Paradigm Shifts and Lessons Learned

I've been thinking about this one for a few days - thinking about the experiences and choices made that have led me to where I am today, and one event in particular that taught me what I thought was the lesson may have only been the beginning of the lesson.

Back in the summer of 1996 I went back to Washington DC to visit friends. I lived in DC in 1990-91, so being back there was a bit like going home. I knew my way around via Metro (get me above ground and I was lost!), I had my favorite places I liked to visit (National Gallery of Art, Old Town Alexandria, Pentagon City (mall) and Union Station to name a few.) On one of the days I was there I decided to go see Multiplicity, which was playing at the Union Station movie theatre. I arrived with plenty of time to spare, and with it being in the middle of a work day the theatre wasn't at all filled up. As I was sitting there waiting for the movie to begin I heard some ladies behind me having a conversation about who was going to sit where and it went something like this:

Girl A: I'm not gonna sit by her
Girl B: I'm not sittin' be her either. You sit by her.
Girl C: No way. I'm not sittin' by her
Girl A: I am NOT gonna sit by that white girl.

The debate continued on a bit longer and suddenly it occurred to me - I was the white girl. I was the one that no one wanted to sit by. I remember being stunned and feeling my heart sink, wanting to stand up and say "For crying out loud - you talk of equality but you don't act like you actually want everyone treated equally." I didn't. I sat there feeling small and wondering about all the progress that society was trying to make.

The ladies finally decided who was going to sit by me... one of several children who were with them drew the short stick you could say. I looked at these kids and wondered just what in the hell their mom's were trying to teach them. I smiled and tried to pretend that I hadn't heard their conversation, but even that child didn't last long, about 5 minutes later he moved to sit on one of their laps.

I will never forget how shocked I felt. Little did I know that the perspective I had gained through this interaction was only part of the lesson.

Later that year I was in Memphis to attend my friend Shellie's wedding. While we were there a group of us went to check out the National Civil Rights Museum, which includes the hotel where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Walking through the museum was truly an experience... especially for someone who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, far away from the racial tensions and the civil rights movement. We walked up to the bus where Rosa Parks had sat, where she stood her ground and refused to move to the back of the bus simply because of the color of her skin. I haven't seen many museum exhibits that captured the energy of the situation quite like that one did. I thought of what happened in the movie theatre just months before and weighed that against everything these people had done, had achieved and sacrificed - how their determination seemed to mean nothing to the ladies who had decided that they weren't going to sit by the white girl. How was what they demonstrated any different from what had happened decades earlier when segregation was the way of the world?

Eight years later I found myself sitting in the middle of our WACAP Weekend, the adoption workshop that WACAP has pre-adoptive families attend. The social worker who was conducting the seminar asked the group of 20 or so hopeful parents if any of us had experienced what it's like to be a minority. We all glanced around the room at the collective group of "white bread" individuals, when I decided to share my experience, something I really hadn't done before outside of family and close friends. To look at me, this blonde-haired blue-eyed Caucasian, the other attendees probably wondered what in the heck I was going to say. Looking back perhaps I was placed at that movie, in that theatre, on that day, and at that time for a reason. Perhaps I needed to experience that myself so that when my children, niece or nephews find themselves in a situation where someone is judging them based on the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes and not on the content of their character, I can at least look them in the eye and agree with them that it hurts and that it doesn't make sense. I can share my experience so that they know they are not alone and that there is a place where we are all the minority.

I remember my sister telling me before we started our journey to Savannah that I may find myself in a position where people who had been my friend no longer would be simply because of the decision I'd made to build a trans-racial family, and to be prepared to let those friendships go. For the most part everyone I knew before we adopted Savannah was very supportive. The one exception was a friend I'd met about 10 years earlier, and for a short time I worked in her family's business here in town. During the time we were waiting for Savannah, these people who claimed to be Christians began acting like anything but. They questioned, in a very disapproving tone, why we were adopting from China and not adopting domestically. I responded with "Because my daughter is in China." Once again I was faced with a living example of hypocrisy - someone claiming to be a Christian and accepting, yet obviously weren't. A few months later I stopped working there and really haven't crossed paths with them since. I quickly learned a valuable lesson... if someone cannot accept my child and treat her or him with the respect and dignity they deserve, then there really is no point in pursuing a friendship. Yes, there is a point when you find out who your real friends, and in some cases, family, are.

By the same token, I have been given the chance to meet people I wouldn't have otherwise met, learn things I wouldn't have otherwise learned and found support from people I would never have thought possible.

Two years ago our local Chinese community found themselves at a cross-roads. We have a wonderful cultural group, the Northwest Chinese Cultural Association (NWCCA), that works in conjuction with the Mei Hua Chinese school to put on various events and concerts, that are open to the public, as a way of exposing the community to Chinese culture. The then president approached me during an event at the Children's Museum and explained the dilemma that the board was facing... people with ties to modern Mainland China were apparently taking issue with people whose families had escaped China during the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and found their way to other parts of Asia. This woman, who I'd become acquainted with a few years earlier had come up with a possible solution that could neutralize the issue - getting adoptive parents of Chinese children involved. I looked at Scott, then at the kids, who were having a grand time with their Year of the Rat crafts. I was being faced with the choice of throwing my hat in the ring and saying that I would get involved, or risking losing this great connection for my children. I wondered about how I was going to be accepted. Would people look at me and wonder how in the world this woman whose only connection to China are the two trips she made their to adopt her two children could possibly offer any "authority" in regards to Chinese culture? Ultimately I realized that it was far more important to me to be able to look my children in the eye and tell them that I did everything I could to maintain this connection to their birth culture. Two years ago we had our first meeting of our board, and thankfully I'd managed to get another adoptive mom to say she'd do it too. Only a handful of us showed up for our first meeting - enough to fill the basic officer positions. I certainly didn't feel qualified to act as president, and happily let that job go to a woman who is a professor at Western WA University. I didn't feel that it was appropriate for me to be treasurer as that is a position that requires a lot of trust and I was afraid people would not trust me simply because I wasn't Chinese. The secretary role was handed out as was the Events chair, again a role I didn't feel qualified to assume, afterall I was still learning about Chinese cultural events - how on earth could I create an event around something that I didn't know about? So, that left me with the VP role. Now, that I felt comfortable taking on. I mean, look at our Vice-Presidents... sure they're on the ticket, but aside from being a tie-breaker in the US Senate, what do they really do aside from stand behind the President? Famous last words.

It turns out that when the President needs to take a leave of absence for medical reasons, the VP steps in to cover for them, which is how last Spring I found myself as the Acting-President of the NWCCA. Before our president traveled to Beijing for medical treatments we met and she told me that she'd had a few members of the local Chinese community question why I was the one covering for her while she was gone. In support of me she looked at them and said 'Because she got involved to keep the Association going. What have you done?" It meant a lot to me to have her support, but the questioning of my involvment started chipping away at my confidence. I continued on with organizing our annual summer picnic and trying to get input from other board members, without success. One afternoon I met with the principal of the Mei Hua school to seek her advice on what to do. To my surprise, not only was the principal behind me, so was one of the other parents - the wife of Gen. Shih, a retired Taiwanese General who was also on the board with me. (Just as finding myself standing on Great Wall was something that I'd never quite entertained doing as a kid, meeting a General from Taiwan wasn't on my radar either!)

In a few weeks my official role as Vice-President of the NW Chinese Cultural Association will be over. Though my experience has had a couple bumps, the positives far outweigh the negatives. I have gotten to know people I may have never met, enabled my children to get to know other Chinese people in town (Savannah still can't believe that I know several of the Silk Road Dancers - the local Chinese dance group). More importantly I can tell my children that I put myself out there by taking on something that I knew nothing about and people I didn't know, because having this connection to their birth culture and local Chinese community is important to me.