***Note, if anyone cares, the formatting on the Meme of Doom is now corrected. It is the next post down and it should be pretty legible now. ****
Three more questions popped up in the comments. Here they are:
Melinda asks:
I finally bit the bullet and begin taking Chinese in October. The question I had was in regards to when L first came home to now. Did anyone in your family speak Chinese to L at any point and did L seem to comprehend that? If you were to do so now, would L be more likely to respond/react to English, Chinese or both?
L definately understood the Chinese the nannies spoke to her in China. She could follow commands like “pai pai shou” (clap your hands). She was much less likely to follow the same commands from Mr. A or myself. Now that I have seen a video of L’s nannies speaking (someone who traveled after us had success sending a disposable video camera), even though they seemed to be speaking Mandarin, it was definately Mandarin with a strong accent. Maybe she couldn’t understand our version of the words.
It took about 6 weeks before we could tell that L was able to understand some of what we were saying in English. Now when she hears Chinese she listens very hard, but definitely doesn’t respond the way she does to English. She will repeat Chinese words when we ask her too, but she will repeat anything we ask her to say anyway.
Country Mouse asks:
Why did you switch from referring to your husband as A to referring to him as Mr. A?
I can’t remember if she said it in the comments or on her own blog, but at some point, Jody mentioned that it was hard for her to read blogs where the people are only initials. Also, MY initial is an A. And A is a word. It thought it was easier if A became Mr.A. Because L and M are more obvious initials, I wasn’t so worried about them.
Marie asks:
Do you find yourself inadvertantly becoming a “cultural expert” and being asked to explain and/or justify Chinese culture? And if so, how you did you adjust to or accomodate that? I ask because as a merely pre-IAP, I already find myself being in the position of “explaining” Chinese culture to others.
I have had the experience of people asking me for information about Chinese culture. Even if I have some knowledge, I generally try to pawn them off onto Mr. A because he lived in China for a bit, has Chinese/Taiwanese parents and obviously knows more than I do. The only exception is that I generally try to correct misconceptions about the one child policy, because Joe Public has some really skewed ideas about that.
KT asks:
My question to you if you want to address another one is “How do you choose your battles?”. In registering my kid for public school we had to pick one race/ethnicity for her. I complained w/ all the correct data etc. The district still says “test scores need one race”. Also I am apparantly the first parent EVER to bring this issue up??? Do a raise hell? or fear some sort of retaliation against my kid? (get the pregnant teacher/long term sub room … not get asked back into program)
That would really piss me off too. I guess I just evaluate each situation and decide how important it is to me and/or my kids. In the instance you mentioned, I would probably complain a little in person, then write letters to the school board, the testing company and governmental officials if it was a state-sponsored test.
I have had maybe two instances when I was specifically told that I could only select one race for M. I think I selected Asian on them both, thinking that if I left them blank someone else would probably fill them in as white because M looks more white.
I think the one-race-only thing is something we will discuss with M when she gets a little older. She will need to know what her options are in a situation like that. Also to know that we support her in defining herself however she chooses.
As a teacher, the one race thing drives me absolutely batty too. I have complained to the office about it many times. I’ve had children come through my room marked as ethnicities that they were not, despite what the parents marked on the form because the secretaries just guessed. And of course, many, many times, the parents check off all relevant races (as well they should) and then the district (and by this I mean whatever secretary works in the office) picks one to enter into the computers because they’re only allowed one.
As far as where this rule comes from, I’m fairly confident that it is not a school or even district rule but somehow coming from the government (at least in my state), because the one thing I’ve heard when I’ve asked is that school funding is partially determined by its minority population, and the government who is requesting that information. I think it would be great if this could be fixed by the powers that be, but I have so little faith when it comes to the bureaucratic machine and education. So while you’re fighting the good fight (and I very much urge everyone to keep doing it, because it’s completely ridiculous that people must be pigeonholed into one tiny part of their identity), keep in mind that your child’s school may receive more money from the government if you choose to check a box other than white.
In response to KT, a friend has children of mixed race (white / African Amer), she either marks both boxes and if it is a “bubble” you have to fill in she very carefully fills in half on each one. Its more to prove a point than to be a pain in someone’s ass, but I still think its funny nonetheless.
I also loathe the one-race thing. I’m biracial, but I generally check the non-white box, because I don’t pass for white and am not treated as such. When “multiracial” does appear on forms, there is often no option of checking which races you are. Often, when people hear “multiracial,” they assume black/white. I think the best solution is “check all that apply.” The government does need demographic information, but by forcing folks to pick one race or multiracial, they’re not recording accurate information.
Your child’s school will not backlash against this kind of complaint. They probably find it annoying too! Besides, I cannot imagine a school putting children in certain classes as a “punishment” for a PARENT. The only way race might come into play with class placement is that many schools try to balance the classes racially. This may sound strange, and I have heard a complaint about this from another blogger, but you really want to make sure that all the hispanic kids don’t accidentally get put in one class, and the white kids in another. That actually happened last year at my school- I got all the Spanish speakers, which isn’t supposed to happen!
The government uses the races to determine how schools are educating “sub-groups” of students. This would include racial groups, as well as students who may have less access to support because of family education or income. We want to know if we need to do more for a certain group! If test scores show that American Indian students are failing, we want to find out what we might need to do to help them be successful. Our test scores are tracked by these subgroups, and if one of them is doing poorly we will be sanctioned.
This doesn’t give any answers, but maybe knowing more about how the information is used will help you make a decision.
As to explaining Chinese culture, good luck. Most people have only the most shadowy idea, some Charlie-Chanish thing, and go from there.
With our Meredith (obviously East Asian) and us (obviously Northern European) the number of goofy comments were much larger when she was little. One time, we were in a local diner, and the waitress said something like ‘your daughter, she’s Chinese?’ Yup. Then she looks at first my wife (Danish/Norwegian ancestry) and then me (mostly German ancestry with brown curly hair) and asked ‘are YOU Chinese?’
Geeze.
Colette, it seems as if in most places, the assumption is that
1) Everyone is either the majority race or some minority
2) If you have any of the latter DNA in you, you’re a minority.
3) There’s no such thing as biracial.