Black Baby White Hands

 
One great thing about vacation with lots of family who will entertain your kids is-time to yourself...to read. I just finished the book, Black Baby White Hands, by Jaiya John. It is a must read for all transracially adopted families, especially those white families who are adopting or who have adopted black children. This is an autobiography of Jaiya John's journey of being raised in a white family. He was the first adopted black child in New Mexico back in 1968. He was raised in a loving white family who failed to address his need to be understood and accepted for his blackness. They were more or less, "colorblind," which most of us white folks tend to be.

 'Colorblind' people related to Greg and me through a denial of our essence. They sincerely believed they were treating us with high morality, but as they ignored something so central to our identity, so critical to our place in the world, and such a salient aspect of our connection with our heritage, they somehow diminished us, in their minds and in ours. The enduring invisibility plunged my esteem into negativity and eroded what confidence I could muster.

So much of what was happening was motivated by people's desire to make us feel accepted, loved, embraced. Family, friends, and teachers-they all must have intuited on some level that we may have been experiencing a kind of isolation. But they tried too hard. They ignored our race so vigorously that they succeeded only in making it a grand spectacle and a poorly attended reality. (pg.138)

We (white people) naively ignore the struggle that black people experienced in slavery, segregation, and what they experience in everyday life. We say, "It was so long ago...Things are different now...Why don't they just get over it." We have no idea how this perspective influences and often offends black people. We are not being sensitive to understand what they might be feeling and experiencing. Black people live in a "white world." We don't even think to empathize with this struggle, because we have the "white privilege" of never experiencing being pulled over by a policeman in a rural town because of our skin color or considering what neighborhood to buy a house in, in fear that people will think we might bring the cost of the neighborhood down. We never have to explain to our daughters why all the most desired beauty queens look nothing like them. Our society deems "white" as best. What a hard world for a black child to live in...more. than. we. know.

In reading this book I have learned it is highly important to expose your adopted black child to other families and people who look like him. Not only expose them, but live in and be involved in an area of town where there are black families that can invest in your child's life. We are blessed to be on this adoptive journey with many other white families who are adopting black children. Our children will be able to grow up with families who look like ours. We also live in the city of Atlanta with plenty of wonderful black families all around us.

It is also very important to have open communication with your adopted child about his or her race and how this is affecting him or her. A black child being raised in a white family will have many struggles to work through, but I hope we will have the wisdom and discernment that only God can provide to help him along this journey of life. I know it is not going to be easy and we will experience many hardships along the way, but hopefully we will grow closer together as a family and closer together with our savior.

We are not adopting because it is the easy road. We are adopting because God adopted us as sons and daughters in him. It was not easy for God to give up his son to die on the cross so that we might receive his righteousness. It is not easy for him to deal with our sinfulness and wayward affections toward him, but God in his mercy rescued us from ourselves and gave us life. Adoption is beautiful redemption. Our son might hate us for his adoption, but we are willing to embrace this if it happens. We go our own way most of the time even though we have a heavenly father who loves us and cares for us. I can only pray we will be a glimpse of this amazing love to Charles Tucker.