[poullafouca]

I have heard versions of answers to this one, but I am a bit of a loss about how to specifically and deftly handle this problem.

We adopted our son from birth, he is sixteen months old. DH is African American, I am Caucasian, we wanted a mixed race baby, and our son's birth Mommy, (whose other three children are mixed) told us that his father was AA. Well, he doesn't particularly look like he has an AA parent. He may have, his birth Mommy described him as light skinned, but it's also possible that she expected another baby to arrive. I know, for example that she had a 'friendship' with an older Mexican man.

Anyway. WHO CARES!? I don't. I love my little olive son with all my soul.

Thing is, relatives and close friends are often given to comment, or question, "He doesn't look black, does he?" I understand their curiosity, but I am concerned that we are now at the point that my little one doesn't need to be commented on or discussed in this manner.

DH has a mixed daughter who is twenty two, and she has spent her entire life explaining 'who' she is to one racial group or another and says it's annoying and boring.

How do I effectively, without any rudeness, deflect these comments. I want my son to glide along as simply as possible, without being confused by other people's questions.

To strangers I am happy to say, "He looks like his father", and leave it there, but please, if anyone has any experience with this or ideas, help.

Thanks

Poulla

[SanInUtah]

Poulla,

A friend of mine adopted a mixed-race baby who turned out to be full caucasian. They learned it after medical problems dictated the necessity to test DNA and it showed characteristics incompatible with that they'd been told. In this case, since both parents are caucasian, they took the step of amending the baby's birth certificate to reflect his true ethnicity.

My son is reportedly full blooded hispanic and looks very much AA after a summer in the sun. He's darker than friends who are full AA. I could care less, same as you, except for medical concerns. Since so much of what has been documented with my little guy was genetically linked through his father's history we might do well to test. It's something to think about if there are more surprises.

[Leigh131313]

Ugg...How very frustrating.

I don't know how to handle it...however, I have handled situations with my own family about my son being adopted. My mom in particular likes to say how much he looks like us, and even introduced him as her adopted grandson (VERY proudly, she thinks that makes him extra special... )

I have just had to speak directly to her. I explained how him feeling that he HAS to look like us, is not a good thing. How being labelled is not going to be healthy for him, I asked her how she would feel if i called her his Adoptive Grandma...she was horrified at the thought..lol

So, even these well meaning comments need to be addressed, and I think a direct approach is probably the best.

[Lexie]

You probably need to get used to it. My family is Asia /AA and we run the gamut some looking pure AA and some pure Asian but most somewhere in the middle. That is the thing with mixed race people, you never know which features will be most prominent and it may change over time as well.

My 4 year old is AA/Asian/cc and when he is with my dh no one thinks he is AA. They know he is not CC, but think he is Eurasian or Hispanic. When he is with me then most people get it.

My baby is AA/Mexican/CC and looks exactly like that. All three. You never know. My girlfriends kids have barely wavy blond blond hair and blue/green eyes. They are bi-racial---and she is fair skinned AA, but they look completely CC ( like Scandinavian--not olive at all).

You just need to teach him that in the US everyone is terribly obsessed with race and trying to catagorize everyone. No matter what he looks like he should be proud of his heritage. You can educate your family--but for the rest ---oh well.

[Fran27]

Originally Posted by Lexie

You just need to teach him that in the US everyone is terribly obsessed with race and trying to catagorize everyone. No matter what he looks like he should be proud of his heritage. You can educate your family--but for the rest ---oh well.

This is so true... As a European, I was totally shocked to find out that Americans even use the word 'race' to describe people, and ask yours on lots of official papers. Just seemed like an open door to racism to me...

And I agree, race just doesn't matter... it's what the people are inside that does. It will be a hard lesson to teach a kid I'm sure, but I'm sure eventually he will understand that people who stop at someone's color just are not worth his attention.

What a sick world we live in.

That being said, it doesn't mean your relatives really care about whether he looks black or not, IMO. It's just something to say, especially if they were told the baby was a AA/caucasian child. I don't think they really mean anything by it. For your child's sake though, I would see if it's possible to get any kind of paternity test or ask the birthmom if she knows who the birthfather really is. It might matter to him eventually, to know better who he can relate to.

But it is annoying when birthmoms are not totally honest about how the baby was conceived... it can cause a lot of problems down the road.

[HBV]

My favorite answer for any rude question like that, even a rhetorical one, is: I can't imagine why that would interest you.

You can get your point across without stooping to the same level of rudeness they've just exhibited.

[lisa in venice]

What Lexie said! Americans are obsessed with catagorizing people as if that has ANYTHING to do with who they are. Our youngest dd is AA/CC (or at least that is what we were told) but with the exception of her cute as a button little nose (which I KNOW came from "Mother Africa") looks totally Latina. Huge almond shaped eyes, dark brown bone straight hair and lighter skin. People are forever asking what her "background" is. The funnist thing is that when I tell most people they question it but black folks just shrug and tell me a bout a cousin who came out looking "different" from the other kids. You can't predict genetics especially with mixed Race kids.

lisa

[joskids]

We have the same issues. I'm white, DH is black, first adopted child is black, other 3 are biracial of various tones and features. If someone asks questions about whether they are mine and are truly sensitive in their asking, I choose that time to teach about adoption. If they are rude in their asking, I say "Why do you ask????????". I think the most important issue is whether your child grows up with a strong sense of self esteem. IF you are confident, they will be also. If you have doubts, so will they. I like the "he looks like his father" answer. I use that one a lot.

Josie

[WizardofOz]

I can totally identify with Fran27. I was born in Europe, too, and lived in Israel for most of my life. I am shocked and disgusted at the "race" frenzy in the United States.

I am still surprised that the word race is "politically correct"! The very same word ("Rasse" in German, "geza" in Hebrew) is used in Europe and in Israel only for animals e.g. dogs but never for humans.

I refuse to participate in the race game because I have seen and experienced that it does not have to be like this. As a consequence, e.g. I refuse to define my "race" in official documents unless there is clear relevance to the topic (and usually there isn't!)

My beautiful son is of Asian descent and I am so happy to have a baby that looks different from us!

We live in a big city in Texas and were prepared to get unsolicited comments from strangers. That did not happen! We do get a lot of comments from strangers about how cute Kiran is but were not asked rude questions like "where did you get him from??" or so. (If we will in future, I will probably say something like "why do you ask??").

In the adoption literature we were told to read, the message was that your child has to be prepared for a racist America and know how to deal with it.

Although this makes sense to me, I did not like the tacit acceptance of the fact that America is racist, as if this was an immutable truth. The message that I was missing in all those books was something like " ... these are the facts and this is what we can do to help to improve the issue of racism in America".

It is folks like us, adoptive moms, who can contribute to making a difference, as little as it may sometimes seem, so let's do it.

[JC10]

You're doing exactly as you should, love your baby unconditionally. I am in a very similar situation, my EM we adopted from birth November 2004. The birth mother in our situation had no idea of the birth father's ethnicity. Our olive skinned curly haired EM is just beautiful. We love her every day. BUT, I do ask myself how I will respond when and if she asks about her ethnicity which could be one of many options. Everyone has their guess the most common choices being AA or Hispanic.

[DebCsMom]

We have 3 adopted children. One Biracial DD, one AA DD & one AA DS. Our DS is lighter than our Biracial DD. Our Biracial DD didn't look Biracial until almost 2 when her tight curls came in. She doesn't have AA features other than the hair. She is now 6. Our AA DD is VERY dark, but both her BParents are VERY light! Her BMom is 1/4 Japanese & 3/4 AA. So our DD is actually 1/8 Japanese but is very dark. And like I said, our full AA son is lighter than our Biracial DD.

We use to get comments too alot that our Biracial DD didn't look biracial at all, until her hair came in. With our DS we use to get that ALL the time because he was so light. His hair came in curly very early though.

My Cousin is CC & her DH is AA. They have 4 children & each & every one of them is different in color, hair texture, features, etc.

It's weird how genetics works!

Deb

[poullafouca]

I am glad of the reminders from non-Americans of how shocked they were by the whole 'race' thing. I remember when I moved here fifteen years ago, being absolutely horrified as I applied for a SS card, and seeing the race question on the form. I was really annoyed, thinking, "Why? Why is it these people's business what my, or any other person's ethnic origin is?"
Let me clarify myself. I love diversity, my idea of hell is to live in a place where everyone looks like me (Caucasian/Irish), what a miserable idea!
I don't want a world of forced political correctness, where we all pretend we are exactly the same, we aren't.
Global behaviour is usually formed by the geographics. English people, for example, we are good at huddling inside for long amounts of time, reading, being aggressive (island mentality), very creative, (you have to be when you live in a grey place), extremely good at being private, and giving privacy, (so are the Japanese, comes from having no space).
Irish people (I'm half) wet, small, poor, dominated by catholicism. Everyone is guilty! Lots of anxiety. Tons of kids, no privacy, people don't express their feelings well; booze helps. Top half of country been occupied by the enemy for years. Very romantic, yearning, story telling based arts. etc etc
That's just two little islands, which are very close together.
Anyway, I am blathering on.

Thanks for the excellent points. All have validity. It will be my life's work to illuminate the beauty of diversity to my son.

And also, hopefully, at some point, discover who, exactly was his birth father, and get the two of them together, so that matters are a little clearer.


Poulla

[lisa in venice]

Race obsessed American taking the steering the topic off a little bit. Race is an obsession here because unlike sot other places in the world THERE IS a great deal of racial and ethinc diversity. Unfortunately our history of dealing with it has not been pretty but also unlike most places we TRY to get better. Government forms that ask for race is so that we can keep track of how many people we have of different races and if they are being properly served with services or if there is a pattern of discrimination. In other countries with large minority ethnic populations there is no attemp to remedy obvious discrimination and no government protocols for doing so (because they claim not to HAVE discrimination ie France, Brazil). We are still dealing with a mess that was nearly 300 years in the making so it means that often we show our dirty linen.

BTW many of the people who ask about Miranda's "background" are not from this country so obviously we re not the only ones obsessed

lisa