ok, ya all

You made me cry a bit there – in a good way. My sis-in-law wrote to say that even she got a little teary from the comments and she is a total badass. (I am concerned about B’s privacy but not my in-laws, apparently!).

I am still a thinking — about Blitzen, self-preservation, a creative outlet, the support hat I really do get from the wonderful vibes anonymous people send my way and the ability to process this incredibly complex way of life that writing has created for me.

I am still a thinking — about what has shifted for me in the last few months that has made things so difficult in a new way.

I am going to take a little break for a week or two and try to figure out if there is a good way to move forward, perhaps with fewer public posts about Blitzen (although as several people have said — there are so many of the wonderful things about this kid that I have captured here, I hope to keep writing all that down for both me and for her whether or not I make those items public). Maybe it is time turn my attention more to some of the social justice issues that being a foster parent has brought into focus for me in a new  and very very real way.

I also just have to say that this past week, the entire world feels wrong which is likely contributing to this feeling that I am having. Everything that is happening in Missouri and the often disheartening discussions that I’ve had with other white people about it, the ridiculous and skewed press coverage, have just weighed me down.  I am deeply saddened, really struggling with how to contribute to this discussion in a meaningful way, how to help Blitzen cope with this tremendous injustice but also prepare for a world that doesn’t see her or respect her.  Even the air feels heavy and full of darkness.

Time to breathe and try to find some brightness.  I’ll likely be back, one way or another, soon.

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That look in their eyes

Andrew and I have both experienced, in the last 36 hours, that look.  That look from ‘professionals’ associated with Blitzen’s case.

That look that says ‘you are troublesome foster parents, you are making my life difficult by demanding that we do all that we should which is way more than we feel that we can.’

That look that says, ‘Oh, we’ve written your child off (not that we in anyway consider her to be your child) and you should too.’

 

That ‘When this was all headed for adoption, you were committed, passionate, model foster parents that we begged to speak on panels, rally new recruits, participate in city-wide ad campaigns. But now, you are a pain in the ass and we’re tempted to just accept false allegations against you so we can make you go away quicker’ look.

We’ve both experienced that moment when it has become crystal clear that this child is going back into a social system of grinding poverty, family dysfunction, racial and domestic violence, a broken and battered educational system that is really just a pipeline to prison/welfare dependency/homelessness/teen pregnancy/addiction, where she will be lost. And sadly, the look in their eyes says ‘we simply don’t care.’

I am sure you all are familiar with that look.

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Blitzen’s Evaluation

People in relationship with Blitzen quickly recognize that she’s brilliant in many ways — curious, creative, quick to make connections, adept at learning new skills with her body, a divergent thinker, a problem solver.  Carrie and I don’t spend much time talking about her intelligence; it’s taken for granted by all who know her, and we move on to the important stuff.  Where do mermaids swim?   When do you feel joyful?  How do you make cartoon characters?  How do you be a friend?  What do you do when you feel really angry?  How do you make Dolphin Cove into a real island?  What makes a family?  How do we change patterns of behavior?  In the book Ingo, why does the sea call to Sapphire?

Blitzen and the wonderful folks in her life are wrestling with those questions every hour.  That’s the work, that’s the joy.   We’re Team Blitzen and this is what we do.

Yesterday we received a Department of Education evaluation by email.  It came in upside down, but it can be read if you print it out or stand on your head.  It’s filled with numbers and clinical-sounding words designed to distance and intimidate.  The word deficient is used a lot.

Reports like that shouldn’t matter.  Blitzen’s brilliance is an ontological reality; her intelligence and glee exist whether or not they’re acknowledged.  My instinct, as a privileged, educated white man who does well on my culture’s bubble tests, is to ignore the upside down email and channel ee cummings:

While you and i have lips and voices which
are for kissing and to sing with
who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch
invents an instrument to measure Spring with?

The problem is that our measuring is not benevolent.  The systems of dominance embedded in our education and child welfare institutions are have consequences in the lives of kids like Blitzen.  Evaluations like that have the effect (and, I’d argue, the intent) of separating undesirable kids from their peers and offering them an education with less creativity, less critical thinking, less joy, less humanity and less possibility.
This disproportionally affects traumatized kids, kids of color and kids in foster care.  (If you’re a footnote type, 40% of kids in care are in special education and 50% of kids in care don’t graduate from high school.)

Blitzen and those of us lucky enough to be on her team won’t have the privilege of  kissing, singing and swimming in Dolphin Cove without spending time, energy and creativity in the soul-sucking battle against the measuring instruments that prop up systems of inequity.

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Hair

Blitzen woke up sobbing and screaming at 1:00 this morning. “I hate my hair.  Why won’t it stay straight?  Why does it have to be ugly?  I want straight, beautiful hair. Andrew, you don’t know anything about girls or hair.  You don’t know how to take care of me.  Fix it, Andrew!”

Blitzen wants straight hair.  White hair.  Disney princess hair.  The first week we met her, she called us to the tv: “Look at these girls — they have pretty hair just like me!” One was blond, one was red-headed, both had long straight flowing hair.

Fast forward to yesterday.  Blitzen’s hair had been in braids for a few weeks.  She went to the salon to get de-braided, and got her hair blown out.  Yesterday afternoon her hair was straight as Barbie’s.  We worked to cover her hair before she went to sleep, but I didn’t tie the scarf around her head right and she woke up 1:00 am with her hair back to normal: curly, gorgeous and alive.  She was furious that she didn’t look like Taylor Swift or Beyonce, and furious at me for causing the problem.

Our struggles with hair don’t make the blog much, in part because they’re obvious to the point of cliche.  Of course a black girl growing up in a patriarchal, white-dominant society that objectifies and blames her is going to have internalized racial inferiority and a complex, oversized relationship with her body and hair.  Of course that relationship will be intensified by the identity issues that come with loving both your black family and your white foster family, plus the rage and pain that come from witnessing abuse.  Frankly it’s a wonder that Blitzen giggles as often as she does.

Sadly, I play my role in this cliche: the oblivious, naive, not-so-bright well-meaning white man with an intellectual interest in racism and sexism and a bookshelf full of literature.  Today, in my sleep-deprived state, prodded by two hours of tears from a loved one who’s educating me, I feel the pain caused by white supremacy.  Tomorrow, I’ll have the privilege to intellectualize it again.

In this rare moment of being human, here’s some of what I feel.  I’m pissed that women are defined first and inevitably by the way they look. I’m pissed that Blitzen will spend her life comparing herself to a standard of beauty built and perpetuated by northern European white men.  I’m pissed that Blitzen will be exoticized, sexualized and othered before she can be listened to.  I’m pissed that Blitzen, who notices everything, get messages every day that tell her black people are thugs, criminals, bad students, bad parents, poor, dependent, superstitious, helpless and undeserving.

I’m pissed about the recordings in Blitzen’s head: “You’re not pretty.  You’re not smart.  You’re not lovable.  You’re not able to make it.”   Those are the voices of institutional racism, and they’re not from 1850, they’re in Blitzen’s head right now as she stands at the mirror with a hair dryer and a brush hoping that her hair turns straight.

What I’m really pissed off and embarrassed about is my role amplifying and reinforcing the voices in Blitzen’s head.  Blitzen moved into a home where every single photograph on the wall was of a white person; it’s pretty clear what I value.  I’ve worked exclusively for culturally white institutions, even when, damagingly enough, I’ve been “serving” primarily kids of color.

Blitzen sees me wield my white privilege like a blunt instrument every time I  sidestep the line, every time I casually break a rule knowing it doesn’t apply to me, every time I tell our agency or our school exactly what I need.  My white privilege has gotten me jobs, credit, housing, access to power, and the opportunity to raise another parent’s brilliant child.  I don’t have to use words to tell Blitzen it’s better to be white.  She notices everything, and my internalized white superiority isn’t that well-hidden anyway.

You fall in love with a kid and it means you have to get better and make the world better.  We white people, in accountability to kids and people of  color, have work ahead of us.

Even if I had tied her scarf around Blitzen’s head correctly, her hair wasn’t going to be straight this morning.  But she’s right to be furious at me.  Me and my white friends built and sustain the world that makes her hair wrong.  If we want to sleep through the night, it’s our job to fix it.

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Can You Like People of Another Color?

“Can you like people of another color?” Blitzen asked.

I turned to my go-to response for the many instances when I’m not quite sure what we’re talking about: “What do you think?”

“I think people of other colors can like each other.  They just can’t marry each other.”

I start to get it.  We just spent a week meeting lots of loved ones, all of whom were white.  Those who are married married other white folks.  “Hmmm.  Interesting.  We know some people who are different colors who married each other, right?  Like D & V?”

I was eager for conversation.  Blitzen was unconvinced but willing to concede the point and change subjects, probably hoping to sidestep listening to me say absurd things about issues around race.

I can’t blame the girl for tuning out the things I say about race.  Her favorite way to access information is through visual observation.  Here are a few of the things I suspect she notices.

1)  Whenever we go somewhere fun or special — Sea World, holiday parties, airplane trips — nearly everyone is white.

2)  When we introduce her to family, the people we love, they are all white.  Other than Blitzen and her sisters, every single person in a framed photo in our home is white.  None of the people we see sleeping in Marcus Garvey Park each day are white.

3)  Blitzen’s school is 100% kids of color.  It’s in a building with a school that is predominately white.  The white kids have the first two floors; Blitzen and her friends walk to the fifth floor.  The white kids have colorful walls, hands-on projects and lots of field trips.  Blitzen and her friends have behavior sheets and kids being physically restrained in the halls.

The list could go on for a long time, and every point deserves a full post, if not a dissertation and protests in the streets.  For now, I’m simply noticing Blitzen noticing that I’m not a reliable narrator when I merrily suggest that anyone can like and marry anyone they want to and that the race we’ve been assigned is not destiny.

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Race and Child Welfare

If an anthropologist from the future were to study the United States in 2011, she’d likely conclude that our child welfare system was designed to remove children from families of color.

The numbers are stark.  In New York, 82% of kids in foster care are children of color.  Studies show that black families are 10 times more likely than white families to be reported to Child Protective Services, and 15 times more likely to have a child removed from their home.  (This isn’t a footnote/bibliography kind of blog, but US stats can be found here.)

Dorothy Roberts, who wrote  Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (terrific executive summary here — okay, no more footnotes) says:

The child welfare system is designed to privilege white people like Carrie and me.  Doors have flown open; we were  certified in record time.  We can be confident that everyone we meet will assume we aren’t drug users, won’t neglect our foster children and aren’t in it for the money.

What’s more, because we’re not poor, it’s unlikely that our child will be perceived as suffering from “neglect,” the cause of 75% of all child welfare cases.  Neglect — poor health care, poor nutrition, lack of shelter — looks looks an awful lot like poverty.

Carrie and I can’t wait to love, nurture, support and celebrate a child in our home.  But our job  just begins there.  The real work in front of all of us is to organize for institutional change that will address the disproportionalities of our system.

Luckily, we’re not alone.  A bunch of groups are organizing the community around these disparities, including the Child Welfare Organizing Project and the Anti-Racist Alliance.  We invite our friends to join us not just in caring for Blitzen, but in creating a just, equitable world for her to live in.

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