Several weeks ago, I was followed around a grocery store in the Pearl, an upscale neighborhood known to some as “Portland’s best-known art district.” At first, I didn’t realize that I was being followed on suspicion of shoplifting. Initially, I thought I was being stalked by another shopper. He followed me from aisle to aisle, watching me through display cases, at times crouching down as he crept closer. As soon as I realized that this man was an undercover security agent working for the store, I made a beeline for the check stand. After paying for my items, I went straight to customer service and asked to speak with the manager. Two managers came to talk with me and, after I explained the situation, they apologized profusely. One of the managers said I had been followed and profiled as a shoplifter because I was placing items into my reusable cloth grocery bag instead of a cart.
Knowing many people use their cloth bags to shop I was not satisfied with the explanation as to why I had been followed. When I asked whether they follow everyone who uses their own personal shopping bag, they replied, “of course not.” I had no doubt this was a case of racial profiling, so I asked the managers what it was that flagged me as a shoplifter (I was dressed to attend meetings that particular
day…not that this should matter, but as we know, it does). They had no answer for me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what this experience would have been like for someone who didn’t feel safe to ask to speak up and how easy it would have been for me to go to my car, sit in the parking lot and cry. I believe that is what made me stay and ask the manager what they were going to do to prevent something like this from happening in the future. At a loss of words, the manager asked me if I had a suggestion. I offered three:
1. Put signs up in the store asking that customers NOT use their recycled bags as carts while shopping, announcing that they may be followed and accused of shoplifting.
2. Notify staff that, if they see someone using their personal shopping bag, they should nicely offer them a cart or basket and explain that they have a new policy that customers not use their own shopping bags. They should not accuse them of shoplifting!
3. Inquire with the security officer about what it was exactly I was doing that was so suspicious it made him think I was shoplifting.
The managers agreed to all three requests -with the exception that posted signs would not say folks will be accused of shoplifting!
After telling a friend/mentor (an African-American man) of my experience, he said “Good for you for going to customer service! Where do you think you learned to feel so entitled?” Instead of answering his question I responded with “Of course I felt entitled! Entitled to be treated fairly…period! Not because I am a woman of color but because I am a good person and I don’t deserve to be treated this way!” This was the first time I have really felt the truth in what I was saying about this power dynamic.
But, to really answer his question, it took several days and a lot of thinking…where did I learn to feel so entitled?
When I was 18, and began experiencing the world apart from my parents for the first time, I learned quickly that the world outside my parent’s umbrella didn’t first see me as Astrid, but as a Latina woman. And, certainly not as one who was entitled to white privilege. With this present situation, I wonder whether my sense of entitlement is the flip side of growing up with white parents in an all-white community…of course, I am entitled to being treated fairly, and I can’t help but wonder if I got a headstart on this journey, a headstart that my non-adopted Latina sisters in the U.S. do not experience and, therefore, don’t realize they have access to.
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Update: I am excited to report that the grocery store now has posted signs at the entrances stating that customers are not to use personal shopping bags while shopping. I also have a meeting next week to talk with the store manager to discuss other ways this situation could have been handled.
This video is from Kevin Hofmann who blogs at My Mind On Paper. Kevin has recently made the leap to video blogging, these are his thoughts on Sandra Bullock’s recent adoption:
The following video is a clip from Anderson Cooper 360 that is airing a four-part series exploring a CNN study on how black and white children view skin color.
The CNN “doll test” is the newest version of the original 1940’s experiment conducted by groundbreaking psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark who used dolls to identify children’s feelings about race.
View updated CNN clips here>> and read the expanded study results click here>>
From guest blogger Shelise Gieseke. We are grateful to Shelise for contributing “Twice Foreign” to Our Voices and to our blog. Click here>> for more information on Adoption Mosaic Bloggers.
Where I reside in Asian-American society, as a Korean adoptee, has been referred to as the “third space.” It is a place that hovers between who I was raised to be and who I was born to be.
I am a Korean adoptee. I was raised in rural Minnesota by white Lutherans of German and Scandinavian descent. Both my parents are generational farmers. My dad and sister have blond hair and blue eyes, as do many of my cousins and friends. I spent a good piece of my life in envy of that blond hair and, especially, those blue eyes. Even though I do not remember a time when I did not know I was adopted from Korea, I do remember a long period of time when I was raised to forget that I was from Korea; to believe that I was the same as everyone else around me, and that everyone else would treat me as if that were true. It seemed to work. . . for a while.
Being familiar with an entire community’s life stories is an advantage and disadvantage of living in a small town. It was an advantage for me because everyone knew how I came to be in my family. I could claim membership to my family with no questions asked. Small town living was a disadvantage because my family and I didn’t have to deal with my race. I could easily become “just like them,” “just a daughter,” “just a friend,” “just a sister,” “just a cousin.” Just, just, just. Even though I was very comfortable with just being “me,” I can see how my affinity for rooting for the underdog, by being moved every time we learned about civil rights in school, by not wanting to eliminate people based on their surface appearance, was me telling myself that I was more than just; I was something other.
In college, I constructed my world to resemble my childhood world. People who would say they saw me as “just” were happily welcome to be a part of my life. I craved others who would accept me as the person I was on the inside and not be guided by my physical appearance. I went on one date with an Asian man, but couldn’t do another because I was convinced I wasn’t Asian enough for him. I didn’t have Asian parents or Asian friends. The whole time we were on our date I was waiting for him to yell, “Phony!” and make me confess I wasn’t a “real” Asian. With my college friends and colleagues, my ethnicity was discussed only within the framework of comedy, as if being the only person of color in a group of white people was always hilarious. I thought this humor helped me own my ethnicity, but it only created more distance between my identity and my ethnicity. Throughout my young adult life, I carried around this sense of being lonely, even in a crowd of people. However, I couldn’t pinpoint the source of this melancholy feeling.
Later in my college career, I transferred to a much larger university. I had the opportunity to take classes specifically related to race, to explore the idea of white privilege and to understand that I no longer had access to this privilege via my family. I started to accept myself as other. However, my social circle remained very white, as I was too afraid of rejection by communities of color. I feared that the people in this community would discard me because my white upbringing made me unauthentic. I only looked like a Korean women, but I thought, talked and walked like a Caucasian.
When I first heard the term “twinkie” to describe a person who was ethnically Asian, but was culturally white (or strived to “act” white), I was so relieved to finally have a label for myself. Even though the person who was describing this term was referring to twinkie as a pejorative term, I was just so happy to learn there was a group of Asians with whom I could identify. But, I did not know where these twinkies were or how to find them. So, I remained in isolation and alone in my struggles.
Then I discovered the online adoptee community. I devoured a handful of blogs that spoke to my race and adoption experiences. I was astonished and relieved to read that other people had experienced many of the same racist encounters that I had; that the authors found it difficult to feel like a “real” member of their ethnic group. Reading these blog entries and comments was the first time I ever felt validation about my own experience as a transracial adoptee. I could read something and say, “I know!” authentically and with authority. A few years later, with help from my therapist and some new friends in the adoption community, I have fully incorporated adoption into my life experience. Where I once thought of adoption as a finite event and something I should “get over,” I now acknowledge that adoption is a lifelong experience that will always be an influence on my life. I can confidently identify as a Korean adoptee. Something I was raised to be, but something different than my birthright.
My current challenge is about authenticity and authority. Given my upbringing, do I know enough about Asian-Americans to claim membership to the group? I know a lot about the culture of rural Minnesotans, but I have never had an Asian-American role model in my everyday life. Do I have the authority to claim to a part of the Asian-American experience based on my physical appearance and the fact that I was born in an Asian country?
I think a lot about what I now believe to be my birthright and how it was taken away from me by many different forces – social, economic, political, religious and individual. Because I am aware of these forces, I am comfortable laying claim to a heritage that was afforded to me by birth, but denied me in my adoptive family. I have not been raised by Korean parents or even lived in a Korean community, but I am living out a piece of the Asian-American experience; an experience that is unique to the Asian-American community itself. Even though it is often downplayed or ignored, I am an Asian immigrant who was sent as a baby to fend for myself in a land of strangers. A land where I could not be comforted by the sound of my language or filled with food cooked by my grandmother’s hand; where I was raised to become a stranger to my own motherland.
I am part of a people that must find the balance between our white families and our needs as Asian-Americans. We have to find acceptance from our white families that we are in fact Asian-Americans and the courage to seek out other Asian-Americans for guidance and support. I am still building courage to seek what I need, but I have been given confidence by my fellow adoptees and by a welcoming Korean-American community. Their acceptance and guidance has slowly been fusing the gap between the person I was raised to be and the person I want to be. And, always, I will hover in the “third space” with my fellow adoptees. We cling to each other as we each try to find our own balance.
The Takeaway (national morning news show) interviews Orlando Modeno, a man who lived through the experience of disruption when he was a child. Hear the interview here>>
If there is a silver lining in Artyom’s disruption tragedy, it is that people in the adoption community, and society at large are now talking seriously about, often ignored, adoption issues – the realities of older adoption, disruption, and adoption reform. Some critical points and interesting discussions are taking place on John Raible’s blog. Read the rest of this entry »
A friend of mine sent me this article published in the online magazine The Root. It is definitely worth the short time it takes to read the entire article. There’s much that I agree with, and some that I don’t, but I think all of it is valuable. The author Angie Chuang writes: “Bring up race and adoption, and watch people squirm.” Are we still squirming when it comes to these conversations? Or have we advanced to a place where we are now much more comfortable talking about race and adoption? Do any of the things the author writes about surprise you? What do you think? Read the rest of this entry »
I have been learning so much from this blog. I learn through the process of writing posts, from the web links and resource suggestions people send me, and from the other bloggers and people who join the conversation. But two days ago, I learned something I didn’t expect. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been thinking a lot about minorities and power and privilege lately. My thoughts come out of my experiences as a white adoptee.
Adoptees are in the minority in this culture. Most people are not relinquished, and get raised by at least one biological relation. Being part of this minority has enabled me to experience what it’s like to feel silenced and, oftentimes, what it’s like to be an outsider looking in at a culture that is based on blood relations, and a culture that asks me to behave as if I’ve grown up with blood relations.
Being white has enabled me to have the experience of being an insider. Though I still have far to go (and the journey will never actually be over), I’ve traveled from less to more understanding of what people of color go through in this culture. Reflecting on what I’ve learned from that particular journey so far, I realized something completely unexpected: I do understand the resistance of some non-adopted folks and adoptive parents to really listening to adult adoptees.
When those in any minority speak out and express “negative” feelings or criticism, the responses from the dominant culture and those in positions of power/privilege can often range from various forms of not listening/caring to outright attacks and attempts to silence those in the minority by casting them as “angry,” “troubled,” or “troublemakers,” etc.
Other responses by those in the dominant culture can range from feeling attacked, becoming fearful that they’re going to say or do something wrong, and/or finding subtle (and not so subtle ways) to not engage, or be an ally. If you’re in a dominant culture, it can be quite uncomfortable to have your eyes opened to a different/expanded reality. At a certain point it’s easy for discomfort to equal retreat.
And we can’t forget that people are usually taught to think of disagreement as something that’s automatically antagonistic, and discomfort as something to be avoided. Most of us aren’t taught how to respond to disagreement. Difference itself is often considered uncomfortable, and something to be silenced, ignored, made fun of, or pitied.
We need to talk about all of these “differences” and how they make us uncomfortable.
Let’s stop being afraid of talking about race, about adoption, about sexual orientation, etc. Let’s stop speaking in code, and be up front about how we feel.
Let’s commit to being honest about where we are on our journey as adoptive parents, birth/first parents, and adoptees. Let’s agree to be honest when we’re having our buttons pushed. Let’s commit to staying open and actually listen to one another.
This is an invitation to stick with the discomfort and keep going.
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Blog post written by Astrid Dabbeni
