White Parents, Black Child: A Transracial Adoptee's Two Cents
But what are you going to do? Five minutes after meeting them stress the importance of the extra responsibility these parents must face having adopted a child of color? Encourage them in a few seconds to be vigilant in helping that beautiful baby to know, to really know that she is beautiful? Prevail upon them to celebrate her color and compel them to help her to install a fierce, strong, stable, sense of self? Warn them of the arduous road ahead raising a black girl in a predominately white society???
Once again too much time has passed since the last blog, sorry ‘bout that. I should stop making promises I can’t keep about how much I’m gonna write. I’m on a train that keeps speeding up; looking out at the landscape rushing by in one long blur as I frantically respond to emails on my phone while listening to the songs I gotta learn for the next gig in my earbuds whilst attempting to write bon mots for Twitter and whistling a little baby idea of a melody. In other words, it’s summer gigging madness time up in here!
Marco and I were in Austria last week and we had a splendiferous time, we took three extra days so as to turn it into a work-cation and cooled off in those glorious mountains. At dinner before a show one evening a family of three were seated next to us. They were two white Italian parents with their little adopted Belgian girl, who is black.
I had my usual conflict when coming across such a combination. As I sat making polite conversation with these truly pleasant people while simultaneously trying to engage the child; on the inside, I started fussing and my brain went into overdrive wondering how quickly I could bring up my own experiences without being rude, or if I even ought to...
If you wanna- come on over here to read more... http://lisamariesimmons.com/blog/blog-post/?permalink=white-parents-black-child-does-a-transracial-adoptee-speak-up-or-not--20170718191527
