New and Improved

It took them a few days, although perhaps that was because they were too busy visiting this post several dozen times to actually do anything about it.

But at any rate, somehow they got the message because Spence-Chapin finally changed their Facebook profile pic:

Is the Spence-Chapin Logo Racist?

(or, “How NOT to Market Kids from Asia”)

So here is the profile picture for the Spence-Chapin adoption agency on Facebook:

Is anyone else getting a bad vibe (and by “bad,” I mean RACIST) from the so-called “coolie hat” on the kid on the right?

Maybe the folks at Spence-Chapin are somehow unaware that many Asian-Americans find these hats offensive.  Sarah Kwak, writing about a different picture, explains:

…the conical straw hat, also known as a “coolie” hat (the term “coolie” should really explain it all), has long been a symbol of anti-Asian racism, especially in the U.S. They were featured in political cartoons from the 19th century and then during World War II, and recently, in those controversial Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts that were ultimately pulled from shelves. The hat carries with it a history that includes the transcontinental railroad, Japanese American internment camps, and a long history of forbidding Asians from immigrating to the United States.

The fact that Spence-Chapin is an adoption agency actively facilitating international adoptions from China, Korea, and Thailand only makes things worse.  Is this a subtle attempt to reinforce the idea that parents in sending countries are poor and uneducated menial laborers unworthy of keeping their own children?  Or is it an unconscious reflection of the stereotype that no matter how “American” we are, we belong in the rice paddies of Asia rather than among all-American amber waves of grain?  Or is it just… stupidity?

Moreover, how can we expect white adoptive parents to be allies to people of color when the organizations in charge of educating these parents are themselves perpetuating racist stereotypes?

Way to get it wrong, Spence-Chapin.  Marketing FAIL.

Forever Young (and Other Rants)

***Did you read the post title?  You have been warned…***

Front Page?

At this very moment, a story about adult adoptees is currently on the front page of the New York Times web page.

It almost makes up for all that Relative Choices crap from 2 years ago.

Almost.

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The article highlights a study that supposedly says many of the things that adult adoptees have been saying for years — much longer than *I’ve* been saying them, or even thinking of them.   I was heartened to see a few fellow KAD-bloggers mentioned, and overall thought that the article itself was pretty decent.

I expect that I’ll have more to say about this later, so stay tuned.

Sometimes My Language Partners Make Me Cry

I <3 my language partners.

I never thought that I would have much to say to two guys who are almost 10 years younger than me, but oddly enough I do.

Having a truly equitable language partner relationship that works effectively for both parties is tricky. It requires a close match not only in terms of skill and ability, but also motivation and personality.  Unfortunately, due to my downright shitty beginner knowledge of Korean, our conversations are considerably more lopsided than I would like.  We definitely speak much more in English than in Korean, although we are trying to speak in Korean practically the whole time, if that makes any sense.

Despite the imbalance in our skill level, things usually go really well.  My language partners are a hoot, despite (and sometimes because of) the language barrier — and yes, I appear quite hilarious to them as well.  I help them with that ever-tricky l-r thing, and they never tire of helping me distinguish between ㄱ, ㄲ, and ㅋ.  I explain to them why they can’t refer to their male friends as their “boyfriends,” and that they have to say “guy friends” or “male friends” instead.  They tell me why I need to be very, very careful when saying the word for “eighteen” (you won’t find that little bit o’ wisdom in a textbook!).

They call me 누나 (nuna, or “older sister”), and I love how Korean that makes me feel.

I ask them what their military service was like, what they want to do after they graduate from college (college tends to end later for Korean males due to the aforementioned military service), and about their girlfriends.  They ask me about my job, about LB, and about life in America.  They are impressed that I listen to “their” music and watch “their” movies, and so we talk about things like the 박재범/2PM scandal and 엽기적인 그녀. We really do manage to have a good time.

And yet occasionally, usually when they are talking about their families or what it was like growing up in Korea, I get these HUGE! MASSIVE! specks of dust (dust, I tell you, DUST!!!) in my eyes that make them red and drippy and I have to excuse myself for a moment to go to the ladies’ 화장실.

Intact Korean families will do that to me every time.

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Alone in the restroom, I try and do the kind of deep breathing that is usually not advisable in public restrooms.  I press a damp paper towel to my eyes and remind myself that I do have gains alongside my losses.  That both my gains and my losses are real — deliciously real, achingly real, but real nonetheless.

That although they are real, they cannot be weighed or counted or pitted against each other.

And then I go back to my waiting language partner, who by now is surely wondering about the dangerous air quality here in America, and…

…we talk some more.

Good Luck, Ken

I have no idea who Ken Hill is, except that he is an adult domestic adoptee who is looking for his biological parents.  He writes:

-Searching for biological parents
-Male Adoptee:
-Born May 2nd, 1970 at Virginia Mason in Seattle.
-Weighed 4lbs, 9oz
-Father was Senior in High School, ASB President, skilled in logic and debate.
-Mother was Junior in High School, skilled in painting and played guitar.
-Ancestry: German, Scottish, Irish, Czech

Reporting on Ken’s quest to find his biological family through Facebook and the Internet, Margie Boule writes in The Oregonian:

He grew up happy and comfortable with the knowledge he’d been adopted at birth.

But now he wants to meet his biological family. And the state of Washington makes that difficult.

Adoptees, Ken says, can’t view their original birth records. The state will allow adoptees to pay $500 and get a court-appointed intermediary to look up the information and contact the biological parents. “But the intermediary might say your biological parents don’t want to know you.”

Ken believes adoptees have a right to know who they really are. “When the state withholds it, they’re discriminating. And there’s something just wrong about having to pay $500 to the state, with no guarantee you will get the information you so want. It’s not a hard amount to save up, but it’s the principle behind it. It could be $20 or it could be $1,000. I shouldn’t have to pay it.”

Ken says he’s “a working-class guy that lives paycheck to paycheck” and can’t afford private detectives.

So he decided to take his search online, in hopes it goes viral. “I’m asking people to spread it around. Human interaction is the key element in this thing. The Internet is just the technological vehicle.”

If you have any information that could help Ken, please contact him at:

http://multimancer.livejournal.com/58120.html

http://www.facebook.com/multimancer

kennethghill at gmail . com

Yellow Trees

I remember a time when I was in college and LB was visiting me, and we were walking across the campus on the kind of fall day that I can only describe as a gift.  Not too cool, not too warm; the leaves on the trees popping with color to the point where I felt like I wandered into a film where the saturation was even a little too deep, the hue just a little too bright.

My mind has never been able to stay in the present, and that weekend it was already leaping ahead to

It’s At Times Like This

… that I wish I prayed.

Sending peace and warm thoughts tonight

to a friend who needs them more than I do.

<3 <3 <3

NOT Every Day

Since I think I’m averaging about a post a month here these days, I am certainly not going to post every day during the month of November.  (We can just call it NO-Na-Blo-Po-Mo.)  But I do want to try and post more, however mundane or trite or non-adoption related (or short) it might be.

Some of the blogs that I am most interested in these days are what I think of as “small blogs” — they are tend to be very personal, very intimate, and very few people read them (at least judging from the number of comments and feed subscribers).  But the writing is deep, thoughtful, funny, and earnest.  Intense without slamming you over the head with SCREAMING CAPS and bold and italics (OR EVEN ALL THREE!).  Most of the bloggers are Korean adoptees, but the blogs are not “adoption” blogs per se — and I love that.  I get to see people as full people, or at least fuller than the narrow lens of adoption will reveal.

Maybe, for a month, I can try that out, see if it fits… and see if anyone is still here on November 30th