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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #15 (April 10, 2007), page 7.

Silahkan, readers. It’s sometimes hard to let go of some things.

So if I may, allow me another week to work through this troublesome issue — transracial adoption. It’s hard. But it’s important. Sharp letters to AR’s editor, unhappy e-mails and voice mails to me make it so. All of them in response to Jonathan Friolo’s cartoon of Angelina Jolie’s "Baby Shopping" and my subsequent column, "About family."

It’s important because the issue of white folks adopting brown children brings up many other feelings. Mostly bad. Many caused by white folks. Strong words because these are strong feelings. However severe, these bad feelings have nothing to do with holding and feeding and loving babies, white, brown, or black.

Our abandoned children are nurtured and schooled, and for this we are grateful. Yet, for all this, brown folks still feel resentful. Or worse. So getting to the bottom of it is important.

Indeed, as I suggested earlier, I am proud of cartoonist Jonathan Friolo and columnist Maileen Hamto’s honesty in telling it like it is.

True is not always nice. Asians excel in nice.

Ultimately, this discussion and these young contributors’ honesty are important because a frightening fraction of our wobbly world is enraged for the same reasons behind that resentment, behind those unkind looks adoptive parents get while loving their pretty babies.

Two weeks ago I tried to account, not to apologize, for why brown folks frown when we see our happy little guys in the arms of white ladies. I feel a little silly saying it again, because it is hard saying so. But okay: our grandparents, our parents, and ourselves, have been hurt by Westerners. Strange men came over deep broad blue seas, into our neighborhood. They humiliated us. In our homes, in front of our mothers, wives, and daughters.

America gets mean when Mexicans come here to nail shingles. White workers glare at high-tech Indians edging them out on the job. Toyota’s success was so bad that Japan now builds Camrys here. Now imagine brown boys walking into a Beaverton family room, taking a TV, a daughter, lighting a fire.

No one will argue out loud that all that ugliness should disqualify good parents from loving neglected kids. Though plenty of people somehow feel it should. Better would be those folks forgiving what no one can forget. Though only a saint or two can actually manage that.

So this leaves us with only the hard parts. There’s no way to avoid an aggrieved peoples’ spite; there’s no way to inoculate against a parent’s instinctive urge to love without doubt, to protect without reservation his or her tender relationship with a child.

Parent Joseph Walder is that full of love in his recent letter to our editor. His protective instincts are exactly that true. Mr. Walder was critical of my column, indeed of me. His observations about my prejudices are also true. He kindly called me "ethnocentric." I appreciate that, but any elder auntie will tell him I have a kitchen drawer packed with prejudices. I horde them like a Kinabalu dragon. They define me. They are the beliefs received from Hindus and Muslims, they are our history with Javan and Japan, they are what we know of Yanks and Yiu Mien.

Indeed, as with all ethnic communities, it is this totality of our in-group experience that is the big fat "us." That’s what culture is.

So far so good. But then it goes bad.

In his letter, Mr. Walder relates a recent meal at a local Viet noodle shop. He went with his Chinese baby. While there, he perceived prejudice against his race. While there, he read The AR. He says: I wrote that race is not the reason he got a nasty look from his server. He says: I wrote that white folks don’t do familia, and that’s the reason his server wasn’t nice. He writes: "I’m trying to wrap my brain around this idea." He means I’ve got it wrong.

Again, this is hard — that incident at his café. I’m a dad too; I know.

In fact, there’s only one thing harder than some dope disparaging your familial integrity. And that’s having a history of entire nations machined to deprive your family of integrity. But this is not about boys comparing bruises out on the playground. And this is not even about race.

This is about familia — not "family" in the American sense. "Familia," as I take enormous effort to define, in our Old World sense. And we really do it, we see it, and live family, differently.

We part. Westerners and non-Westerners. Of course, it’s not true for all white folks and every brown boy from milk chocolate to Dove Bar dark. But rest assured there’s plenty of divide. Daily. Dangerously.

Everywhere people are angry. At us. At America.

My column tries to get at the cultural core of our parting. I am a lucky beneficiary of liberal American optimism, so my work is about understanding. More learning makes reconciliation more likely. More talk, more better.

Always our talk starts with urban Americans startling non-Westerners. Folks are shocked by national policies, but also by individual behavior. Many non-Western thinkers attribute this dissonance to differences in how we define selfhood.

Take Southeast Asians. Please.

I take as a fundamental premise that my identity depends on other rice-pickers placing me in their familial hierarchy. Luckily, a billion kitchen table aunties and coffee shop uncles are all working the same premise. Once in, I keep my place so long as I act dutifully. This bus runs on interdependency and dutifulness. Familia.

This kind of living is simply, obviously, different from the American cultural norm of an autonomous individual impressing his rights on his life. Lots of ownership. Individualism and rights rule. Not familia.

The point is: individual-rights-based cultures often crush the rest of us when they own the power to push their wants, to enforce their rights. Ergo, our rub with white folks. Power.

This is not an issue of race, as Mr. Walder writes. I dread his power, not his pigment. Imperial Europeans, arrogant Japanese, and aggressive Americans own the power to act all that out, on us.

In his note, Mr. Walder says that his relationship with his favorite Viet pho shop owner is different from the relationship between him and the young man or young woman waiting on his table. The first one is nice, the second not.

Analyzed in terms of relationships, rather than race, it’s still bad but it’s not so hard. Each relationship is a different power dynamic. The shop owner pays bills by selling fragrant noodles and good ambience, that grumpy server gets a paycheck from his or her noodle boss, not from Mr. W.

Mr. Walder concludes the server’s "dirty look" was a reaction to his "white face." That’s not right.

I suggest this: When that soup shop worker looks at Mr. Walder’s precious baby’s almond eyes, he or she sees familia. That server can, or my niece can, or I can, jump in and start big sistering or uncle-ing. We want to. It’s what we do. It’s what we are.

However, when Mr. Walder’s server looks at him, I’ll wager that waiter felt different. I’ll bet a hundred dollars he or she did not feel familia with that pretty child’s dad. I’m not talking about "family" like in the American sense, like the Oregon law makes straight folks, gays not, like power enables some people to make family or break family, here or in China.

And I’ll bet you another hundred bucks, Mr. Walder’s table help was suddenly awash in all that awful stuff I mentioned earlier. About fear, about despair, about anger, from our fathers, from our grandpas. Now inside her heart or his guts.

With all that simmering, I imagine that server was seeing in this Chinese baby, more loss. Loss of another precious family member. An affirmation of white folks’ power, an affirmation of our elders and ancestor’s sorrows.

That’s a lot.

That’s a lot to put on any innocent adopted baby boy or girl, now blessedly loved. But that’s about the size of it. And it does my bones no good having to put it this way. This is harsh. Indeed, I feel bad. I feel bad because Mr. Walder does. Because we’re both fathers. So permit me one more thought. A short one.

Adoptive parents, please, be grateful you have the power (education, money, nationality) to make your baby happy and healthy. Al’hamdulilaah. You have all that. Take our bad history along with your good fortune. Thank God for both. They are inseparable. Try not to worry about not having the power to make us approve.

There’s lots of adoptive parents out there graced with oceans of approval. From familia. Do like they do.