I just finished watching Rabbit Proof Fence. It was absolutely an amazing film, but really disturbing. As I was watching it, I actually felt like my heart was breaking. The (true) story was so horrible.
I had a really hard time separating myself from it, I think for two reasons: (A)the story is just too familiar and (b)the girls are taken from their mother because they are biracial.
When I visted A in China, I knew nothing about China at all. But it was an amazing trip, so when I came home I read everything I could get my hands on. Everything about China from the mid-1920′s until now. A lot of horrible shit happened there during that time period. Several wars, famine, forced separation of families. Terrible, terrible things.
When we went to Cambodia, I had a little more preparation. I read everything I could before I left, but I wasn’t prepared for what we found there. Twenty years after the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia hasn’t recovered. Maybe it never will. It seemed like the whole country was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
When the KR took over, they basically poured into Phnom Penh one day with no notice. They forced everyone to leave the city. They made them drop what they were doing and start walking. No finding your family, no getting food, no nothing. Just go. I think they told everyone it was only for one day, but it was for 3 or 4 years. Over night, Phnom Penh was a ghost town. Some families that were separated that day never saw each other again. Children never saw their parents, never knew what happened to them, wandered alone.
When we were there, there was a notice that the UN or the Government or someone was going to destroy a munitions dump. Basically, they were going to blow up a bunch of guns or grenades or bombs or something outside Phnom Penh.
But some people didn’t get the message. When the explosions started, parents started running for the schools. I knew someone working at an American School or an International School who told me about it. The explosions started and all the sudden, body guards (the Khmer kids whose parents could send them to that school were very very wealthy) and parents ran in, grabbed their kids and ran out. They thought the KR were back or that someone else or something else was coming. No one wanted to risk being separated if it happened again.
Since then, I have done some volunteer work with refugees an a lot of their stories are similar. Split-second decisons meant your family stayed intact or never saw one another again.
It isn’t hard to start internalizing that mindset when you’ve heard it enough times. When we lived in SF, A and I had a plan about where we would meet if there was a major earthquake and how long we would wait for the other to show up. Sept. 11th made another plan necessary. When there was a bomb threat downtown this winter, I actually thought about packing us all up and driving out of town.
It may sound a little paranoid, but it is always somewhere in the back of my mind. So whent the authorities swept in and took those kids in the movie, I could imagine it happening to us.
The other side of it is the part about the kids being biracial. Being in a mixed race family is strange. You are just walking along, living your life, minding your own business. But then people keep pointing our difference out to us. As a white person who grew up in a predominantly white area, this experience is totally foreign to me. I suspect it is a little bit like what people of color experience all the freaking time.
When I look at A, I see a lot of things, (my partner, M’s father, my friend, a kind of flaky goofball) but none of those things is a race. I worry about fitting into his family, but anytime you join a new family, I think there are issues like that. WHen I look at Miss M, I can see bits of myself and bits of A, but I don’t see a race there either. Inside our home, we are just a normal family.
Until go outside and people point out our difference. Over and Over.
List of stupid things you should NOT say to someone with a biracial kid:
–Biracial babies are just the cutest!
–She is going to be so pretty when she grows up. Asian-mixed women are always so attractive!
–She is lucky she is a girl. It would be harder for her to find dates if she was a mixed boy.
–She looks just like a little china doll!
–She doesn’t look any thing like you. Is her dad oriental?
–She doesn’t look like you at all, is her mom white?
–She looks just like you, I can’t tell she is Asian at all.
–She looks more white than Chinese.
–Her eyes are kind of slanted, but she looks pretty white.
–She is lucky her skin is pretty light.
–Her hair/skin color/eyes/profile/nose looks really white/asian.
–She has the good eyes, nice and round.
–I want an Asian baby.
–She looks white enough, she won’t have many problems.
–No one will know she is Chinese, unless she wants to tell them.
–What is she?
None of these things are appropriate. ESPECIALLY when the child is sitting right there. I am going to start coming up with some seriously rude responses.
Anyway, the movie reminded me that it wasn’t really that long ago that being in a mixed race family was more than just an annoyance. And that 30 or 40 years ago (hell, even now), some people were morally outraged that people like A and myself could possibly love each other…never mind have sex and procreate.
It is getting late and I veered way off topic, but what I originally wanted to say was that it was a really great movie and I highly reccomend it. But have some tissues
