The snurchin has a white-hot hate-on for people who say things like this:
Many people who are not adopted have abandonment issues and identity issues. One can’t be sure they wouldn’t have had those same issues had they remained with their original family. People have issues.
And people pluck these issues out of thin air. They’re certainly not formed by the experiences and emotions they actually have and feel. Ask any psychiatrist! Babies do very little but lie there considering whether they’ll choose abandonment or addictions or a borderline personality or what, all on their own.
And sure, everyone has the same issues adopted people have. That’s why every group, not just adoptees, is overrepresented in juvenile facilities and mental hospitals. It all makes perfect sense. Only it doesn’t, of course, because if all groups were overrepresented, there’d be no concept of overrepresentation.
From a different person, bolding mine:
I was raised in a family that would appear to be the archetypal nuclear family. There were four children, my mother was at home, we suffered no losses or upheavals in our idyllic suburban lives. Despite all that, I have never felt close to my mother (whom I resemble strongly), and I have always felt that I was never understood by my parents or siblings and that I really didn’t “belong” in the family. Unfortunately, I can’t blame any of these things on adoption, and therefore must just chalk them up to the human condition, my own personal DNA, or perhaps the fact that we all suffer from a primal wound.
“Unfortunately”?
[sputter, flail]
“UNFORTUNATELY”?!
With that one word, you’ve proven how little you understand about how being adopted feels and how uninterested you really are in knowing how it feels. It’s one of the most callous things I think I’ve ever read. “Nobody understands me. I wish I had been handed over to strangers so I’d never know who I am or where I came from or why my first family wasn’t raising me. I wouldn’t just feel like I didn’t belong, I’d know it in the core of my being. That would make life and Thanksgiving dinners so much easier!” What are you, eight years old?
Truly: Shame on you.
There’s more from that last person. I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn she’s an a’parent:
I’m sure that many adopted children struggle with their identities, and I hope that I will be able to help my adopted son to understand his life story and to feel positive about himself. I hope I will be able to listen to his feelings and tell him about his birth family without interference from my own emotions.
However, I also hope that I won’t blame all his problems and all our problems on the fact that he’s adopted. As we go through our inevitable mother/son battles and his predictably stormy adolescence, I hope I will respond as his mother, not as the one who created his problems by taking him into my home.
Spare me, Lady. Plenty of parents who didn’t adopt don’t want to be the ones who caused all their kid’s problems. Your issues are probably invented, and if they aren’t, they have nothing to do with the reality that you adopted.
Really, you never felt you fit in? Well big godsdamned deal: you and every other kept child ever, so STFU asnd GTFO: you did and do belong and your feelings were a silly thing little children go through. If you chose to hold onto them into adulthood, that’s on you. Cry me Lake Erie, you whiner.
That was rude, dismissive and hurtful of me, wasn’t it? So cut it out. I mean, do you go around claiming everyone’s pain for yourself? Do you tell people of other races you know how it feels? amputees? the homeless? the opposite sex? I’ll bet you don’t. I’ll bet you only pick on adoptees because we have the nerve to occasionally say things that make you uncomfortable when we are supposed to shut up and be grateful. I don’t know why society doesn’t insist YOU shut up and be grateful you got to raise someone else’s child every single time you presume to speak about how adoptive parenting feels.
“I woke up in between/a memory and a dream…Think of me what you will;/I’ve got a little space to fill, /so let’s get to the point….You don’t know how it feels to be me.”
I really hate it when PostSecret–wait, strike that, I really hate PostSecret. (Yet I can’t stop reading it.) For every actual secret (the interesting ones that might help me learn something uplifting about human nature), there are thirty mere brags, five or six obvious lies, a dozen postcards that only provide evidence that human beings are stupid vicious creatures, and at least one noisome adoption-related piece of *trollstank:
I saw this last Sunday and I still don’t have words for how I feel about it.
I want that thing that chick on TV got.
(I lied, I got some words right here. But you knew that.)
I don’t watch much TV, so I had to consult Google to see who these characters are. Here’s their heartwarming adoption story from Grey’s Anatomy, according to Wikipedia:
When the Chief’s wife, Adele, is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she receives a spot on Derek’s trial. Meredith tampers with the drugs so that Adele does not receive the placebo. She and Derek decide to adopt Zola, an orphaned baby from Africa, and make their marriage official. When the truth about Meredith’s tampering comes out, however, a furious Derek tells her he cannot raise a child with her. Meredith is fired, and tries to conceal both this and her separation from Derek from the adoption counselor. Although Richard steps down as Chief of Surgery and takes the blame for the trial tampering to protect Meredith, Zola is taken away. She and Derek reconcile and fight to get Zola back, but fear the worst when the judge cancels their hearing. Meredith tells Derek that she does not want another child, just Zola. They are both delighted when the adoption counselor unexpectedly returns Zola to them.
WHAT.
So this person is saying that adoption from Africa by an unemployed, unethical imaginary doctor who lies to adoption agencies and is rewarded for it is what made her/him want to adopt.
Well. Given the state of adoption in the US, where babies are returnable dolls you can buy in any color from all over the world–given that we take orders from the media on how to look and act and be–and given that we believe having one black acquaintance can make you 100% not-racist forever–this shit makes perfect sense.
(I’d be angrier if I weren’t pretty sure the poster has done nothing to pursue adoption but make the postcard, mail it in, and feel all warm and glowy about it.)
*I watched TrollHunter recently and it gave me a new Bad Word. Recommended!
She goes on to say she’ll definitely either adopt or make her own baby because what the fuck, these two things have been rendered almost indistinguishable by the fluffy wuffy (KACHING!) propoganda campaign that surrounds and cushions adoption so no APs will get their itto feewings hurt–and to hell with what that does to kids because KACHING again.
And Queen Latifah says, like so many others I’ve encountered, that she’s wanted to adopt “since I was 17 or 18 years old.”
Why do people say this? Seriously, why? Is there any reason to say this other than to get your head patted? I don’t think there is. I don’t have any way of knowing whether anyone has wanted to adopt for twenty-three years. But I was forty-one once (Queen Latifah’s current age according to the article), and by that age there was not one damned thing I wanted to do when I was seventeen or eighteen that I had not
already done,
stopped wanting to do,
realized I’d never be able to do,
or just plain discarded as childishly ill-thought out, because I was seventeen FFS. I used to have a friend who said she’d “always” wanted to adopt a baby girl from China, as if this had been a trend or even a possibility her entire life. She’s younger than I am, but she was not born during or after 1983. So no, not “always.” Why would you say that?
I’d believe people like this if they’d admit that what they mean is that they have been saying they want to adopt since they were seventeen or eighteen. And I’d believe them if they’d admit they’ve kept saying it all these years because it’s always gotten them free platters of You Are A Wonderful Person! cookies for doing nothing. (And they by-gods expect those cookies. Ever been the first person to react to that announcement with something other than unqualified praise? I have. Wheeeeeeew!)
The people I’ve known who say this sometimes go on to rhapsodize about how wonderful it would be to help a child in need…and I watch their eye glaze over and I can almost hear the music start. It’s good having your head up in that cloud, People. Cinnamon popcorn* and cute Chinese babies forever…and ever…and ever.
This is vile. It’s also exactly the kind of racist tripe an urchin expects from *fans of Ron Paul; but I repeat myself:
An online ad posted by “NHLiberty4Paul” includes video footage of Huntsman, the former ambassador to China, with daughter Gracie when she was an infant. It also shows Huntsman holding Asha shortly after she was adopted from India.“American values? Or Chinese?” the ad asks, ending with “Vote Ron Paul.”
“If someone wants to poke fun at me, that’s OK,” said Huntsman, whose campaign has posted several online ads attacking Paul as unelectable. “What I object to is bringing forward pictures and videos of my adopted daughters and suggesting there’s something sinister there.”
[Huntsman pointed] to his 12-year-old daughter, Gracie, in the audience, saying adopting her and her younger sister have reinforced his pro-life views. […]
Huntsman also looked to his daughters in answering another question later, at a general store in tiny Washington, N.H. Asked to describe a “watershed” moment in his life, he described traveling to China to get Gracie — who had been abandoned in a vegetable market at two months of age, and later adopting his younger daughter from India, where she had been left on a roadside.
“I’d never had quite such an emotional journey,” he said.
It’s a little late to act hurt on their account and say “Pick on someone your own size” now, Asshole.
Of course, Huntsman has a perfect right to expect to be treated better than anyone else. He’s yet another rescuer of orphans for Jesus. Naturally he reserved the right to name the new puppy before he ever saw or met her. (What if she hadn’t “looked like a Gracie Mei”?) And he’s raised his Chinese daughter to parrot all this horseshit. Here’s her story according to 2012.republican-candidates.org:
The Huntsman’s adoption of Gracie Mei in 1999 was particularly poignant, as they chose a name for her years before she was even born, and her future siblings wrote imaginary Christmas letters welcoming her into the family. The Deseret Morning News ran a heartwarming story on the adoption where Mary Kaye, Huntsman’s wife, was quoted as saying, “She is our greatest Christmas present ever.” Gracie Mei herself, now 12, joined in the conversation.
Gracie Mei: “They (the adoption agency workers) found me in a vegetable market (Yangzhou Phoenix Vegetable Market)” Mary Kaye: “Who found you in the market?” Gracie Mei: “Jesus.”
Did you catch that? A twelve-year-old child gave a perfectly factual answer (based on the info she has, anyway), and Mommy corrected her with a prompt to tell a pretty fairy tale instead. There wasn’t even a “need” for any fairy tale, because the kid already knows the truth and the truth is not, comparably speaking, horrible. But Mommy and/or Daddy must think it is.
That exchange sums up perfectly how it feels to be an adopted child.
You ain’t scoring any brownie points with me this way, Mr. and Mrs. H.
*fans of Ron Paul insist the ad was a false flag placed by their enemies to make them and Mr. Paul look bad. I’m not investigating that any further because I don’t care.
I’m Marlin Snurchin, and today on Wild Adoption Kingdom, we’ll examine two things that are supposed to equip white people with a magical racism eraser but do not: Traveling overseas and adopting a child of color. As the AP in the below-linked article proves, one can visit Africa, “fall in love” with the version of it one sees from one’s privileged position, and remain racist. No, not the sheet-wearing kind of racist. The more common, and possibly more hurtful kind: the Incredibly Oblivious Racist. Look, there’s one now. [lifts binoculars, squints, points] And a beautiful specimen she is too! Don’t make any sudden moves. They scare easily:
“Those drums. Throbbing in my brain. Primitive. Frenzied. They speak to me of Africa.”
Exotic, Touristy Africa! I’m in luuuuurve!
“Having fallen in love with Africa on various visits—the people, the land, and the endless skies”
“Yes, all the people and all the lands of the entire continent. I love them each and every one.”
“—adopting from there was especially appealing.”
“Have I mentioned how much I love Africa? I love African people sooo much that I bought one and brought it home so it will never be African. They don’t mind at all, they’ve got so many to spare. And oh! such an adventure I had!”
“And so, in the summer of 2010, with swirling thoughts of Joseph Conrad and his dark colonial tales, I applied.”
Buh whaaa? [reads sentence again] Lady, did you really have to go there? Then so shall I:
They [Africans under the colonial yoke] were dying slowly — it was very clear. They were […] nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. [L]ost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away and rest.–from Heart of Darkness.
“Oh god you guys, there with people with GUNS all OVER the place, and actual political protests actually being put down, and my agency told me not to go somewhere, but I did and it turned out to be dangerous! Actually dangerous! For ME!”
“[W]e wound up on that dark road, in the middle of nowhere, with the driver attempting a shakedown and refusing to drive. We stood our ground, and eventually he drove on, muttering angrily.”
“I could’ve had to give up more mon–I mean, I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED, Y’ALL!!1!”
There you have it: the never-elusive White Adopter in its unnatural habitat. Next week on Wild Adoption Kingdom, we’ll look at a creature so rare as to be almost unique in Adoptoland: the a’mom who doesn’t blog about her adopted children. She says it’s because “Children appreciate privacy just as much as adults do” and that they’ll appreciate not having been blogged about when they’re older. Remarkable, eh? Tune in next week! [removes pith helmet] [lights down]
And that’s it. No, really, that’s the danger she faced. I bet it was frightening as Hell, but I expected worse, what with machine guns in the article title and all. There’s bonus racism in the comments, as usual. In her eagerness to explain how right it is that Americans get anything we want, one commenter says:
It really shouldn’t matter which race adopted this child, what is more important is that she now has a family of her own. Having her wait for someone of her own race to provide this setting is in itself cruel.
You know what? You’re right: it shouldn’t matter which race adopts which. BUT IT DOES. Because WHITE PEOPLE INVENTED RACISM, and when we find it getting between us and something we want, we exercise yet more racism by imagine racism away. “All gone! Post-racial everything!”
“Now gimme that baby, you warthog from Hell! I’m entitled!”
Another commenter asks,
Do you have any idea what the chances are of Anna being able to stay where she is and have any quality of life, at all? You seriously think she’d be better off staying there?
Gosh, you’re right. Africa is nasty and full of guns and flies and shit and flies that shit guns, and it’s just no place at all, dear me no, for a child who’s wanted by a white woman to live. I mean really. How dare you expect that darling girl to sit around waiting for a black family to adopt her? Waiting and waiting. It’s not like Africa is full of black people–No, I mean it is, and that’s exactly why it’s so necessary for USAsians to pluck the little ones who haven’t learned savagery yet out of that horrible place and make them white, not that I’m a racist or anything….
Adopto-Snark 