I posted a comment on Facebook last night about something that happened, and it generated a lot of conversation. I thought I'd continue the conversation here where it can be more than a mere paragraph at a time. For those who aren't my FB friends, let me explain.
Yesterday evening, the kids had their TaeKwonDo tests, they ran quite late, and so we went to the nearby McDonald's for a quick dinner. Matthew had a meeting he had to attend for Civil Air Patrol there for planning with a few of the young men, so we thought it would kill two birds with one stone. We get out of the car and start walking toward the restaurant, and before we even enter both Angela and I see this gaggle of high school aged girls with their father staring and pointing at us. Hmm....OK, so there are 5 kids in TKD uniforms, maybe that looked kind of funny, I get that.
It didn't end there. As we walk in and stand in line, the staring continues with more pointing and whispering behind hands, accompanied by giggles. Mind you, these were not young girls, these were older high school aged kids. I elect to ignore them, but Angela us growing more and more disturbed. Olesya and Kenny notice but are in conversation and don't realize how ongoing it is.
We get back to the table and Angela says to me "Mom, that was way overboard...did you see how they were making fun of us and wouldn't stop staring? I am used to people staring at us, but that was too much." Thankfully, she is my girl filled with confidence and instead of making her shy and totally uncomfortable, it actually angered her. She then said "What is so wrong with us? We're just a family, it's like people sometimes never have seen adopted families before and that's just silly. Adopted families are all over the place so it isn't new or anything."
We had a long talk about appropriate behavior in public, about staring at anyone who is different for some reason and how it makes them feel. We also talked about how lacking in diversity our area of the country is, and that the girls "pass" as bio kids but the boys don't. Angela said "Yea Mom, but it's not like we live in Kazakhstan or something, where they don't want Kazakhs and Russians together. Here in America it is just stupid for people to stare at us, we're just a family."
I had just told Dominick a couple weeks ago that I have noticed that the attention we receive has totally ramped up and I am completely stumped as to why. It isn't a good thing, not at all, for it is often to the point of rudeness we experienced last night. Now, I know those of you in urban areas are likely not to believe this, and are thinking I am exaggerating, but believe me I am not. I have spent the past 11 years being stared at more often than not when I am out with my children, but when they were young it was sort of cute curiosity. People would ask questions, and while sometimes I would get a little tired of feeling on display, it was all fairly benign.
I can not understand what has changed as the kids have gotten older. I have not said anything to Matthew, but I have discovered the past several months that when I am out alone with him these days I am getting almost nasty looks. Considering I have been subjected to this for years, I am not sensitive to it, it is that it is newly changed. He has yet to notice it, but soon enough he will...as will Josh and Kenny.
I joke about being mistaken for being a foreign exchange school group, but in all seriousness it has happened no less than 5 times....and that's when we are not out on a homeschool field trip wearing our shirts and when people even hear the kids call me "mom". It's like they somehow can't quite imagine a family looking like us, and frankly, as bad as it has been getting the past couple of months I am running out of compassion and patience. As I said in my short FB post, we are NOT a traveling freak show and I don't like being treated like it everywhere we go.
Some of my FB friends suggested that maybe it was people interested in adoption, or that they are fascinated by us. That might be true part of the time, but not always. It's almost as if I don't have the right to put my arm around the shoulder of my Asian son in public. It's almost as if we don't have the right to exist as a family. I am not the horribly over-sensitive type of female, believe me, but this is really starting to get downright offensive sometimes. I am not talking about the honest mistakes, where store clerks handing out samples innocently assume we are not together, or where restaurant hosts want to divide us and place us in two separate areas of the restaurant (happens OFTEN) until we explain we are altogether. I can totally understand why that happens and that doesn't bother me. But this is different.
When you live in a county with 41,000 people (our city is much smaller, around 17,000 I think) and .6% is Asian, I guess it is to be expected. Yea, you read that right .6% not 6%. But you'd think that simple exposure to media today would make us less of a sideshow. Haha! I just realized, that as compared to the Occupy movement we are even lower....we aren't the 1%, we are the Less Than One Percent!
So as we move into this new phase as a family, I have some thinking to do about how to handle this, because it is obvious it isn't going to change and might only get worse. On FB it was suggested that I walk up to people and initiate a conversation and offer an explanation to satisfy curiosity. That might work, I suppose, but then I would be doing it almost every single time we are out together as a family, no kidding, and I guess I don't want to place myself in the role of "Official Ambassador for International or Transracial Adoption" just because I am going to City Market and want to get a gallon of milk. I just want to be what I am, Mom. I want our kids to be just kids, not "those adopted kids", but I have a feeling that as this increases, that is just not going to happen.
Many of you may wonder why we try to get out of our area as often as we do, why Team LaJoy always seems to be going someplace or headed out on the road on another adventure. There are a lot of reasons that have nothing at all to do with being on display all the time, but in part it is because we need our kids to see the larger world where there is diversity. We absolutely have to go someplace where we can walk down the street and be relatively anonymous with no one giving us a second glance, because that sure doesn't happen often at home. We need to be someplace where no one questions our validity as a family, where I am not asked if I am babysitting my own children, where sometimes it is actually even assumed we ARE a family. We need them to see people of all colors (our county's African American population is even smaller at .4%) and to view them as beautiful and lovely, just like our family is. Angela and I still laugh over her declaring in her very limited English while we were in the Frankfurt Airport bringing theme home "Mama...Look...BLACK!" as she pointed and loudly talked about a person of obvious African descent...because she had never seen one before.
I guess I just don't want my own children being like those we encountered last night, whose lives have been so limited by their environment that they find a need to point, stare, and giggle at that which is different.
For now, I guess we just ignore it, educate when the opportunity arises, and try hard not to get angry at having our family sometimes not even seen as a family. If someone thinks it is weird for a middle aged white woman to be out with a teenaged Asian boy, then that is their problem, not mine. Where it becomes a problem is when our kids are affected by it, and then we will need to address this differently. Last night was perhaps the beginning in a series of long conversations about race in our family. Sad, that in 2012 there is even a need for that at all.
Yesterday evening, the kids had their TaeKwonDo tests, they ran quite late, and so we went to the nearby McDonald's for a quick dinner. Matthew had a meeting he had to attend for Civil Air Patrol there for planning with a few of the young men, so we thought it would kill two birds with one stone. We get out of the car and start walking toward the restaurant, and before we even enter both Angela and I see this gaggle of high school aged girls with their father staring and pointing at us. Hmm....OK, so there are 5 kids in TKD uniforms, maybe that looked kind of funny, I get that.
It didn't end there. As we walk in and stand in line, the staring continues with more pointing and whispering behind hands, accompanied by giggles. Mind you, these were not young girls, these were older high school aged kids. I elect to ignore them, but Angela us growing more and more disturbed. Olesya and Kenny notice but are in conversation and don't realize how ongoing it is.
We get back to the table and Angela says to me "Mom, that was way overboard...did you see how they were making fun of us and wouldn't stop staring? I am used to people staring at us, but that was too much." Thankfully, she is my girl filled with confidence and instead of making her shy and totally uncomfortable, it actually angered her. She then said "What is so wrong with us? We're just a family, it's like people sometimes never have seen adopted families before and that's just silly. Adopted families are all over the place so it isn't new or anything."
We had a long talk about appropriate behavior in public, about staring at anyone who is different for some reason and how it makes them feel. We also talked about how lacking in diversity our area of the country is, and that the girls "pass" as bio kids but the boys don't. Angela said "Yea Mom, but it's not like we live in Kazakhstan or something, where they don't want Kazakhs and Russians together. Here in America it is just stupid for people to stare at us, we're just a family."
I had just told Dominick a couple weeks ago that I have noticed that the attention we receive has totally ramped up and I am completely stumped as to why. It isn't a good thing, not at all, for it is often to the point of rudeness we experienced last night. Now, I know those of you in urban areas are likely not to believe this, and are thinking I am exaggerating, but believe me I am not. I have spent the past 11 years being stared at more often than not when I am out with my children, but when they were young it was sort of cute curiosity. People would ask questions, and while sometimes I would get a little tired of feeling on display, it was all fairly benign.
I can not understand what has changed as the kids have gotten older. I have not said anything to Matthew, but I have discovered the past several months that when I am out alone with him these days I am getting almost nasty looks. Considering I have been subjected to this for years, I am not sensitive to it, it is that it is newly changed. He has yet to notice it, but soon enough he will...as will Josh and Kenny.
I joke about being mistaken for being a foreign exchange school group, but in all seriousness it has happened no less than 5 times....and that's when we are not out on a homeschool field trip wearing our shirts and when people even hear the kids call me "mom". It's like they somehow can't quite imagine a family looking like us, and frankly, as bad as it has been getting the past couple of months I am running out of compassion and patience. As I said in my short FB post, we are NOT a traveling freak show and I don't like being treated like it everywhere we go.
Some of my FB friends suggested that maybe it was people interested in adoption, or that they are fascinated by us. That might be true part of the time, but not always. It's almost as if I don't have the right to put my arm around the shoulder of my Asian son in public. It's almost as if we don't have the right to exist as a family. I am not the horribly over-sensitive type of female, believe me, but this is really starting to get downright offensive sometimes. I am not talking about the honest mistakes, where store clerks handing out samples innocently assume we are not together, or where restaurant hosts want to divide us and place us in two separate areas of the restaurant (happens OFTEN) until we explain we are altogether. I can totally understand why that happens and that doesn't bother me. But this is different.
When you live in a county with 41,000 people (our city is much smaller, around 17,000 I think) and .6% is Asian, I guess it is to be expected. Yea, you read that right .6% not 6%. But you'd think that simple exposure to media today would make us less of a sideshow. Haha! I just realized, that as compared to the Occupy movement we are even lower....we aren't the 1%, we are the Less Than One Percent!
So as we move into this new phase as a family, I have some thinking to do about how to handle this, because it is obvious it isn't going to change and might only get worse. On FB it was suggested that I walk up to people and initiate a conversation and offer an explanation to satisfy curiosity. That might work, I suppose, but then I would be doing it almost every single time we are out together as a family, no kidding, and I guess I don't want to place myself in the role of "Official Ambassador for International or Transracial Adoption" just because I am going to City Market and want to get a gallon of milk. I just want to be what I am, Mom. I want our kids to be just kids, not "those adopted kids", but I have a feeling that as this increases, that is just not going to happen.
Many of you may wonder why we try to get out of our area as often as we do, why Team LaJoy always seems to be going someplace or headed out on the road on another adventure. There are a lot of reasons that have nothing at all to do with being on display all the time, but in part it is because we need our kids to see the larger world where there is diversity. We absolutely have to go someplace where we can walk down the street and be relatively anonymous with no one giving us a second glance, because that sure doesn't happen often at home. We need to be someplace where no one questions our validity as a family, where I am not asked if I am babysitting my own children, where sometimes it is actually even assumed we ARE a family. We need them to see people of all colors (our county's African American population is even smaller at .4%) and to view them as beautiful and lovely, just like our family is. Angela and I still laugh over her declaring in her very limited English while we were in the Frankfurt Airport bringing theme home "Mama...Look...BLACK!" as she pointed and loudly talked about a person of obvious African descent...because she had never seen one before.
I guess I just don't want my own children being like those we encountered last night, whose lives have been so limited by their environment that they find a need to point, stare, and giggle at that which is different.
For now, I guess we just ignore it, educate when the opportunity arises, and try hard not to get angry at having our family sometimes not even seen as a family. If someone thinks it is weird for a middle aged white woman to be out with a teenaged Asian boy, then that is their problem, not mine. Where it becomes a problem is when our kids are affected by it, and then we will need to address this differently. Last night was perhaps the beginning in a series of long conversations about race in our family. Sad, that in 2012 there is even a need for that at all.
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