Earlier this week, I read the book this article was excerpted from and it gave me a lot of food for thought. You can click to read the article yourself, but it talks about the affect of parenting on kids’ racial preferences. There is a lot of food for thought in that article, but I was particularly interested in the stuff about how more diverse environments do not necessarily mean that kids will make friends with kids of other ethnicities. In fact, the more diverse the environment, the MORE likely kids are to self-segregate and the LESS likely they are to have friends of a different race.
I have read this article over a few times and it gives me mixed feelings. The liberal white girl inside me says “Oh noes! What do we do? How can we force the children of all races to hold hands and sing kumbaya together?”
On the other hand, I am not raising white kids. As a white mom raising Asian and hapa kids, my first and foremost concern has always been that my kids are comfortable relating to other Asian (or hapa) kids. (I know! I should have my liberal white lady card revoked for admitting that out loud!)
Sure, I think it would be swell if my kids have friends of all different ethnicities and backgrounds, but isn’t it more likely my girls will be friends with kids who share commonalities? Last year in school, one of the girls M became close friends with has a Chinese American mom and a white dad. I can’t say I was particularly surprised.
Exactly how many close friends do Mr. A and I have who are nothing like us? Most of our friends fit into more than three of the following categories:
- Former classmates (high school, college, law school) or coworkers
- Parents whose kids go to our kids’ schools (preschool, elementary, Chinese school)
- Lawyers and/or lawyer’s spouses
- Neighbors from our town
- Parents of children the same ages as our kids
- Moms who don’t work
- People who share our values and political views
- Families who are similar to us socioeconomically
It makes sense that we are hanging out with people who are similar to us. We meet these people because they are where we are, doing the things we’re doing. We can relate to their lifestyles and values, because they are our values and lifestyles.
I used to feel a lot of pressure to find Asian kids for our kids to be friends with. Without any real effort (via seeing them at both preschool and Chinese school), we made friends with a couple other families. Unfortunately, their kids don’t go to the same schools as our kids, so we see them less often than we would like. (Not to mention both families are hard working overachievers, so they have busy schedules, not unlike our family.) When we ran into both these families last Sunday, all the little girls were thrilled to see each other in the hallway. Now that Chinese school is back in session, we are planning to hang out more often.
It is funny though, how I used to think about needing friends so the girls would know other Asian kids, but now these friends are friends because our families have a lot in common: all three families have an Asian lawyer, we all have 6 year old girls, one has a daughter adopted from China, one couple is white/Asian, one dad is 2nd generation Asian American, they all like dim sum etc. It is nice to have friends who don’t think we are crazy for trying to make the girls learn Chinese and for wanting to travel with them while they are young. These other families are doing it too.
I don’t worry so much any more about finding Asian kids for our friends to be friends with. I think the odds are good both L and M will end up being able to relate to other Asian kids because they have a lot more in common than just their appearance. Our family’s values are pretty typical of other Asian American families and our girls will have a lot of shared experiences with Asian kids, I think.
Thinking this through, though, I wonder if L will be able to relate as well to other transracially adopted kids. Since we decided to pull her out of regular Chinese school, I contacted our local FCC to see if she can still sign up for their introductory language class. She will be starting a class there this weekend. I will confess, I am more nervous about showing up at the FCC class than I was about Chinese school. I am hoping we can find people there who we have more in common with than just a kid adopted from China.
I thought of you the other day.. I was reading an article (maybe the same one? I can’t remember now where I read it) written by grown kids adopted from Korea into white families. And the article was saying that it was kind of silly to be bringing them to the US and dressing them in ceremonial clothing and feeding them Korean foods that were for special occasions and enrolling them in language classes (this is what made me think of you, although obviously your situation is different b/c of your spouse & in-laws) because the kids were from orphanages, and thus their entire culture was different in & of itself. That they were NOT traditionally Korean.. that their culture was an orphanage culture. And that no matter what, they were not Korean enough to be accepted by Koreans.
I worry about this with my kids.. I *know* that Haitians consider them “blan” (white, or “foreign/other”) just by virtue of the fact that they left Haiti, adopted American ways, don’t speak Kreyol, etc. American black kids do not consider them black (hell, my KIDS do not consider themselves black.. they consider themselves Haitian, and call themselves “brown”). They are being raised by white parents. Where do they fit in? With other brown kids raised by white families, realistically.
Well, and with other kids who have RAD/PTSD and other trauma related issues, too, but that’s a whole other story.
http://www.watchingthewaters.wordpress.com
Corey
@Corey: I hate to use AmFam’s blog as a soapbox for a parallel issue… but to hear that your kids “don’t consider themselves black” sounds a HUGE warning alarm for me in terms of the potential for internalized racism.
I’d suggest reading this link by a black transracial adoptee that addresses black diaspora identity and Ethiopian adoption, but I think it could apply very well to Haitian adoption also:
http://birthproject.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/african-diaspora-adoptee-identity/
One thing I am discovering is that I can introduce kids to each other, but I can’t make them be friends. Whether my son becomes friends with another kid depends so much on personality. So with some hapa kids, they will just ignore each other and do their own thing, whereas with some hapa kids they will get along really well….. (Same with kids of other ethnicities)
Thank you.. I find the article to be really fascinating.
Interesting-definitely things I think about a lot. I have yet to go to an fcc thing, and I still feel weird about heritage camp. But I do think it is important for S to develop relationships with other girls who share her IA experience, and all that goes with that.
This will be a blog post at some point, but I do feel the priorities are the Chinese language and current sociopoliticaleconomic knowledge of her birth country. When I buy Chinese dresses, they are fusion styles that I can see my ChAm friends wearing.
And, as someone who was once told I was “too white” to raise an AfAm child, I have successfully done a lot of outreach to connect with AfAm who are atheist, vegetarian, liberal et al.
But, I am interested in your list of circles. I actively avoid work friendships, and my life has moved too rapidly to maintain classmate relationshps to any real degree-our friends are people we meet dancing, knitting circle, hiking clubs, etc-and I honestly wouldn’t say most of them are a lot like us. Our social group is very diverse on all spectrums but created by activities in common. Sometimes that’s hard, in that I don’t have a best friend who shares everything-but I also like the fact that I can meet my friends at a bar to knit and chat and be reminded of their very different religious and political values-and yet, or core values are very similar.
So, I don’t want my kids to be surrounded by white faces-but I’m starting to think it’s more important for them to learn that they can care a lot about friends who are quite different from them. Sorry-rambling-I do need to blog ; )
Most of my work friendships got much closer after we started working together. Mr. A has gotten several jobs due to friend connections, so his work friends were friends before they were coworkers.
Our circle of friends is relatively ethnically diverse, but most of them fit into the categories I mentioned. I have a few friends who are outliers, but we aren’t particularly close.
Great article…
I have a learning Chinese website. If you are interested in learn Chinese, check it out at http://www.learnchineseeveryday.com/
Thank you.
I’ve been thinking about these issues too. My daughter is at a new school (diverse, but not as diverse as preschool), and I also read that article and have been mulling it over ever since.
I do want her to have Asian/ half-Asian friends (and she does), and to feel comfortable in the Korean community. On the other hand, I think all kids (not just white kids) benefit from friendships with kids of many different races and backgrounds.
As a White mom, I have the same goals as you–I want my White kids to have other White friends, and if they want, they can form friendships with kids of a different racial backround than them. My goal isn’t to pressure them into relating and befriending kids of color or to convince them that it is required that they have these friends. Oooops, does that make me racist?
As a mom, I want my kids to have friends. I don’t care what color they are. But I do not want other kids to WANT to be friends with my kids JUST because they are black. I don’t want my kid to be their “token”, so they can say, “well, I have black friends…”
fortunately we live in a very diverse town (culturally and economically). My kid’s school is mostly filled with various shades of tan. They are really excited to go to school with kids that look like them and love the kids that are very different than them (though definitely they think the coolest kid is the one who’s mom is African and came in with an Obama t-shirt and a 70′s fro… I was promptly told that she is much cooler than I am) Their circle includes many hispanic, black and asian kids (lots and lots of half-white kids). Funny thing is our circle of adult friends all non-us born. My husband’s friends are all Indian or Chinese. Mine are all Asian, foreign born white or married to an Asian. I am white and my husband is chinese from vietnam, spent HS and college in Toronto. Though we are both computer programmers by trade most of our college friends and colleagues are Indian, Chinese or foreign born whites.
love this topic
Thank you for this – that article got me reading more about antiracism (and criticism of its weak spots), and just thinking about this in general more actively than I have been for the past couple of years.