2 Reading Reflection

Student’s Name

Instructor’s Name

ENGL 100

Date

Understanding Cross-Racial Adoptions

Rebecca Carroll’s Washington Post editorial, “As a Black Woman Raised by White Parents, I Have Some Advice for Potential Adopters,” opens with a drawing of a black girl holding hands with two white adults, who join a larger group of white people wearing casual clothes and who walk into a field of whiteness. Importantly, the child is looking back – looking right into the eyes of the reader – me. Her face is the only one that I can see.

This drawing does a great deal in quickly conveying the main themes of this editorial – which is extremely painful and courageous, especially as Carroll is focusing readers on the most intimate of relationships – that between the child and parents – and recasting this relationship in terms of race and systemic racism. Although Carroll is not writing a piece advocating that white parents stop adopting black children, she is making several points about how these white parents – and, in this case, the readers are to understand that she is talking directly to her own white parents – are participating in a racist system, although they may not be completely aware of what they are doing. White parents with black adopted children may resort to stereotyping and fetishizing with the ways in which they talk about their children. White parents, moreover, may have little knowledge of black cultural and social leaders and they may have no connections to black cultural forms and to members of the black community. Carroll stipulates that these white parents are practicing racist beliefs and supporting systemic racist structures by hoping that their black adopted children grow up in a “colorblind” – that is, white – world.

Carroll’s editorial is confessional – in this case, she is confessing to her white parents that she recognizes their complicity in racism despite the fact that they were “incredibly loving White parents”; Carroll writes, “[I]f you legitimately don’t understand how systemic racism works, or the ways in which it will target your child specifically and often, then maybe you shouldn’t adopt a Black child. And I mean that in the kindest way possible.” Again, with this last line, Carroll is being extremely personal; in an editorial that is meant to address the issues of transracial adoptions and to speak to white parents, she is doing this work by calling out what her parents have done to her.

As a parent of two children, I tried to imagine myself reading this editorial for the first time as I were Carroll’s primary audience – parents who had adopted African-American children or, for that matter, children who were considerably different than them for race, linguistic, social class, or other reasons. What must these parents be feeling? Hurt? Resentful? Angry? But, also, quite possibly feeling guilty and complicit? Of course, my personal experience is limited when it comes to Carroll’s argument: my children and I never had to question the community and the identity that they were brought up in, although we did want them to realize that their skin color, language, and social class were not universal norms and identities; we dutifully clicked “diversity” as one of the most important qualities when enrolling them into daycare centers. We have several white friends and acquaintances who have adopted or served as foster parents for African-American children, and our neighbors – who could be described as “salt of the earth” Kansans – have created a large, close-knit family by adopting cross-racially.

To my knowledge, they have decidedly not followed any of Carroll’s suggestions, and I would be surprised if they made any cultural accommodations besides bringing their children up with their Catholic views and a strong work ethic. Race, as a concept involved in their family structure, would never have entered their thinking.

As I read Carroll’s editorial, though, I found yet another example of how race, especially in the United States, involves, subsumes, and penetrates the lives of all people. White parental adopters, though, may not be aware of race or may have found ways to justify what they have done: instead of thinking in term of race, for example, they could point to their liberal good intentions or, as in the case of my neighbors, think in terms of religious faith. And, from Nicholas Zill’s online article, “The Changing Face of Adoption in the United States,” we can understand who most of these white adopters are: they are older and more financially secure than biological white parents. Yet, here in my realization, one in which social class and race become intersected, is where this most intimate of relationships – that of the family – becomes submerged with race. I started to play this though experiment: could I imagine a black couple adopting a white child? Though I am sure that this has happened, I’ve never heard of it before personally and never seen this type of family represented in popular media. Instead, this type of family creates a cultural dissonance because of the fact that it is so hard to imagine. But why? Where is this dissonance coming from?

This hard-to-imagine quality may point to systemic racism, in terms of a complex range of factors, such as economic factors (there are systemic reasons for why white couples will have more financial resources than those of black couples), institutional (there may be assumptions and expectations from adoption agencies regarding what types of people constitute “good” parents, and cultural (there are few representations in popular culture to allow us to make sense of these types of families). Carroll addresses systemic racism when she reminds white parents that the “beauty” and existential significance of their adopted black children do not stem from the white parents themselves; they, according to Carroll, do not bring the beauty and the worth to their children – that beauty and worth already pre-exists within them.

According to Zill, white potential adopters may be paying attention to these conversations about race and systemic racism: since 1999, white parents are adopting far fewer African- American children in favor of adopting children with Asian ethnicities.

A final way for me to make personal meaning out of Carroll’s editorial is to recognize the power that Carroll endows upon parents. As far as Carroll is concerned, parents have the power to bestow identities, dispositions, attitudes, and ideas about self worth – and they can create all of this magical identity work through the ways they characterize their children in their language and informal conversations; the example that Carroll uses is “spitfire,” which, when labelling a young black woman, may conjure up stereotypes about “angry black women.” Carroll has extremely high expectations for the linguistic and ideological consciousness of parents, and maybe that’s her point: if you, as a white adopter of a black child, cannot serve this important role as a parent “naturally” – that is, you cannot fluently bring your children up in a diverse and multi-racial community – then you should reconsider becoming a parent in the first place. The risks are too high. Of course, Carroll may hold too much faith in the power of parents, who cannot possibly control the rich alchemy of biological, social, and cultural factors that influence their children’s identities, interests, and influences.

“Get Up, Stand Up — Stand Up For Your Life”

Taylir Charest

Taylir Charest wrote this Reading Reflection in Spencer Young’s ENGL 100. Charest wrote her reflection on Chet Ellis’s “The Sound of Silence.”

We all face small, everyday transgressions by others in one way or another. Most people endure comments or jokes about their race, age, weight, or gender each day. Do we perpetuate the discrimination because we do not initiate a change by standing up against those everyday transgressions? Chet Ellis believes we do.

In “The Sound of Silence” by Chet Ellis, he writes about his middle- and high-school experience where he learns that by not speaking out against racial microaggressions early, he lets offenders think what they are doing and saying is okay, and the microaggressions only get worse. In hindsight, Ellis does not blame himself for being racially targeted, but he does blame himself for not standing up against others. In his hometown of Westport, Connecticut, he was one of the only Black people, leaving him feeling like he stuck out like a sore thumb. In middle school, “I’m blacker than you,” was a remark from his classmates because he had not listened to Lil Wayne’s album that had just dropped. Ellis let it go, which was one of his first mistakes. Not wanting others to feel like he did when people made jokes that offended him, he would smile or simply change the subject. This response made microaggressions worse for him in high school. Freshman year during soccer season, his teammates used to play “get the minority,” where they chased him down, so they could tackle him. These were not the only instances when microaggressions occurred. After doing some research on why it was difficult for him to stand up for himself, Ellis questioned if it was his fault the jokes got so bad, and if he had stood up for himself sooner, would the jokes have stopped? Following this, Ellis took accountability for not speaking out.

Reading this article for the first time, I immediately found myself being able to relate to Ellis and his experiences. This does not mean I understand what it feels like to experience racism. Though I have not experienced racial microaggressions, I parallel his experience with mine being a woman. I will now show three examples of how Ellis’s remarks hit home for me. For instance, when the microaggressions got too much to handle and he did some research on why it was so hard to stand up for himself, he found a meaningful article and quoted it in his paper. It said “For token women, the price of being one of the boys is a willingness to turn, occasionally, against the girls. The token woman, in other words, is required to sell out her own kind.” And Ellis questions, “Had I sold out my own race in an effort to fit in?” A token woman is included in a group to make others believe the group is being fair and inclusive, when this is not really true (“A Token Woman”). Ellis felt some of the same things a token woman does. Though I do not quite feel exactly like a token woman, I can relate to this because I have many friends who are young men, and I am often referred to as “one of the boys” when I am with them. They are who I have always hung around. Being in this situation, sometimes I did find myself selling out my own gender, putting myself and other women down, just to fit in with them.

Another time I found myself relating to Ellis was when he talked about a really bad “joke” that his classmates made, and he only reacted with a smile. Ellis said, “He had offended me to my core, and yet there I was feeling compelled to smile so as to not offend him.” For me, this happens quite often, just as it did to Ellis. If one of the guys is making a joke, I am probably going to laugh at it, no matter how bad it is. I might not laugh at as many things as I used to, but I never wanted to stand up against the joker and make him feel like he was not funny. I always found myself smiling and laughing along because I did not want the boys to feel how I felt. The misogyny that laced their jokes was offensive and got to be too much sometimes. They even recognized their offensiveness at times, but then joked about being really misogynistic with their humor. I wondered if they said some of the same things about me that they said about other girls when I was not around. Trying to be so relatable for them really took a toll on me. This is how I think Ellis felt when he was reacting the same way. He did not want to make someone else feel bad, even though others at his school were making some of the most insensitive jokes I have ever heard. It was continuous acts of misogyny without consequences from me, and continuous acts of racism without consequences from Ellis.

The last example I found myself relating to is when Ellis gave us some background on himself at the beginning of his paper and said, “I covered myself in rags from J. Crew and Vineyard Vines as camouflage, trying to show the people around me that I belonged.” He wore overpriced shirts, in my opinion, just to try and blend in with everyone around him. This action pertains to me, but almost in the opposite way, as I am not the type of young woman to wear “nice” or fancy clothes. You will see me in athletic shorts or leggings and a big T-shirt most days. I like being comfortable and do not like to stand out. When I do dress in something other than my normal, people comment on it, and it makes me uncomfortable. Women have to confine themselves to fit society’s standards, while men can wear almost anything they want without being chastised. When women wear anything that shows off their figures, they are automatically sexualized. This is why I wear the clothes that I do. Ellis used brand name clothes as a way to fit in, just as I do with unrevealing clothing.

Overall, “The Sound of Silence” helped me realize that “letting it happen” is not the way to approach things. This essay was influential and relevant for me because it helped me realize that something similar is going on in my life, and it showed me how I can change to make it better. When people are being offensive towards you, actually standing up for yourself can stop these offensive jokes and comments in the future, and it may even get people to stand up with you. I hope this article urges others to see that staying silent is not the solution, whereas speaking up for yourself and others is.

The Desire for a Single Story in an Interconnected World

Connor Aggson

Connor Aggson wrote this Reading Reflection in Phillip Marzluf’s ENGL 100 class. It won second place in the 2022 Expository Writing Program Essay Award Competition.

“It’s us versus them.”

“We’re the good guys.”

“Toe the party line.”

As socio-political beings, we’ve all known thoughts such as these, whether they’ve been implicitly directed towards us or they’ve originated in our own heads. Together, they form a narrative of our own self-righteousness, molding bias and fueling our decisions. This “story,” though arguably helpful to us in primitive settings, becomes detrimental when combined with our world’s ubiquitous connectivity through social media. As such, these biases, these “single stories” we have of others, are now the source of much danger in our contemporary, globally- minded age.

Within “The Danger of a Single Story,” a talk given by writer Chimamanda Adichie, Adichie discusses the importance of understanding people in a multi-faceted, nuanced way. As a middle-class Nigerian woman surrounded by western literature and influences, she became well integrated into a global cultural environment. Western culture, to an extent, became a part of her culture, and defined her early creative identity. Conversely, others’ perceptions of her own experiences were comparatively narrower, with some automatically expressing pity under their own universal assumptions of Nigerian life. These assumptions, she points out, are a result of only understanding her by a single story.

Through these experiences, her goal is to express the power of storytelling. Her message is that by understanding a group, community, or country from many stories, people learn the ways in which they are similar, but by focusing on a single story, it makes others appear more different than they really are, and distracts us from finding honest, human common ground. Her early integration with western literature has allowed her to see many westerners in ways she may not have otherwise. Comparatively, as her own statements tell, Nigerian literature is relatively unknown when compared to the power and influence of the West. In this way, she was forced into this integration through a supply shortage, and undoubtedly this forced experience has resulted in her unique perspective later in life. As a writer and philanthropist acting in a globalized world, these experiences, and the philosophy she’s built from them, are instrumental to her unique perspective, and the message she wants to tell.

Reflecting on her experiences, I’ve considered how (or how not) the concept of “a single story” affects the broader modern world. Are we now, as younger people living in a globalizing world, more or less keen on the trappings of a “single story”? How could this be quantified? Nowhere could this question be looked at further than by pointing to the greatest tool for human connection ever invented: the internet.

Being in the age of information has given me a great deal of insight into the ways a “single story” mentality perpetuates. It’s a common sight to see people grapple with the easiest interpretation they can about a topic or group, but why is this? Much of it comes down to the internet’s sheer surplus of stimuli to process. For example, it’s much easier to read a tweet posted by a friend than to compare firsthand accounts of a situation as it unfolds. In essence, the internet makes us hyper-aware of everything going on, but as a consequence, makes it more difficult to focus on what’s in front of us at any given time. Internet politics in particular offer a direct example of this. With so many voices vying for attention and only so much time to look at them, the effects of bias, of “single stories,” is all too easy to come by.

As a middle-class, white Kansan citizen, statistics would bet that I, and those I’d meet, would be conservatively minded. But as a citizen of the internet, the “single stories” that define political dogma come at all angles. In this way, the boundaries of my geography fell apart, replaced instead by the boundaries of diverse ideology, values, and discourse. As someone who has explored many nooks of the political spectrum, it’s not as if this resulted for me in some kind of ideological renaissance. Each portion of politics I delved into was all consuming for the time I was a part of it. As a twelve-year-old, I was incredibly liberal, dipping my toes into atheistic circles and the contemporary, gamer-gate inspired wave of feminism from figures such as Laci Green and Anita Sarkeesian. During the late “red wave” of 2016, I rescinded much of this and discovered niche conservative views. Since then, I’ve been in and out of various political circles, and even now, I don’t know where I stand. In each of these cases, however, the degree to which they dominated my thinking was incredible. The internet let me explore these viewpoints as much as I’d liked, and I could always find a take on current events or a review of history fit to my current leanings. Pulling briefly from Adiche, her described variables of power and geography with regards to national biases, extended to the internet, show a new dimension of deeply niche ideological bias.

In spite of my experience, one which others have had analogously, there is a general perception that the internet has created a revolutionary public square that allows ideas to flow like metaphorical water in a riverbed of fiber-optics. Because of it, these ideas could be hyper- evolved, allowing humanity to reach collective conclusions with more unity and swiftness than at any other point in human history. But in spite of the space-time compression offered to us, the river which comprises internet ideology isn’t a flow of water. The water is an illusion, covering up the stubborn, weathered bed of pebbles at the bottom. Each pebble represents a niche within an ideological niche, a piece broken off by water erosion from what must once have been a monolithic partisan rock.

On the internet, there is less national unity, there is less partisan unity, there is even less political unity. Every sect has their story, and every story has its omissions. This is the effect of the internet on our “single stories”; its implementation allows us to focus on our in-group biases through the overabundance of information. It is the opposite of Adichie’s situation: whereas she had the opportunity to humanize western society because of an underabundance of information, this surplus puts a buffet in front of us, asking us to pick and choose what we want to see. One can see how when these factors apply to politics, they can create many single stories, bringing the dangers that come along with them.

Reflection: The Effects of Trying to be “Normal”

Drew Bittel

Drew Bittel wrote this reading reflection in Cecilia Pick Gomez’s ENGL 100 class.

Society has created a standard of what it means to be normal, and many people worldwide are excluded from this standard. Typically, it is those with mental disabilities. The article, “At Risk in the Culture of ‘Normal’” by Jonathan Mooney, calls for a stop to this discrimination and goes into depth on how the connotations related to “normality” and the pressure to become “normal” negatively affect the mental health of those with disabilities. Disabled individuals are

constantly pushed to fit in with society but can do nothing about it because they are different from others. I can personally relate to this topic from witnessing how one of my family members, who had disabilities, was treated by his peers, and I can use this example to explain why this identification of “abnormal” versus “normal” must be put to a hold in order to create a more positive outlook on society and create fairness between people. Instead of trying to force similarities in society, we should strive for individuality and be proud of our differences.

In the article, Jonathan Mooney argues that society must stop treating people with disabilities poorly and learn how to support and be appreciative of all people despite their differences. To support this claim, Mooney uses personal stories from his childhood that illustrate the mistreatment he received for his disabilities as well as many statistics that display how people with disabilities are discriminated against and how this discrimination affects their well-being. Mooney’s overall main purpose is to advocate for a change in cultural mindsets that view “normal people” as superior to disabled individuals and to place importance on the fact that being different is not a negative identification. This article points out many societal flaws that have demeaned and harmed people with disabilities by making them feel like they are not of the same worth as others and that they need to change their character to match societal standards.

Not many people understand the amount of discrimination that individuals with disabilities must endure. Mooney puts this discrimination into perspective by stating a statistic that reads, “Children with disabilities are three times more likely to be bullied than their non-disabled peers.” This statistic is a startling one for me and makes me feel very emotional because I can relate it to one of my cousins who is currently in high school and has a handful of social and learning disabilities such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, and ADHD. He has been struggling to cope with the scrutiny he has been facing at school, an experience that got so intense at one point that his parents enrolled him in a different school, which was still no help. His parents had asked me to have conversations with him to see if maybe I could help him improve with fitting in. But it was then that I realized the true mental effects that this discrimination has on a disabled individual. What was once a very creative and electric child is now a child who has no interest in doing anything he enjoys out of fear of being judged for his actions. My biggest takeaways from my conversations with him are that he has no idea what he is doing wrong to deserve such harsh treatment and exclusion from his fellow classmates. He stated that it makes him want to give up on his own personality and become a whole different person. It saddens me greatly to watch his progression of becoming more introverted and shy each time his family visits me, and I wish I could see the old him again. Many children worldwide are suffering from the same scenario as my cousin, and this brings awareness that children with disabilities are heavily scrutinized and are given the idea that they must change their own personalities to fit in with the rest of society.

In order to better understand why a social transformation is needed, the harmful effects of this scrutiny and discrimination against disabled individuals must be known. Mooney states that “adults with learning disabilities had 46 percent higher odds of having attempted suicide than their peers without learning problems.” Society has created an imaginary standard for the people of the world to live up to, but it does not acknowledge the effects these standards play for the ones who do not meet its expectations. I can relate to this statement from Mooney through an experience I encountered in my freshman year of high school when another freshman, who had mild autism and was the center of many jokes, took his own life. This tragedy really opened my eyes to the effects of the discrimination people with learning disabilities must face. Though I did not know the kid all that well, I felt the sorrow his family and friends must have felt and was angered that the people who had given the kid a hard time did not feel guilty whatsoever. The fear of my cousin becoming a part of the statistic that Mooney had stated makes me understand the need for a social transformation to respect all people of the world for who they are, no matter their differences. A difference is not something that one should be scrutinized for but is yet something that should be treated just as anyone else in the world. Society has made these people feel the opposite, which results in the failure to meet the standard and the suicide rates of disabled individuals to rise.

To put a hold on the discrimination against people with disabilities, a social transformation that requires inclusion and the embracement of people with differences is needed. Throughout my own high-school experience and from what my cousin has shared with me about his own, it is no doubt that people with differences are discriminated and scrutinized against. I always made the extra effort to treat those with disabilities the same way as I wanted to be treated, but I could never understand why most other people treated them as outcasts. According to Mooney, a social transformation that “requires us to include and to love” is needed. This quote is a very vital piece of advice for society that Mooney is giving us, that to end this discrimination requires us to include all and be appreciative of all. This statement from Mooney really hits me; if the kids at my school had taken this advice, that child wouldn’t have taken his own life in his freshman year. If the kids at my cousin’s school had taken this advice, then he wouldn’t have to suffer this wave of depression and scrutiny that he is currently enduring. This point goes for people all over the world who are being discriminated against for their disabilities. Difference is not something that should be looked down at, but rather something that everyone should appreciate. And the sooner the world learns to include and love all human beings, the sooner everyone will be able to understand and relate to each other.

By writing this article, Jonathan Mooney spreads awareness about how the discrimination against “abnormal” people places very negative effects on their mental state. Instead of discriminating against them and further destroying their motive for life, we should be appreciating their difference and including them just as we would include anyone else. Although I have never had to personally suffer from the discrimination and scrutiny that some face, I have witnessed how it impacts the mental state of those whom I am close with and can conclude that no human being should have to endure such harsh cruelty. By embracing differences and treating everyone equally the same, all people of the world will feel like a part of society, and the world will become a much more accepting place.