Loving Across The Color Line

Loving Across The Color Line, by Sharon E. Rush.

Subtitled, A White Adoptive Mother Learns About Race. 

For those of you who are just joining me, I am an adult adoptee, as in my husband.  We adopted our daughter Mia, who is biracial.  Martin and I are both white.

(Note to self: She's going to be four next month.  Where has the time gone?)

When we started talking seriously about adopting, we looked at many angles, foreign versus domestic, age, and yes, race.  We had a very gifted social worker who performed our home study and was an adoptive mother herself.  We quickly decided that foreign adoption was not for us; the travel, the cost; the red tape.  The most motivating factor against foreign adoption, however, was that there were children right here in the States who needed families and we could fill that need.

The race of a child was not the big motivating factor.  We just didn't care as long as we had a healthy infant.

On the other hand, I'm a white girl married to a pale blue guy.  I have friends from many ethnic backgrounds but I wanted to make sure I gave my daughter all the support and honored all of her heritage and wanted her to be able to negotiate through the world with confidence in herself.  I don't want her skin to be the only thing that determines who she is.

I read everything I could get my hands on regarding a child of a different  color than the parents.

Loving Across The Color Lines was one of the books I read.

It was also the worst.

Ms. Rush is a civil rights lawyer and a law professor at the University of Florida.  Obviously a highly educated woman.  She is also a single white woman who adopted a biracial girl.

Throughout the book, she capitalizes White and Black.  That is a constant irritant.  And weird.  Is that something I missed in the style guide?

She also seems to hunt for injustices done to her daughter.  It's as if every situation her daughter is in, whether playing team sports or interacting with other families, the only issue Ms. Rush focuses on is the race of the other people involved and if that affects her daughter's experience.

She admits she became obsessed with race and race relations.

Although this book is fairly short, 188 pages plus Notes, it took me a long time to read it because it just pissed me off so much.  I had to keep putting it down.  (Okay, sometimes I threw it down and told my husband, "This is such utter bullshit!"  Martin, I should add, read the first chapter and gave it up as a bad job.)

I may be naive or just Pollyanna, but I am not going through my life looking for prejudice.  I can say that so far, we have not encountered any obvious prejudice.

We have also had many frank discussions with friends of various ethnic backgrounds regarding race and the bottom line is that our friends and acquaintances look at Mia as a cute, bright, vivacious little girl.  Not a cute bright vivacious little (fill in color here) girl.

Note to Alaina:  If you send me your snail mail address, I will send you this book.  Of course, after you read it, you will come to my house and beat me about the head and shoulders with it since it is so awful, but hey, that is what friends are for, right?

Comments

[Martin]

Stupid narrow minded bitch. There are no lines, just people. Typical Lawyer. My daughter is one of the cutest, sweetest, little girls I ever met. She is not one thing or the other. She's mine and I have never loved another human more and she makes me SO proud every single day. I get so sick of this bullshit. Mia is ours, she is just like us in every way, we love her SO much and as her parents it's totally up to us to screw her up in our own way. We don't have a college fund yet but we do have a therapist fund. Guess what? That has nothing to do with her colour and everything to do with the screwed up people in her life. Us, her Grandparents, our friends, etc. Those are the things that are going to screw her up. Not the colour of her skin, why? Simple... No one cares. LOL. This idiot woman sees issues where there aren't any and doesn't see her own shortcomings.

Silly bitch.

- MG

[sandi]

depending where you live..you may have a reality check when she starts school... and you can go into denial...but I work in a school system..and even though i don't work at a school...i still hear about it..which should tell you something about the small minded people here...

[Martin]

I love you so very much Sandi and we see you FAR TOO LITTLE. But honestly, if it ever comes to that, I will relocate my family back to Europe. For reasons that are obvious to the more enlightened people in the world.

- MG

[sandi]

I hear you Martin...how ironic that we have that little statement "give me your tired...opressed.. blah blah blah" just so we can persecute them... Sometimes Canada looks good and Janey could actually become a citizen, she is the only one in her family NOT born there, but Canada would grant her dual citizenship even though yet again the US does not recognize it? As if turning your back will make it go away...