Posts

Showing posts from August, 2014

One Angry White-Privileged Mom

I was blissfully away on workation last week when all hell broke loose on young black men. I stay away from news when I'm on retreat in the mountains, so I have to confess to not having an in-depth knowledge of each case. But, I know enough to be angry and I know enough to be frightened for my son. When we were considering adoption, we knew we wanted to adopt a boy. Then we were asked about race. My initial reaction was to not adopt a child of color -- whether from this country or internationally. "What do I know about raising a black boy in America?" I said to the social worker. But as things happen, we were eventually led to Ethiopia where we brought home with us one of the cutest boys ever. With skin I just want to eat up -- the color of milk chocolate -- but a color that, once he reaches a certain age -- will put him in jeopardy just because it's not white. I was hopeful -- we had an African-American president. My son has never known a president whose skin