Moving

Next month we are moving. In part, we're moving because T wants a dog. In part, we're moving because our landlords/duplex neighbors are racist.

When T moved in, readers of this blog might recall that the landlords went to see their attorney before they even bothered to shake his hand or speak to him in person. Despite the fact that he was only 15 at the time, they tried to block him from moving in by claiming that he was an "adult roommate". They told us that they "know what these kids are like" and that there "used to be some gang bangers in the neighborhood" whom they knew to carry weapons. What any of this had to do with T went unsaid; they clearly saw his Black face and felt sufficiently justified to form paranoid opinions on that basis alone. We quoted the advice we'd received from the Office of Fair Housing back to them, and they backed off.

I've never been able to forget it, nor really to forgive them. Over time, I realized that I am subtly stressed and angry raising T in close proximity to people who may not wish him well. If he comes in the house late, or makes too much noise, or fails to speak to them politely when they cross his path, I find myself fretting over how they might treat him. I do worry about (and try to support him in preparing for) the effects of racism in his life - the teacher who assumes he can't read, the police officer who pats him down on the subway. Worrying about it at home is just one thing too many.

So we're moving. We live in a great neighborhood in a central part of Los Angeles that is not only truly integrated, but also has an unusual number of interracial and non-traditional families. We rent rather than own so that we can stay in this area, for that reason. On our block, we have several African American families, several white families, a group home for developmentally disabled adults, a halfway house for recovering alcoholics, a postproduction studio for an African American television station, and a couple houses full of recent college grads.

So we're staying in the neighborhood. But we're trading the racist landlords for a professional property management firm. I want my lease to be a business deal, not an opportunity for comment on my family composition. We have new neighbors including two young female rock musicians and a fashion designer - they make noise, and are unlikely to find us particularly odd. T wants to graduate high school next year and live at home while he goes to junior college. We are feeling good about finding a place we can all commit to long term.

I often notice the impression we make on new acquaintances. In general, people are nice and perhaps a little curious, though we often have to be fairly explicit in the beginning in order to establish that we are, in fact, T's parents. For example, recently T and I went to the animal shelter to look at dogs. The volunteer asked me how many children were in the home. I pointed to T and said, oh, he's the one. Confused about what I meant (and perhaps by his height) she said, "Oh, T, how many children do you have?" He looked at me aghast. "T is my kid," I explained, and laughed. "He's our only child." "Oh!" she exclaimed. "It's okay," I said. "He's very tall." The moment passed, and she was very kind and took to T and helped him find his perfect pet. It just took a moment for everyone to figure out what was going on.

But things aren't always so friendly. People do stare, and sometimes leap to conclusions. Planes seem to be particularly awkward - T often travels in his pajamas, and he tends to hang all over us on the plane. More than once, other white passengers have openly stared throughout a flight, obviously unable to conceive of our relationship. Recently, on a ski trip, the lift attendant saw T and I approach together and said to me "Oh, it's okay, you can ride alone." I said, "I'd prefer to ride with my kid," and got on the lift with T.

I find that African American women have been the most openly skeptical and also the ones with whom I feel the greatest mutual understanding. They are not afraid to raise the topic of race, which I appreciate. I work with a number of African American women older than myself who see me with T on a regular basis. At first, I had the sense that some of them questioned my qualifications and my motivations. They probably also felt concerned about a Black child being separated from the community. At the same time, because that dialogue is on the surface with them, I find it can evolve. Recently, an African American colleague who had been polite but distant witnessed me in the hallway at work giving T some guidance - I was handing him his allowance, reminding him of our agreement about how he'd spend it, and telling him what time to be home. He was hopping from foot to foot, pulling my hair playfully and agreeing to abide. After that, she gave me the nod of approval. Whereas before, I had the sense that she regarded us with critical distance, now we are friendly and familiar - she asks after him and after me. I think she is convinced that I am doing the work. And I think she'd be pleased that when T talks about my work, he talks about people like her. "African American people work there," he tells his friends with great pride.

Recently I read an excellent article that is more than 20 years old and still captures a great deal of truth about interracial relationships. The focus of the article is on interracial romantic relationships, but I think much of the insight contained there pertains to interracial parenting as well. I think interracial parenting is probably hardest on those who are most sensitive to other people's opinions. I might seem so here, but in general, I am independent minded and so is T. We are both introverted and autonomous by nature, which I think protects us from some of the more intrusive attention we attract by being an interracial family.

I have heard it said of interracial romance that it matters greatly where you live, and I that's just as true of interracial parenting. I am satisfied that we live in the midst of a major city on the West Coast, where I think it is perhaps easier to be an interracial family than in other parts of the country. I'm also grateful for T's friends and for his generation in general, which is astonishing in its total embrace of diversity. The gulf between people his age and people like our former landlords is enough to make the latter look antique, and I hope that soon they are.

Racism is Weird

I didn't really fully perceive myself as white, and all of the consequences and privileges that pertain to my "whiteness" until we started this adoption process with T.

I was brought up with the strong influence of my Irish American grandmother, who always reminded us of how the Irish were racialized when we came to this country. (When I was teaching, I used to use cartoons like these to make that point). She would talk about graduating college only to find every job listing specified "Irish Need Not Apply" and how, as a result, she had to go all the way to Puerto Rico to find work to get through the Depression.

She lovingly called me "The Moor" because of my woolly dark hair - it took me until I reached college to understand that she meant that I looked like the so-called " Black" Irish, descended from north African settlers according to early Celtic history. I don't mean that I grew up with a Black identity in any way - I definitely did not, and I enjoyed all the privileges of "whiteness" growing up. But my point is that my grandmother was so intent on conveying the history of Irish liberation and British oppression that I grew up thinking of myself as ethnically very specifically Irish. It made me uncomfortable to indicate "white" when asked to name my race, because I did not think of myself as white - I thought of myself as Irish-not-British.

College opened my eyes, and made me more sophisticated and aware of racism and oppression, and more attuned to matters of identity and social perception. I studied and later taught American political history. I took classes in African American history, read writing by African American authors, and when I grew older, sought out integrated, diverse neighborhoods, which wasn't hard to do because I've always lived in big cities.

But of course I didn't really experience racism on a visceral or personal level until now. Until our landlord insisted that we need to reassure them before they'll drop their opposition to T. moving in. Until I visited stores with my about-to-be-adopted child where he is followed like a shoplifter. Until a close friend suddenly wouldn't allow her child to hang out with us anymore.

To be clear: I don't feel sorry for myself or for us in all this. It's fascinating, horrifying, confusing, and eye-opening, and I wouldn't turn back for a minute. I know Tim and I are changing, in ways beyond our control, in ways that will make us better parents to T. We are no longer a white couple. We are an emerging biracial family now. Tim is down at the Fair Housing office this morning seeking legal counsel about our right to adopt T. without losing our lease. That's not a problem we ever considered before.

We feel a new bond with African American parents. In our DCFS mandated pre-adoption parenting classes, we talk with African American parents about how to teach your children to deal with racial profiling by the police; how to help them with racial harassment at school, and how to combat the culture of low expectations so we can make sure our kids get proper academic and college counseling.

We didn't set out to adopt an African American child. We set out to adopt an older child out of foster care, and we connected with T. (and he with us) in a very natural way. We knew the race issue would introduce a host of new considerations, and that it would be incumbent on us to support and promote his connections to African American community and his African American identity, and we felt comfortable doing that.

But there were things I didn't understand then that I do now. This will sound hopelessly naive, but in the interest of being candid, I'll share it anyway: one of the greatest revelations for me is that the worst most virulent racism often isn't overt. Sometimes you just get a really strange feeling - an old friend isn't acting the same, you're not invited to visit anymore, or an extended relative keeps telling you that they "hope everything turns out okay" with an unusual implication of danger. And then, after struggling to figure out what's going on (beyond the usual skepticism about adopting older foster kids, which is already intense!), it hits you. Your kid is Black, and they don't like that. It's. So. Weird. I'm coming to recognize that racism is a very loud, unspoken subtext in an awful lot of conversations.

I wouldn't change a thing about the process we're going through with T. But if another parent were adopting an older African American child, I'd tell them to get ready for the utter weirdness of other people's racism. And I'd say you need to really know yourself and feel prepared to become a biracial family with all of the attending complexities.

A Racist Fly in the Ointment

And the latest is....the landlords (we're in a duplex and they live in the unit beneath us) are consulting an attorney and won't accept T. moving in.

We wrote an innocuous message letting them know that we know this young man very well and that he'll be coming to live with us, probably in January. And they responded that there are "complexities" that we may not be aware of, that they need to know if he'll be living with us after the age of 18 (whatever that has to do with it - if we were having a baby, would they ask if the baby might live with us after it turns 18?), and that they'll be consulting their attorney and getting back to us.

They've met T. on the street during his weekends at our house. I just introduced him then as a friend, because we were getting to know each other and it was early days and I didn't want to put him on the spot. In our letter to the landlords, we didn't refer to T. as a "foster child" - we just said that he's a young man we know very well, and that for various reasons he can't stay with his family, and we'd like him to come and live with us. We didn't mention adoption, because he is likely to move in before we manage to adopt him, you never know how things are going to go, and anyway, it didn't seem like they needed that information.

I am certain race has something (everything?) to do with this. If I told them we were adopting a baby, would they say they needed more information and consult an attorney? If your first child is a tall African American teenage boy, it's a different world.

I am certain there are laws that protect the rights of adoptive parents in situations like this one and that prohibit racist discrimination on the part of landlords. I was just really hopeful it wouldn't come to a legal dispute. Guess not.

I am so tired of the paperwork and bureaucracy, which have been dragging on for months, and this just feels like the last straw. We're so committed to T., we'd move if we had to in order to adopt him. But I really, really, really hope that isn't necessary. Besides the upheaval, it would delay our home licensing for foster/adopt, because we'd have to start over with the state. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.