"You should move"

Today I’m putting together some materials for a presentation on transracial adoption. I started to think about a common question we get, the common answer, and the common response. This has happened at our conference, at our meetings, at various interludes where parents have the chance to ask our workers the questions that most dig at them.

Transracial parents who want to give their kids positive interactions, identity, and community need to do some crucial things. Mainly, they need to find the diverse places in their town, and go hang out there. This is a lot harder for white people than you might generally think. (To wit, when was the last time you were in a place where you were the only white person? When was the last time you went to that place on purpose for that reason? If the answer is never, and my god, why would I do that? please do not adopt an African-American child) When we get specific in telling parents ways they can do this, we end up with the same inevitable question. The question is: “We live in a small town. There is no diverse school. There is no diverse community center. There is no library with diverse books. There is no barbershop that knows how to do my kids’ hair. There are no African-American people who live here, other than our children. It’s a four-hour drive to a town that does have these things. So what are we supposed to do?”

Our answer? “You should move.”

This is not just our answer. This is the answer we have gotten from adult transracial adoptees. This is what they wish their parents would have done. This is what they did as soon as they were old enough. So this is what we tell the parents.

Their response? A crinkled up angry face. That was not the answer they wanted.

Which, you know, I can understand. Moving sucks. Moving sucks hard. It sucks for me, right now, in my mid-twenties, with only an apartment’s worth of stuff and no children and no major career. It is just an abominable journey for people with households, children, and lifestyles.

But hey, you asked.

There is, I think, a lot going on with that crinkled up angry face. I think there’s also a lot going on with the fact that this question got asked at all, and that the answer was unexpected and not well-received. People move for a lot of reasons. People will move to get their kids’ to a better school, with better credentials. People will move to get a better job. People will move so they have access to more stores and industry. People will move so they have access to more people in a less insular way.

Really, when we tell people to move for their transracial families, those are all the benefits they’re looking for. More people, better schools, more stores. But when you think of those things in a race-neutral (white) way, they seem acceptable. What makes people crinkle up is the idea that they are moving for race. That they have to do a thing to accommodate race, when so far in their experience, race has accommodated them. This is an invisible process, for white people, so they might not have seen it. But let me put it another way. That old question, “Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?” Well, let me ask you this another way. Why are all the white kids sitting together in the cafeteria? The question is not, “Why do we have to move to accommodate race?” The question is, “Why do you live in a place where your race and only your race is accommodated?”

This reminds me of a conversation I was a part of in college, in one of my African-American Studies classes. Inevitably, this happens in every class where there is a 50/50 split of black and white kids. Race gets discussed, and one white bumpkin pipes up: “I grew up in small-town America. I didn’t know any black kids. Nobody there was racist, so I didn’t know anything about racism.” Usually this statement precedes or directly follows an abnormally ignorant comment, but it doesn’t always. It’s pretty ignorant in and of itself, the idea that racism doesn’t exist in your all-white town. Well, kid, if that’s true, how the hell did your town get all white?

So in my class, this white kid pipes up with that general statement, and one of the black women in the class loses her shit. “That’s bullshit, that’s bullshit!” she told the white kid. “That’s such white ignorant bullshit!” She then put on her best Aunt Jemima imitation. “Ohhhh, I’m from the south side of Chicago! I’ve never seen a white person! Can I touch your hair?”

The white kid didn’t get the point. I walked home from class with him while he raged on near tears, and I tried to explain what had just happened there. I could tell he was angry, but I think under that was humiliation. He had done something wrong, and he really didn’t know what. He couldn’t understand, what had made the woman angriest was the fact that he didn’t know what. I tried to explain, “She doesn’t get that luxury, man. She doesn’t get to ‘not understand’ race. No matter where she grew up.” I also tried to explain, “That ‘I grew up in a small town’ thing works when you’re growing up. But, look, you’re grown up now. You’re an adult and you don’t get to say, ‘I don’t understand’ anymore.” He went on angrily that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t get race, because of where he’d grown up and how, and he didn’t deserve to get slapped down for trying to figure it out.

The kid didn’t get it that day, and I don’t think anybody could have explained it to him. But I think it was good for him to see that anger, to understand that he didn’t get to bumble on through life and expect shit to get handed to him. The attitude of “teach me, give me” will get you slapped down sometimes. Because, as an adult, it’s your responsibility to learn. The silent addendum to this is, if race is important to you. And if you can get angry at somebody for insinuating that it’s your job, your haul, your responsibility, then race is not important to you.

The kid couldn’t help growing up in a small-town with (“no”) racism. But as an adult, he could stop abdicating his responsibility to his own ignorance, because he didn’t live in that small-town anymore. He had a responsibility to learn about race — if it was important to him – and a responsibility not to let other adults get away with, “Well, I grew up in a small town, so…. can I touch your hair?”

Likewise, to our parents. You can’t help where you are when you start this journey, and it may be that you start in a small town. But, if race is important to you, you should move. You should move, or you should make that four-hour drive frequently, and without complaint. You should do this, because you are grown-ups, and this was your choice. If race is important to you, then it becomes your responsibility.

If race is not important to you, welcome to America, and please stop calling it a melting pot, the greatest country on earth, a superpower, or a place where anybody can be anything. It is none of these things, and that’s your responsibility.

As a white American, that is your choice. Does that choice suck? Does it seem like not a “choice,” but like your hand is being forced between two options that are unappealing? Do you wonder why those are the only two options? Does it seem unfair? Does it raise your hackles that you don’t get to live where you want and have everything you need available to you? Do you hate the fact that you’re told you have to move away from your childhood home in order to get the things that ought to be available to every American, no matter where they live?

Welcome to racism. Hey, heads up: it affects white people, too.