Extra Credit Blogpost

I think Mr. Wise made a very clear point at the beginning of his speech that many people of color don’t like to talk about racism in front of white people and this makes them shut down. People of color assume white people are racist because we are raised in a radicalized society in which we internalize it. At the same time white do not want to talk about racism because they fear they may say the wrong thing. Wise gave the term suspect racism means that when people don’t talk about racism is because they have something to hide. Wise says it is better to take a risk even when it is scary and uncomfortable.  He says we need to push through the difficulty and emotional feelings. Wise said it is not like science where we can find a solution to a problem. So to get rid of a social problem we need to be able to discuss this issue amongst each other as a social society. I thought this was a great point because I feel this is plays a part in why there are issues with the topic of racism. Everyone feels uncomfortable and therefore we don’t talk about it but, by doing so it harms us more because we are doing nothing to try to fix this. How can we it so that people will feel that it is ok to talk about racism? I think this is why people are now bringing up the white privilege topic because it is a new way that involves white people to try to think about their advantages and how minorities don’t have equal opportunities and how this ties into racism. This made me reflect on the reading by Linda Faye Williams that the race problem is a euphemism for white skin privilege. “The real problem is the social and political construction of race in a way that advantages whites over people of color in economic markets, political institutions, and social policies (91).” There is this new idea of racism denying that race still matters. Just because we don’t see racism like how it was historically like slavery doesn’t mean it doesn’t still exist today.

Wise told us a story of when he was invited to CSBSJU a couple of years back to speak about diversity. The two students who had went to pick him up at the airport and while driving to campus Wise asked why they decided to bring him to their campus. They told him that because they decided to have a diversity day. Wise thought to himself really only one day! So what is the rest of the 364 days are like without diversity he thought? He asked them if there were any issues on the campus about conflicts with racial tension. They answered no because they have this thing. Wise was thinking wow they have something that gets rid of racism? Let’s hear it said Wise. They said it’s called Minnesota Nice. After that Wise spent a few years asking people what they think of the Minnesota Nice thing. People said that it is just used to be passive aggressive. Minnesota Nice is institutionalized and is used as a mask and keeps the lid on problems. Wise said that people of color or people who are marginalized have to complain or raise their voice something that is wrong/issue. When you do that you are not nice now you violate the norm because it wasn’t an issue until you brought it up.  We need to prepare to be honest address institutional inequalities to be a community. We are bad as a society at not being honest. Wise said that when you’re white it’s hard to see racism just because of race you’re not going to have to know what color of people has to know or experience. William argues that, “new racism hinges on the insistence that, discrimination is illegal; everyone has equal rights, so what’s the problem (93)?” I agree with Williams that in order to break this new racism and make people of color full participants in our society we need to openly confront white privilege as reality and ideology (94). This means changing the capitalist system of social policy like redistribution of income and wealth and less capitalization (94). I think for this to be effective is if a great number of people come together to bring this issue up and get attention from the government and politicians to do something about this because they do have the power and authority to make new rules and they have the responsibility to take care of our society.  

-Ka L.

Blog Post 7

Blog Post 7: Book Review

The book I read for my book review is called A Family of Choice: A Gay Man’s Story of International Adoption by Paul Hampsch. The book is a memoir of Paul’s international adoption/single parent adoption in Ukraine. Paul is a gay man and has a partner named Domenic. After a long and stressful adoption process he managed to adopt two “healthy” sons, named Paul Jr. and Andrew.

In class, we briefly talked about international adoption. Paul’s international adoption consisted of finding an adoption agency that specialize and foreign adoption and then he has to do a home study to see if he is fit to be a father. Unfortunately, since he is gay his options are very limited. Even the fact that he was a man also plays a role. During the time of his adoption only two countries was available to an unmarried man which was Guatemala and Ukraine.

Ethical issue that Paul provided was the best interest of the child. Evidently, many orphanages in Ukraine do not have the necessity to raise the orphans into fully healthy children until someone adopt them. They lack medical supplies so they have to sterilize used medical equipment for further usage, does not have enough food for the orphans, do not have proper clothing (mismatched shoes or worn out shoes), etc. Since Paul was capable of adopting two sons he provided the best interest of this child because he can provide that necessity for the children to be develop into healthy adults. Another ethical issue was that directors often used the orphans as a mere means. They would get compensated for the sales of these children and they were also known as “director’s commodities” (Hampsch, 2009, pg. 44). It also mentioned that if the demands of the director’s are not met they would rather have the child starve of hunger than give it to loving and caring families (Hampsch, 2009, 42). I personally think it is unfair for these children to be born into a country where they lack the support to be developed into sufficient children and how they are being used for the selfishness act of the directors for their own personal gain.   

Chia C.

Blog post 7): Book Review

The book I read was called After the Morning Calm: Reflections of Korean Adoptees edited by Dr. Sook Wilkinson and Nancy Fox. The main ideas for this book were letting Korean adoptees voice and express their experiences with personal stories about adoption. This book addresses different themes according to each individual such as struggling with race/ identity issues, giving back to the community, and developing self acceptance of who they are. In the end, they become a stronger and better person through these struggles and experiences.

There were many new things I learned from reading this book. In one of the stories by Christine Jones Regan, she talked about painful years of being teased. She believes in interracial adoption and her advice for new adoptive parents or those considering on being adoptive parents should consider and take time to examine their own values on race. She feels that adoptees have a lack of support from others and that adopted children’s coping mechanisms may not be as strong. “It is unfair and ultimately harmful to deny that prejudice and bias exist or to assume that love will conquer all. Love is strong but there are realities that must be faced (55).” This reminds me of how love is color blind and how some people believe that love is enough from Oparah, Shin and Trenka 2006.

Furthermore, this made me think more about adoptive parents how they really try their best to provide the best for their adopted children. I thought about how many adoptive parents must also be hurting and suffering knowing that all they want to do is protect their adopted child. But, it is very painful to them when they cannot protect their child from others racist teasing. I think it is equally important to see both sides from the adoptive parents and the adoptees struggles. It made me reflect a lot from Jean Keller’s (2012), that transracial adoptees do struggle to find a community to fit into (26). In the end I think it is not easy at all to find justice and equality in our structured society. One the other hand, I think that John Raible’s 9 Steps to a Transracialized, Multicultural Lifestyle is very helpful for adoptive parents to help their adopted children. Like recognizing racism, reaching out, immersing yourself and your family, keep learning, and enjoy diversity. 

-Ka L.

Book Review Blog

This blog post is a review of the book I read for my book report.  The title of the book is Following the Tambourine Man: A Birthmother Memoir.  The book was written by Janet Mason Ellerby. She is currently a professor of English at the University of North Carolina.    As you can presume by the title, this book was written by a birthmother. She had given up her first born child when she was sixteen years old during the baby scoop era.  This book tells of her experiences of giving up a child and how she tried to heal over many years through her heartbreak.  The main point of this book was to tell the story of the author.  In the author telling her story she was able to tell the story of other women of her generation.  This book describes her struggle with her pregnancy, men, her parents, and the eventual raising of children of her “own”.  The story takes from her early teenage years up until her forties.  She describes how she felt through the pregnancy till the time she wrote this book in 2004.  The entire book consisted of three parts the loss, the journey, and the return.  By those titles alone you are expected to know the themes of the chapters to come.  Throughout the whole book she shares her thoughts and events from the time she was a young teenager up until she wrote this book.  She bounces back and forth from past to present to almost analysis her thoughts now and then.  To reflect on her life and how she got to where she is today.  Janet felt a lot of pain and loss throughout the entire 36 years she lived without her first born.  As a reader you feel her pain and connect with her story as she tells it.  Also with the joy and relief she felt when she was reunited.   

I would recommend this book to those who are interested in adoption because it tells of the heartaches that birthmothers may feel in giving up their children. It could be useful for those that would like to study the aspects of adoption, become an adoptive parent, or those debating whether or not they themselves should keep their own child.  Not only that I thought the book was very interesting and engaging.  It is one of those books that made you want to turn the next page.   

Lisa R.  

Extra Credit Blog Post

I went to the lecture hosted by Tim Wise, the author of White like Me. He was a very intelligent and passionate speaker. The overall theme of his speech was race and racism in our nation. I thought he spoke of issues that could easily be connected to the issues we have discussed in class.

His main point of the speech was to make the audience understand that racism still exists and that it needs to be talked about within our community. He related not talking about racism to not talking about starvation. Not talking about starvation is not going to cause everyone that is starving to receive food, just like not talking about racism is not going to make racism magically disappear. He explained that racism is easy to go unnoticed by the majority, also known as the white person, because our society automatically reverts to the majority. For example, in American schools we have American literature, and then we have separate Black literature. This can also be seen in Black history month. Tim Wise argues that we do not have a white history month because all of the other months are white history month. Again, we automatically default to the majority. As a society Tim urges us to recognize this and talk about this so that we can work harder to fix it.

I responded to this point by being a little bit surprised. I know that racism is present in America, that was not a shock, but I was taken aback by how much I was responsible for continuing the cycle. I grew up in a fairly diverse community and I had many friends of different races. I never really gave much thought to them being different, I saw them as the same as me, an average high school student. Tim Wise would have disapproved of this notion. In his view I need to see them as different people with different backgrounds. After listening to Tim Wise, his approach makes sense. I had always been under the impression that treating everyone the same was the goal of defeating racism, but Time Wise taught me that as a society we have to take another approach to defeat racism. We need to have talks about racism and learn what the perspectives of minorities are on the topic of racism. These talks are difficult to have. Simply listening to Tim Wise while in the back row in a packed room of students made me feel a bit uncomfortable. I have to realize that the discomfort is so minute compared to the discomfort that many other cultural groups may feel on a daily basis, and that in order to reduce racism I need to be put into these uncomfortable situations. 

I think the talk I attended was strongly related to our discussions in class, especially our discussion on silent racism. Tim Wise’s views on our racist society today are similar to the views of Trepagnier in Silent Racism. Trepagnier states in her first chapter when discussing racism that “because this racism is not recognized by most whites, even well-meaning white people contribute to the racial divide without intending to and without knowing that they do” (Trepagnier, pg. 4). Wise would agree with Trepagnier. Wise believes that most white people do not know they are being racist because of how our society operates. Many white Americans have this idea that they are not racist and that they are just operating under the societal norm, which actually happens to be racist. This can be seen by some of our class members stating that they are not racist, yet when we took the Implicit Bias Test almost everyone had some sort of racial bias. Wise believes it is hard to see the racism in our institutions as a white person but that, as Trepagnier states in her book, “blacks and other people of color see racism as permeating the institutions of society, producing racial inequality in employment, education, housing, and justice” (Trepagnier, pg. 4). In order to reveal the systemic racism in our society to those that deny it exists, we need to have discussions in our communities about racism, such as the talk with Tim Wise.

I thoroughly enjoyed Tim Wise’s speech and I took a lot away from it. I think it is great that CAB brought such an important topic to the attention to the members of our community. I would strongly suggest that Tim Wise or other experts like him be invited to our school in the future. 

Julie Thurmes

Blog Post #7

I read "Another Place at the Table" by Kathy Harrison. I found there to be a significant ethical dilemma somewhat hidden within one of the stories of a foster child.

Harrison, a foster parent, was planning on adopting one of her foster children, Karen, while the other foster child, Sara, was not to be adopted by her. Though Harrison cannot be expected to adopt every child she lets into her home, I found this situation to be ethically difficult. I cannot imagine being a child, abandoned by those who I believed to love me, only to come to a home where my foster parents choose to adopt another foster child instead of me. This could easily result with a child feeling even less loved by those who claim to love them most, as occurred with Sara. It would be also be a very difficult situation to explain to a foster child that you love them, but not in the same way as you love another foster child. In Sara's case, it solidified her idea that she was the problem and that she would never be good enough for someone to love. She was eventually hospitalized due to her difficulties in handling this poor self-esteem.

This leads me to the ethical dilemma; is it ethical to adopt one child over another while both children are in the care of the foster parent? On one side, Karen does have the right to grow up in “an atmosphere of affection and of moral and material security,” which would be provided by the Harrisons (Keller, Ethics Toolbox). On the other hand, Sara also has this right. The environment that Harrison has now created for Sara is an environment that is unable to provide “care, treatment, and guidance that will assist the child in developing into a self-sufficient adult,” which infringes on her rights as a child (Keller, Moral Principals and Rights Handout). I think it would have been more ethical if the Harrison’s had waited until Sara had left their home before they had adopted Karen. This would have taken into account both Karen’s and Sara’s rights while causing the least amount of harm to all parties. Though as ethical as it may be in theory, I understand that this may not have been plausible in their particular situation due to complex rules and regulations of adoption. I feel as though this would be an interesting ethical question to discuss in our classroom.

Julie Thurmes

Blog Post 6

Blog Post 6

Before I read the article, “Rethinking Racism” by Barbara Trepagnier; I thought of racism as someone who is either is or not. I guess it did not occur to me that someone can be in the middle. More importantly, the article did get me to rethink about racism. It was interesting to see racism to be modify into a continuum, “Changing the oppositional categories ‘racist’ and ‘not racist’ to a continuum ranging from ‘more racist’ to ‘less racist’ would more accurately depict racism” (Trepagnier, 2006, pg. 5). This makes sense because I do not think that anyone (maybe) can be 100% racist or not. With the continuum anyone can stand where they believed in. Furthermore, I think the continuum stay away from indicating whether someone is intended to be racist and focuses more on the racist’s effects of one’s actions.

A question that I have is that I see people advocating/promoting to stride away from racism and with the continuum, would it be possible for a society to get away from racism? I mean if someone cannot be racist at all, then would racism ever end? This would be interesting to see how the continuum would change depending on how someone act because someone who is less racist arguing against someone who is racist but still is quite racist themselves.    

Chia C.

Blog Posting # 6

In my blog for this week, I am going to discuss the article that we read for last class about silent racism.  In this article Trepagnier talks about the presence of racism in our society today and the importance of acknowledging it.  The thing that struck me most and the thing I personally struggle with is silence racism.  Trepagnier says that silent racism is broken up in two forms stereotypical images and paternalistic.  The stereotypical image branch is based on the misinformation about blacks that are prevalent in our society.  Whereas the paternalistic branch stems from superiority that is found in some relationships between whites and black (Trepagnier, pg. 6). 

            In the spirit of being honest as a white person I have been exposed to negative images and thoughts about black people since I have been very young.  I consider myself not racist and have no personal stigmas for races other than my own, but I can’t help but make preconceived judgments about people sometimes that go against how I truly think or my morals.  Trepagnier suggests in her article that ALL white people are racist.  But at the same time who can blame us.  In my opinion, racism is something that is learned and that is exactly what she is suggesting.  It is instilled in the “white” culture to have judgments about others who are not like us. 

            After reading this article I thought about myself, my family, and my generation.  The first thought that I had about this topic was the civil rights movement and in thinking critically about it, it really was not that long ago when it happened.  The mind set of those that lived during that time are still very much alive in even my generation.  Our grandparents were most likely the ones that lived through the segregation era’s, they grew up thinking that whites were better than blacks.  That means our parents inherited and/or were exposed to racism that existed in those times.  Though I do believe our generation and our parents have developed different beliefs on the topic of racism and blacks.  In terms of silent racism, it lives inside of us and we need to know why it is there and make conscious choices to try and avoid making the type of judgments we have been taught to make.      

Lisa R.     

Blogpost 6 (transracial adoption)

I do not know much about transracial adoption but, since I myself am Asian and probably have similar experiences as transracial adoptees like how I well I can speak English but, I am not adopted. Or assimilating to American culture while I learn less and less of my own culture.

The con’s of transracial adoption first is that love is colorblind (Wright 2006, 28). Some people believe that love is all a person needs. Adoptive parents do their best to raise their child. In other cases love is not enough. I am sure that transracial adoptees are very happy that they don’t have to live without a home and loving parents. But, there are challenges. If the adoptive mom does teach her how to be black does she only teach about all the good things about being black? I mean I would not want to tell my black daughter that society thinks blacks are ugly. Secondly, few blacks are capable of the adoption process. “The emphasis on high income, educational achievement, residential status and other accoutrements of a white middle class life style eliminates black applicants by the score (Bremner 1974, 780).” I think it’s fair that whites should be able to adopt transracial adoptees because they have the right to and because the children deserve to have a home and a family. It would be a problem if the children were only meant to be adopted by blacks because the quantity is few and most do not qualify. Thirdly, that transracial adoption damages children of color, leading to low self esteem, identity crisis, and difficulties relating to their communities of origin (Oparah, Shin, and Trenka 2006, 4). This holds true in the story of the girl who wrote in her diary, “It’s a good thing I’m smart because no one is ever going to marry me (Wright 2006, 27).” It is difficult for both the child and the adoptive parents.  Each of them is trying to comfort and protect one another.

The pro’s of transracial adoption is that these adoptees do get a loving family and home. “Critics have pointed to the large number of children of color awaiting families, arguing that permanency is far more important than race (Oparah, Shin, and Trenka 2006, 5).” Sometimes adoptees get the best of both worlds. “…advocates of transracial adoption depict transracial adtopive families as sites of hope for a multicultural utopia (4).” This is a way to overcome racism, inequality, injustice and, to connect with families and communities. I would like to discuss more on things that are a must for adoptive parents to teach transracial adoptees. 

-Ka L.