Let’s start with the obvious. I am a white woman. My husband is a white man. Together, we are parents to a gorgeous, witty, creative, brilliant, strong-willed, athletic, Korean-American boy. (We’re not biased–all of those adjectives are simply fact.)
Recently, I wrote about a problematic and in my mind racist assignment that passed through my son’s school. I wrote about how the school responded, in a way that was, in our minds, thoughtful and honest, and reinforced our faith in the institution he attends.
There was, however, something that still bothers me and I can’t seem to let it go.
When we received the initial assignment, my husband and I were shocked, and didn’t quite know what to do. Our first response, after talking to each other, was to ask our Facebook friends what they thought. And people had things to say. Many things to say.
It was an important discussion, one that I found clarifying for me in terms of helping me to better articulate why the assignment was troubling for me. The discussion assisted me in crafting my response and enabled me to hear from the voices of others who had faced similar situations.
Thrilled as I was that my community responded, I was troubled to receive the clear message from someone who told me it wasn’t “good for the school” to have this discussion posted on Facebook.
My response, after my initial anger wore off, was that my son’s school community does not necessary reflect our larger community.
To help this person understand, I explained that I needed to reach out to other families like mine and to people of color who might have faced similar situations. I needed perspective, and didn’t know if, in fact, my husband I were over-reacting and needed a reality check. I needed to “talk” to those I know and respect and hear what opinions others had.
This was not something that was possible in the smaller community of my son’s school. Yes, it’s fairly diverse, but not enough for the kind of feedback I was looking for. Thus, I went to Facebook. And yes, it helped. (Not to mention that my Facebook wall is NOT public and went only to my selected group of friends.)
The entire incident has made me think about the larger significance of social media and networking and how it’s part of an evolutionary process for families like mine.
10 years ago, my husband and I took our then toddler to a Korean Culture Camp run by the Korean Student Association at one of the many colleges in our area. In one break-out session for parents, a woman talked about being adopted by white parents and growing up as the only Asian-American in her small town in Kentucky, the younger sister of 4 brothers who were biologically related to her parents. She had a lot to say, and we had a lot to learn. Some of it was hard to hear, because she was understandably angry about the lack of diversity in her early life, but the other parents and I listened intently. At that time, it was still hard to find the voices of many members of the adoption community as yes, 10 years ago, the internet was still in its infancy. And this was valuable for us to understand and hear. We needed to hear the words of people who had gone before our son, and to learn what had worked for them in their early lives, and what clearly had not.
Now, 10 years later, I think about that young woman sometimes. I cannot help but wonder how her growing-up experience might have been different if she had been able to reach out to the larger communities of adult adoptees, multiracial families, Korean student associations, and the many other online outlets that allow us to hear those voices more regularly now. That’s not to say that it would have been easier to grow up in that small Kentucky town, but perhaps she would have felt heard in a different way if an online community had been available to her.
On Mother’s Day, a dear friend of mine wrote eloquently about his own white mother, a woman who married a Korean man in the 1960s and then, raised three Korean-American children, in Maine–certainly no bastion of diversity at that time. Who knows how she might have benefited from being able to talk with those in similar circumstances all those years ago.
The bottom line is that when there are things associated with my son’s school, or with our life as a family that require processing in my larger community, I WILL continue to write about them on Facebook, to ask for advice from the community I have chosen to friend. I will also write about the positive things, the things like the bird walk my son went on with a local naturalist and the amazing experience he had rescuing a baby bird who had fallen from its nest. It is about sharing, and that mean all kinds of sharing, both the positive and more problematic.
Facebook, or whatever social networking forum we choose to us, matters to so many of us. It matters to my friends who are raising children on the autism spectrum, and to my friends who are same-sex couples raising kids. It matters to people who are seeking communities of those who share their interests, problems, challenges, or whatever it is that inspires people to seek out others.
And Facebook, or whatever social networking platform he chooses to use when he is older, may matter to my son who will probably have things to discuss that my husband and I cannot even begin to anticipate these days. Again, we are white parents raising an ethnically Asian child, and there are things we, despite our best efforts and most heartfelt intentions, will never be able to understand. I feel thankful that he will have a means of accessing discussion, advice, and community regardless of where he is geographically. (He is also being raised as a critical thinker who, hopefully, will remember not to believe everything he reads.)
And if there are people who take issue with me or my son needing the advice, solace, laughter, cheering section, or assistance of my online community, that’s too damn bad.
