shewolfnm wrote:Forgive me ... I am posting what is going through my head with out reading everyones posts in detail.. and I only have a vague idea of what you are discussing..
But this discussion has lead me to wonder about mixed race "natural" families.. Meaning.. families that have their own kids, yet the parents are mixed race.
My mother is white/cherokee
My father is black and we believe part cherokee too. But no one can locate him to prove that anymore.
I grew up in a primarily white home, yet I am very dark skinned.. tight spiral hair, black woman ..
Am I now , uncultured?
I dont know a lot about african history.
I know my father was born in africa to an american mother and an african father. His mother brought him back here. Sometimes I want to say he is from Johannesburg . Other times I want to say he is from a distinct small tribe. I truly do not remember anything about him .
My mothers skin is white. She has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Her father looks like an indian straight off of the plains.
Yet, all of his children look like my mother.
THEIR children look like him. If I braid my hair in a native american style I no longer look like a black woman. it is odd.. but that is not my point.
My point is that I am no where near as cultured in my history as I should be. But that does not detract from my home, my acceptance from my family, my security in myself and my place in this world.
As a child, I was at the mercy of adults as to what it was they would teach me. As an adult, it is up to me if I want to learn both of my cultures, or just stay as is.
If someone told me that I suffered as a child because my mom did not take me to 'black areas' or did not ' walk me to a reservation' I would laugh in their face.
Again.. this is SO much about race it is sickening.
Any white person can teach a child about black famous people, black heritage and older deeper black religions ( houdoo anyone?)
Any black family can teach a native american child about their heritage.
You dont have to have a matching skin tone to teach properly.
Unless you really want to get down to some racist ideas like.. young black people in america only show thier pride in their race by dressing a certain way, speaking a certain way and they should also like a certain type of music.. I think this whole news story is mind boggling and I am sorry to see people fighting against adoptions based on race alone. Because that is all it comes down to.
A black person is not better at teaching black history then the white person.
An Indian is not better at teaching Hindu then an Asian person.
it is all up to the parents to teach history. And history I think should never be about a single race.
Yeah, it's complex.
SOME kids, when placed outside their culture, DO feel "uncultured" and lost etc.
Along with dealing with not being with birth parents, which can be a huge thing for some kids.
Some don't.
I think it's important to recall the not with birth parents thing, too, as opposed to being raised with bio people.
The difficulty in discussing this is people get all polarized and emotional, as though one is saying race is the most important thing.
It is one thing, though.
I suspect both our countries (and Canada) are likely still deeply affected by the terrible results of our shared history of forcibly removing indigenous kids from parents and attempting to extirpate their culture and language by forbidding them to practise them.....and thus prone, perhaps, to over value race.
I think awful decisions are made for aboriginal kids because of this...both in failing to remove them, privileging aboriginality of placement over other things too much, and not challenging the aboriginal-run agencies managing these placements at times when they are clearly wrong in what they do.
