accessorizing with race?
I must preface this by say that I have fallen prey to the popular American pastime of celebrity watching. Yet another on the list of the things my 18 year old self would find unspeakably shameful. Yes, I suppose I am becoming the adult are always feared I would.... and isn't it fun? Actually, mostly I just read the copies of the celebrity mag's that are updated weekly, and immediately well-worn dogeared, at my gym.
Skimming the annals of celebrity gossip, I am somewhat up-to-date on snippets of the (quite dull) lives of celebrities such as Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, and other bony vixens with abnormally prominent teeth, lips or other body parts. Who knew what a petty, idle sport than I was missing? Gossiping shamelessly about people I don't know and have little admiration or interest in other than their faces and names being common currency in the celebrity-culture petri dish of the American entertainment elite.
So for the first time in my life, I actually pay attention to the headlines in the "entertainment" section, which led me to the following quote from an article about Brangelina's Brad & Angelina's upcoming plans to adopt again soon in which Angelina says:
"...it's gonna be the balance of what would be best for Mad and for Z right now. It's, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids."
which race would fit best??
Umm... well I've always found that the naturally docile temperament of East Asians complements well to a fiery spunk of those adorable Latinos.
Or are we talking color coordination? It's like putting together a good outfit, you can't just throw any colours or styles together, heavens no! We're talking careful planning and aesthetic discretion. In that case, maybe it's time to lift an indigenous baby from Australia... they are so beautiful! And that lucsious skin-colour, you don't find that anywhere else now do you?
But seriously, perhaps I'm being overly snarky and unfair... but I wonder what exactly she means... are we looking at assumptions of biological essentialism based on race (aka racial stereotyping, aka racism)? Are we looking at the confusion of race with culture, because really Angelina, I hate to break it to you, but all the kids are going to be socialized as Hollywood brats regardless of their "exotic" country of origin... with healthy dose of veiled racism and exoticism thrown in for good mix (hopefully not too much from you and Brad, but who knows).
slanderous wrote a brilliant and cheeky post a couple months, joking about starting a rumor that Angelina Jolie is a vampire who lives off the blood of little brown babies -- I think the entry was looking at how rumored realities/urban legends and be a location to analyze histories of violence, power imbalance. Lacking slanderous's super-star brain, I can't really explain it well here, but it was great. And I'm dying to hear other smarty-pants perform additional cultural/political critiques of transracial adoption phenomenon via the Jolie-Pitt sample ("finding a race that fits").
Transracial adoption is an issue and quite fascinated and, in part because I think it presents some parallel and contrasting experiences/issues that mixed race children/people, such as me, experience. But also because it's such a fascinating and problematic locus from which to examine the intersections of imperialism (imbalance of global power) and self-determination and the construction of choice (what countries, and which peoples within those countries have the power/resources to decide what happens to their children -- including those who are adopted out and those who stay); the politics of race intersecting on individual and macro levels (well-intentioned, mostly white benevolence aka "saving" the children, racial and cultural identity development for the adopted children, adoption policies in both the US (immigration laws, history of how the process has been regulated, tax breaks for adoption costs, etc.) and other countries (some of whom, India included I believe, have adopted laws making it more difficult for non-Indians to adopt*), and so much more.
That said, I must fess up that another reason for my fascination is that at an early age I thought that if(and that's a BIG IF) I ever did have children, I would certainly adopt... and then, at a slightly later age, I decided I would adopt a child from another country -- probably informed by some of the same cultural and racial narratives (aka: saving the children) that motivate many Americans to adopt internationally. As I developed more of a race and political consciousness, and read more about the politics of transnational/transracial adoption, I became much more uncertain.
I read stories of transnational and transracial adoptees growing up in households and communities without significant connection to the culture and people of their birth country, experiencing racism from their adopted-families, and a lot of the accompanying pain and anger I became even more uncertain. I wondered if maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I adopted child from India, where my father is from, thinking that I could at least offer the kid some access to Indian people and culture... but then I wondered, whom I kidding? My connections to (mainstream) Indian culture and communities are complicated, limited, and tenuous at best -- due both to being biracial (and not appearing convincingly S. Asian) and my largely, white-Protestant-middle-class-suburban-American upbringing by my mother and largely absent father. I must say, at this point I am rather disinclined, but not entirely dissuaded from the idea.
---
*For example, I saw the confluence of US & other countries policies on transnational adoption play out when a friend of mine and her husband (both Indian citizens w/ greencards, residing in the US for the past 5 years) thought they would try to adopt a child from India. Being Indian, they wouldn't have much problem getting the child from India, but lacking US citizenship, they'd be unable to bring the child here under US immigration law.
Skimming the annals of celebrity gossip, I am somewhat up-to-date on snippets of the (quite dull) lives of celebrities such as Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, and other bony vixens with abnormally prominent teeth, lips or other body parts. Who knew what a petty, idle sport than I was missing? Gossiping shamelessly about people I don't know and have little admiration or interest in other than their faces and names being common currency in the celebrity-culture petri dish of the American entertainment elite.
So for the first time in my life, I actually pay attention to the headlines in the "entertainment" section, which led me to the following quote from an article about Brangelina's Brad & Angelina's upcoming plans to adopt again soon in which Angelina says:
"...it's gonna be the balance of what would be best for Mad and for Z right now. It's, you know, another boy, another girl, which country, which race would fit best with the kids."
which race would fit best??
Umm... well I've always found that the naturally docile temperament of East Asians complements well to a fiery spunk of those adorable Latinos.
Or are we talking color coordination? It's like putting together a good outfit, you can't just throw any colours or styles together, heavens no! We're talking careful planning and aesthetic discretion. In that case, maybe it's time to lift an indigenous baby from Australia... they are so beautiful! And that lucsious skin-colour, you don't find that anywhere else now do you?
But seriously, perhaps I'm being overly snarky and unfair... but I wonder what exactly she means... are we looking at assumptions of biological essentialism based on race (aka racial stereotyping, aka racism)? Are we looking at the confusion of race with culture, because really Angelina, I hate to break it to you, but all the kids are going to be socialized as Hollywood brats regardless of their "exotic" country of origin... with healthy dose of veiled racism and exoticism thrown in for good mix (hopefully not too much from you and Brad, but who knows).
slanderous wrote a brilliant and cheeky post a couple months, joking about starting a rumor that Angelina Jolie is a vampire who lives off the blood of little brown babies -- I think the entry was looking at how rumored realities/urban legends and be a location to analyze histories of violence, power imbalance. Lacking slanderous's super-star brain, I can't really explain it well here, but it was great. And I'm dying to hear other smarty-pants perform additional cultural/political critiques of transracial adoption phenomenon via the Jolie-Pitt sample ("finding a race that fits").
Transracial adoption is an issue and quite fascinated and, in part because I think it presents some parallel and contrasting experiences/issues that mixed race children/people, such as me, experience. But also because it's such a fascinating and problematic locus from which to examine the intersections of imperialism (imbalance of global power) and self-determination and the construction of choice (what countries, and which peoples within those countries have the power/resources to decide what happens to their children -- including those who are adopted out and those who stay); the politics of race intersecting on individual and macro levels (well-intentioned, mostly white benevolence aka "saving" the children, racial and cultural identity development for the adopted children, adoption policies in both the US (immigration laws, history of how the process has been regulated, tax breaks for adoption costs, etc.) and other countries (some of whom, India included I believe, have adopted laws making it more difficult for non-Indians to adopt*), and so much more.
That said, I must fess up that another reason for my fascination is that at an early age I thought that if(and that's a BIG IF) I ever did have children, I would certainly adopt... and then, at a slightly later age, I decided I would adopt a child from another country -- probably informed by some of the same cultural and racial narratives (aka: saving the children) that motivate many Americans to adopt internationally. As I developed more of a race and political consciousness, and read more about the politics of transnational/transracial adoption, I became much more uncertain.
I read stories of transnational and transracial adoptees growing up in households and communities without significant connection to the culture and people of their birth country, experiencing racism from their adopted-families, and a lot of the accompanying pain and anger I became even more uncertain. I wondered if maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I adopted child from India, where my father is from, thinking that I could at least offer the kid some access to Indian people and culture... but then I wondered, whom I kidding? My connections to (mainstream) Indian culture and communities are complicated, limited, and tenuous at best -- due both to being biracial (and not appearing convincingly S. Asian) and my largely, white-Protestant-middle-class-suburban-American upbringing by my mother and largely absent father. I must say, at this point I am rather disinclined, but not entirely dissuaded from the idea.
---
*For example, I saw the confluence of US & other countries policies on transnational adoption play out when a friend of mine and her husband (both Indian citizens w/ greencards, residing in the US for the past 5 years) thought they would try to adopt a child from India. Being Indian, they wouldn't have much problem getting the child from India, but lacking US citizenship, they'd be unable to bring the child here under US immigration law.