You can see the four of them above the fold, their hands and faces starkly contrasting against the white background: two middle-aged adults, beaming broadly, their hands lovingly arranged around their two beautiful sons. The older child has his arms thrown backward around his father's neck in a three-year old's ubiquitous "tickle me" posture, while his younger brother desperately tries to arch himself forward out of the frame, a fourteen-month-old "tornado" momentarily restricted by his mother's solid grasp.
Oh, and the boys are black. Their parents are white.
This, I expect, is why the little boys are naked except for diapers, their little brown tummies highlighted against their white parents in their white shirts against a white bed. In case we might not notice if they were dressed, the Globe and Mail has thoughtfully stripped the children that their explicit blackness may be fully exposed.
Below the fold, I learn that "The United States exports newborns by the hundreds for international adoption each year. Canada is a preferred destination point..."
"Interesting," I think. "So now we import black children under NAFTA." I turn to page 7 anticipating a dose of comparison between the US and Canada, doubtless chock-full of gratuitous Canuck self-congratulation and insufficient analysis of the socio-cultural effects of adoption across national, racial, ethnic and class lines. 1300 words later, Jane Armstrong does not disappoint:
The United States is exporting newborns by the hundreds and Canada is a preferred destination.
Most of the infants are African American or biracial; their birth mothers want them to be raised outside the United States and believe Canada is a land of little racial strife.
Although there are no officials [sic] figures, an estimated 500 African-American babies are adopted abroad each year. In the past 20 years, about 300 have come to British Columbia, where blacks account for less than 0.7 per cent of the population.
Scandalized yet? Our neighbour to the South is "exporting" African-American babies to Canada "by the hundreds." (It sounds almost like they're being shipped out in UPS boxes, doesn't it?) Clearly, we dutifully self-righteous folk are supposed to react strongly in some way, perhaps with abhorrence and a rousing game of our cherished Canadian sport of America-bashing.
I assume that this must be so, because I can't imagine what else would possess a seasoned journalist like Jane Armstrong to choose to use the word "export" to describe the movement of human beings. I know that Armstrong must know that "export" means
- To send or transport abroad merchandise, especially for sale or trade.
I also know that Armstrong must know that using such a mercantile word to reference children who belong to a race of people that were explicitly defined as property until just over two hundred years ago would be an unbelievably cheap way to tug at a reader's heartstrings. It would also be belittling and, dare I say it, racist, especially when we have a perfectly valid way to describe the moment of human beings across national borders:
emigrate: To leave one country or region to settle in another.
(Quibblers, of course, could argue that babies can't emigrate by themselves, so the application of an intransitive verb would be inappropriate to describe the trans-border movement of the small, helpless, pooping machines that capture our hearts so dearly. Perhaps they'd be right, too. I still can't see how this could possibly mitigate Armstrong's use of "export", however.)
After determining through sheer, uncredited speculation that "hundreds" of American children are adopted by Canadians each year (why offer the source of the 500 Fed-Exed babes in arms annually shipped into Canada, really? It's not as if Globe readers might want to check up on that) Armstrong's sensational article continues, profiling the Alexander family of Langley, B.C. who were pictured on the front page. The parents describe the adoption process they went through to gain their sons through a private Georgia adoption agency, cumulating in the typical but nonetheless sweet recollection of parents seeing their child for the first time:
When the couple first laid eyes on Elias lying in a crib in a foster home near Atlanta, they both burst into tears. The three-month-old infant, who had been crying, suddenly stopped. “It felt like he knew who we were,” Ms. Alexander, 36, said, recalling her first minutes with her elder son.
Fair enough. Afterward, though, the surreal profiling of saintly white Canadians continues, the following paragraph making their role of saviour quite plain in our post Katrina world:
The Alexanders' rear porch backs onto a wooded marsh threaded with a creek and bicycle paths. In the distance, the snow-capped Coast Mountains gleam in the autumn sunlight. It's light years from the muggy heat and segregation of the Deep South where both boys were born.
In the rhetoric books, they call the act of placing two things close together in contrast to indicate difference "juxtaposition". In case it's not clear enough, the two things being juxtaposed here are British Columbia (a land of snow-topped mountains, a temperate climate and fresh air) and the Deep South (presumably a swath of humidity and burning crosses as far as the eye can see). Thank goodness the Alexander boys have been spared from mosquito country! How altruistic are these Canadians to bring these nonthreatening refugees into our land of deciduous trees!
But it isn't only mildew and frizzy hair that American babies are spared in their flight across international borders - it's racism:
Walter Gilbert, The Open Door's CEO, said Canada appeals to African-American mothers because the culture and language are similar, plus there is a belief that racism in not nearly as prevalent.
“Is the U.S. more racist?” Mr. Gilbert asked in a telephone interview. “We say yes.”
It's all relative, I suppose. If you're in the business of "exporting" children, you probably have a vested interest in believing that your major trading partner's a pretty fair guy. I mean, that's what we've got NAFTA for, right?
And so the Canada as a safe space for black people refrain sounds high, reverberating right to the tops of the Rockies as once again our national identity is defined by what we are not: American. And this makes us feel good about ourselves:
Mr. Gilbert said he recently asked a black 13-year-old whose adoption to British Columbia was arranged by The Open Door to describe his experiences with racism. The boy said he had been taunted and teased at school about five or six times in his life.
“If that child had grown up here, in southeastern United States, he would have been called the ‘n' word every day of his life,” Mr. Gilbert said. “In Canada, it appears like it is just a matter of incidental racism, whereas here, it's a daily occurrence.”
Hmm. Since when is calling somebody "the 'n' word" EVER "just a matter of incidental racism", unconnected to issues of entitlement, oppression or society's complicit approval? Gilbert seems to be saying that explicit racism is bearable, so long as it only happens fewer times in grade school as one has fingers. I don't know any Canadian who would be proud of our country after hearing a thirteen-year-old claim to "only" recall being taunted about his skin colour "five or six" times. Call me picky, but that doesn't scream inclusivity or understanding to me, more like an insidious underpinning of racism which only occasionally boils up to the surface in a manner recognizable by a child. Gilbert's refusal to take this boy's word at anything other than face value demonstrates his willful ignorance of Canada's systemic racism in deferral to our aptly-named Great White North.
This deliberate disregard for the all-too-easily-ignored systemic racism of Canada is continued by Armstrong, who writes as if it's a dismissible phenomenon:
The Alexanders know that racism exists in Canada, although they believe that in a province like British Columbia their children are viewed more as exotic curiosities. While the Lower Mainland is as diverse as any other Canadian urban centre, with large Asian and Indo-Canadian populations, blacks are few and far between on the streets of Vancouver.
Armstrong's use of the word "although" here begs her audience to assume that evidence will follow which mitigates the undeniable claim that "racism exists in Canada." But we don't actually get that evidence at all - what we are left with instead is an unfinished comparison that begins "their children are viewed more as exotic curiosities." But what's missing is the "than ____" statement. The Alexander children are viewed more as "exotic curiosities" than what ? Black people? "Niggers"? Domestic curiosities? What exactly is being excused by the claim that people view the Alexander children as "exotic curiosities?"
Maybe we should look at the term "exotic," which means
From another part of the world; foreign.
Well, the Alexander boys were foreign, being born Americans, so I suppose that's technically accurate. But what seems to be significant is that the boys are "viewed" foreign by virtue of their skin colour alone. After all, only 0.7% of the B.C. population looks like them - they don't "match" this part of the world, and are foreign because they look like they must come from another part.
And so the article might be expected now to discuss the unique aspects of parenting children of a different race, listing the never-ending series of questioned assumptions and self-doubt and confronted biases and more self-doubt and accusations by strangers and reflections on the purpose of parenting and the nature of adoption and more self-doubt and confronting nosy people in supermarkets and a great deal of research. Maybe we readers might be offered some of the poignant and heartwarming insights of people such as Shannon and Dawn (both linked in my sidebar) who are white mothers raising black daughters while struggling with issues of race in America.
As white parents, they can't live in their children's shoes or identify with the experiences the boys will encounter as they grow up in a predominantly white culture. But the couple have taken pains to expose the youngsters to other black children and adults. Once a month, they take their kids to a nearby playgroup for black children.
Or maybe not. Maybe instead we'll get a encapsulating idea of "blackness" as a virus that children can be "exposed" to (yet another excellent word choice by Armstrong, who I'll tactfully assume had forgotten that she could also use that obscure verb, "experience", which means "the apprehension of an object, thought, or emotion through the senses or mind" without the belittling connotations of "expose").
Let's be plain: we do not live in a "predominantly white culture," we live in a default white culture, where in the absence of another marker, whiteness is the assumed norm. The Alexander boys are "exotic curiosities" precisely because their black skin is so unequivocally NOTwhite that they stand out in their community as sharply as they do in their photo on the front page. The self-conscious and artificial playgroup is likewise testament to the fact that black children in BC are NOTwhite, and all the see-saws and sandboxes in the world are not going to make it any easier on the children who are being stared at.
But it isn't just the practical failings of the monthly play group that are troubling. What is truly disturbing is the way that all meaningful difference is condensed into the rubric of NOTwhite-ness:
The couple once lived in Senegal and have African friends. “We aren't black and we can't pretend to be or pretend it doesn't matter,” Ms. Alexander said. “We can only hope they won't feel like strangers to this heritage when they are older.”
And what heritage would that be exactly? Black heritage? American heritage? Poverty heritage? Armstrong's implicit assumption here is that the only difference that truly matters in one of skin tone, the divisions between various cultures surmountable by the inclusiveness offered by the notion of universal "black culture". One cannot fathom even for a moment this sort of fallacy committed about "white culture". Imagine a national newspaper claiming that the lives of Greek citizens and Irish citizens are essentially similar, both sharing a level of melatonin that surpasses any distinctions of language, religion or behaviour!
And yet, Armstrong's article supposes exactly this, her tacit approval of the black playgroup stolidly refuting any notions of diversity within a black community. The only identified black individual in the article is a man whose race identifier forces him into a position of role model to children whose cultural and economic heritage he doesn't share:
When Elias and Keiran get older, they might turn to someone like Troy Peart for advice on how to live as a black man in a white-dominated culture.
Mr. Peart, 33, is one of a handful of black mentors who gather once a month at a community centre in the Vancouver area to play with black kids. The financial adviser with the Bank of Montreal was born in Sudbury and raised in Scarborough, Ont. His parents came from Jamaica.
Mr. Peart understands the isolation of being black on Canada's West Coast. He helped start the playgroup to be a role model to black youngsters, many of whom don't know any black adults.
And Mr. Peart, it seems, is desperately needed. Indeed, it is incredibly problematic when the black child asks his white father when he too, is going to "turn white," or when another child believes that black people only work at fast-food restaurants. Mr Peart's role as a surrogate black man is to divest these kids of those impressions, his mere presence as a professional adult testifying to the false and limiting nature of stereotypes. But Armstrong fails to examine the questions begged by the presence of this playgroup as well as the abstract "love is all you need" parenting that could allow a child to conclude that his skin colour will change to look like his father's as he grows into adulthood. What kind of parenting strategy can fail to notice that the only place a child sees adults who look like him is at McDonald's?
And this is where the "love is all you need" article falls in tatters - parenting is not just a matter of love, but a matter of judgment, practicality and a great deal of action. Part of being a parent is also anticipating and shaping children's perceptions of the world, giving them the strength and independence to view themselves as capable and worthy beings. It is not, contrary to what the commentators on the online Globe article seem to believe, in "selflessly" giving oneself over needy little beasties who look charming in booties, but in recognising that parenting is also an inherently selfish act that gives adults a great deal of pleasure.
The Alexanders, it seems, are the only ones quoted in the article that get this:
The Alexanders don't want to be viewed as a middle-class couple flying in to “rescue” two poor black boys. If anything, the reverse is true, Ms. Alexander said.
“They have blessed our lives beyond measure already. We feel privileged to have the honour of raising and sharing their lives with their birth parents.”
And so Armstrong's article ends with the honest gratitude of adoptive parents to the birth families who gave them the children they adore.
But the story of Elias and Keiran Alexander is only beginning. As babies, it is easy for them now to be mere "exotic curiosities" in Langley, B.C., cherubic pudgy darlings fit to grace the front cover of the Globe and Mail. Their blackness is sweetly "exotic" to those who see them, a feature of their beings that is pieced out like candy in a monthly playgroup. But when they are fourteen and sixteen years old, Elias and Keiran will no longer be mere "curiosities" in a white world - they will become "exotic threats". As the boys grow into adults, the patronizing language used to describe them here will become indefensible - they will no longer be "exports" from the United States, but independent agents capable of independent action. And their NOTwhiteness will make them suspect. We know that all the playgroup in the world will not have prepared them adequately for the real Canada of the Somalia Regiment and beating of Jama Jama and "None is too many," and yet our oldest national paper likes to pretend that to overcome these crimes, all you need is love.
Because, you know, we're not as bad as those prejudiced Americans. Just ask any thirteen-year-old boy.
I saw that on the newsstands this weekend and suspected you might take it on.
Well done.
And parenting is never self-less...nor should it be. Fucks up the kids when their parents live only for their needs and not for some of their own.
I hate that "oh you're so selfless for adopting 'foreign' babies rhetoric". Bleh.
Posted by: Steph | October 04, 2005 at 14:45
Thanks, that was a great analysis of a crap article.
Reading it really complicated our hopes to move to Vancouver, let me tell you.
Posted by: shannon | October 10, 2005 at 19:06