By Mansfield Frazier
There was a touching article in the news recently regarding a couple that was able to raise money online via crowd funding that allowed them to ameliorate the expenses of adopting a child. It just so happens the child is bi-racial and the couple is white … a fact I have zero problem with. I’m a firm believer in cross-racial adoptions, convinced that race plays no role in the love a parent has for a child … especially an adopted one.
However, I do have a problem with the surroundings this particular child will be raised in. The couple in the article lives in Streetsboro, which I imagine is a fine little town. However, according to the latest U.S. Census the percentage of bi-racial people listed there is 1.8, which means there’s a 98.2 percent chance the child will not see anyone who looks like them while growing up.
Over the years I’ve met numerous minorities that were raised in an environment where virtually no one else looked like them … and most of them on reflection, once they attained adulthood, wished their upbringing had been different. Many felt something was missing, and lacked a sense of connection to others of their own race. And all of them who were forthcoming said their problems began at puberty.
As long as the child is mainly at home, under the protective wing of parents (or even in the primary grades in school), everything is usually fine. Recognizing a racial difference is learned behavior; just watch babies at play … they all get along, and when they don’t it’s usually over a toy, not skin color.
But that starts to change with some kids around middle school. If their parents harbor racist tendencies they transmit those to their offspring, who then, in turn, mimic or act on that learned behavior. And who is usually the target? The “different” looking child. Indeed, those teenaged years can be difficult enough without being viewed as the odd-child-out.
And where are the parents? Stuck in their Pollyanna-ish bubble where they think everyone is like them and is simply going to adore and embrace their adopted child of another race. Sadly, they are so wrong. They have no way of controlling how their child will be treated at school and in the community once the youngster begins to venture out during their teen years. Problems usually exacerbate when flirting and dating begins.
Why risk it? Why risk exposing your child to the vagaries of racial attitudes they will no doubt find in such a diversity-deficient community? If they truly love the child as much as they think they do, why wouldn’t they make the effort and move to one of the lovely integrated communities in Northeast Ohio, where the child will have more opportunities for positive socialization with peers that look like them?
The folks at the adoption agency who seemingly didn’t address this issue (either due to gross unprofessional behavior or simply not caring) are the ones who should be taken to task. If there are no residency rules in place there should be. Can you imagine them allowing a black couple to adopt a white child and take that child to a virtually all black community to rear? No, they simply would not. I rest my case.
Well, I almost rest my case. Let’s not forget those black folks who love to distance themselves from their race, failing to think of what their children might experience. I once heard a couple actually brag that their child was one of only three blacks in their high school of over 500 kids. These self-hating dunderheads are so intent in outrunning their own skin — yeah, I know we black folks can be loud and rancorous at times — they actually take pride in how far they can remove themselves and their kids from people that look like them.
These sad folks have suffered a brainwashing; it’s a sickness … a disease for which there is no known cure — but their children shouldn’t be made to suffer because of their pathology, which I hereby name the “Michael Jackson Syndrome.”
Quick, name the largest selling cosmetic product in Africa and parts of the Caribbean: Skin whitening (bleaching) cream — a fact that no doubt makes some white racists very proud. These persons of color have been convinced that lighter-skinned people have an easier (and more profitable) time in life, and, unfortunately, statistics prove that to be true.
I can recall the first time I heard Louis Armstrong sing an old Fats Waller song: “What in the world did I do to be so black and blue.”
“I’m white…inside…but, that don’t help my case ’cause I…can’t hide…what is in my face
“How would it end…ain’t got a friend. My only sin…is in my skin What did I do…to be so black and blue”
Sad.
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.