Thinking Blogger

A NEW FLOWER BLOOMS was kind enough to give me a "THINKING BLOGGER AWARD". Besides the right to show off the graphic, the best benefit is the opportunity to nominate five other deserving bloggers.

So, here's my list:

BRONZE TRINITY: BronzeTrinity is an African-Canadian ray of sunlight. She attacks controversial issues with vigor, with innovation and with a true positive spirit. With a sense of vision, she genuinely believes in an empowered, informed grassroots movement for all kinds of social change. Most importantly, her positivity is infectious -- she'll get you to believe, too.

Bronzetrinity maintains the Afrospear Online Paper.

AfroSpear: A Think Tank For People of African Descent.

They describe what they're about better than I could: The origins of “AfroSpear” started from a discussion a group... [I]t developed into an idea to create a diasporic-wide think tank type blog.

We don’t always agree, but what we have in common is our love for our community and a commitment to the progress of those of African descent, both near and far. We are made up from a variety of voices with a variety of perspectives. Lubangakene, Sylvia and Field Negro reside in the United States. Asabagna is of Caribbean heritage residing in Canada. Aulelia is a Tanzanian woman living in France.

Adjunct to this blog is the "Afrospear Nation", the widest blogroll of black bloggers I've come across. Surf lots, but remember to bring your manners.

African American Political Pundit describes himself as, "African American Political Pundit is a former Democrat, turned Republican, now an Independent; who is politically biased, pretending to be neutral." A fiercely original thinker, his blog is the kind of intellectually honest blog that can be provocative for white readers... but then, he isn't blogging for white readers. Also, as most of the Afrospear Nation is blatantly leftist, for the Elephants in the crowd, you can find some conservative black bloggers on his blogroll.

Jack and Jill Politics, mentioned here before, is an incisive, left-leaning political blog from a self-described "Black Bourgeoisie perspective". What I like is the intellectual honesty and the fact that the "Black" perspective trumps the political ideology (a recent post about Edwards "code talking" is a solid example of this.

thefreeslave is one of the more challenging blogs on this list for a white audience, but, much like birth mom or adult adoptee blogs for adoptive parents, a blog like this that gives so much deep thought to racism, to me, is crucial. thefreeslave sees White European culture as a hypocritical, imperialistic society, and those values define white action. This is not the starting point of most white people on America... the "land of the free" and all that. If you've never framed the racism question in that way, thefreeslave will provoke thought and introspection.

So, there's my list. There are a host of other equally valuable black bloggers, representing a range of black thought. In general, I feel it's VITALLY important to understand issues within the black community. I have approached commenting with a tremendous amount of humility, thankful for their perspective and understanding that it's not any of their jobs to educate me, but my job to educate myself.

The N Word

Pop quiz! Who said...

To be plain, I wish to get quit of Negroes...

I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in endowments both of body and mind.

I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race...

Answers?

George Washington (in a 1778 letter to his plantation manger)
Thomas Jefferson (Notes on the State of Virginia, 1785)
and
Abraham Lincoln (1858)!!

These bon mots and more are revealed in Jabari Asim's new(ish) book, THE N WORD: WHO CAN SAY IT, WHO SHOULDN'T AND WHY. What Asim (syndicated columnist and deputy editor of the WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD) has accomplished in this slender, powerful book, is a concise history of African-Americans... as told BY whites TO other whites.

Through the lens of the "N" word, from first recorded usage through today, Asim makes the persuasive case that whites could not deal with the dichotomy of being good, God-fearing men of noble purpose AND slave owners. Instead of abolishing slavery at the birth of the nation, our glorious founding fathers created a myth around those they had brutally imported from Africa to MORALLY justify the Africans' enslavement. To do this, they created the "N-----", and bent reality to fit their story. It helped the whites sleep at night AND get their cotton picked. Africans were not the same race as whites. They were animalistic in their joys, passions and fears. Because their pleasure was only base sexual gratification and their pain was "transitory", there was no moral imperative to keep families intact, honor their history, allow them to keep their names or grant dignity to them in any way. Because they were "fearful" of freedom, and too stupid to be of use, slavery was, in fact, a COMPASSIONATE alternative to freedom.

Because they were not human, it didn't matter if white men slept with black woman, but it was an affront for any lust-crazed Negro to sleep with a white woman.

Because they were simpleminded, they loved to dance and sing merrily while working 18 hour days.

But, because they were animalistic, they could turn mean and evil and needed to be put down.

W.E.B. Du Bois cleverly called this "racial folklore", and insisted that it's presence made the "color line", as he called it, transcend simple economic exploitation. For example, while other ethnic minorities have been or are being exploited for their labor, it is unique to the black experience to have an identity manufactured by the dominant white society and then brutally and systemically imposed -- even imprinted -- onto them, the "...belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid, and called it a Negro -- a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations."

In the subsequent pages, Asim traces the implementation of this "racial folklore" through American history, proving his point with devastating detail. Almost like a prosecutor, even if you have known all the facts, seeing them all pulled together in such a cogent way makes it clear to ANYONE that whites have tried to rewrite the reality of black America with the merciless, pernicious efficiency of Orwellian scope. "2+2=5". Winston Smith needed not just repeat it, but BELIEVE it. Internalize it.

Slaves not willing to work in subhuman conditions? They're lazy!
Slaves pretending to like whitefolk to get by? They're jolly darkies!
Slaves try to run away because they don't like being slaves? They're aggressive, violent, predatory animals out to rape white women and kill white men!

Again, a quote by W.E.B. Du Bois sums it up perfectly. "Everything Negroes did was wrong. If they fought for freedom, they were beasts; if they did not fight, they were born slaves. If they cowered on the plantation, they loved slavery; if they ran away, they were loafers. If they sang, they were silly, if they scowled, they were impudent... And they were funny, funny -- ridiculous baboons, aping men!"

Asim walks us through this twisted history, showing how this "folklore" became fact, through pseudo-science (initiated by Jefferson, himself!), white mistrelry, "plantation" literature, up through Michael Richards' onstage tirade.

What is so pernicious about the "n-----ization" of America is the way it self-perpetuates, creating false history, false "experts" and false "eyewitnesses", thus creating an inauthentic basis for the black experience. Asim deals with this explicitly in a chapter about the painful legacy of UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. The book (which I have never read), is, in fact, a Christ allegory, written by an ardent, Christian abolitionist. How, then, did it come to be synonymous, in the contemporary lexicon, with "sellout"? Asim explains that Harriet Beecher Stowe, having little first-hand experience with black people, used many of the racist conventions of (white-authored) "plantation literature", in their portrayal of black speech and attitudes. With a foundation of inauthentic "research", even the sympathetic portrayal of blacks in the novel served to perpetuate negative and harmful stereotypes.

Adding insult to injury, the rights to dramatize the book fell away from Stowe's control, allowing the masses to see play versions of the book, in which the character of Tom was altered from a robust young man to a dodering, simpering old man, sometimes nominally in keeping with Stowe's rhetorical point, but often, perverted to serve explicitly racist motives.

The racist stereotypes are even internalized by blacks. After generations of blacks being forcably corralled into a small sphere of possibility, after generations being told that they are base and less than human, or, certainly, less than whites, many blacks begin to live out the very grotesque "fables" of black life, as concocted by whites. From this, stems the smiling, dancing, "coon", a role still required of many African Americans on sit-coms and lame comedies, and the "bad N-----", the provocative, raping, stealing, killing machine that eventually became the "thug" or "gangsta", celebrated in film, in rap music and on the streets of America.

The most horrendous problem is the circle of unbroken white power, modern white politicians and authority figures using the self-comforting lies of their ancestors about the nature of the black race to justify the curtailment of blacks' rights. By using this "folklore" to decide that "urban blight" is a foregone conclusion, based on the nature of the black community, contemporary politicians are able to perpetuate their ancestors' racist policies, all while avoiding admitting that racist hiring practices, racist college admission policies, failing public schools and difficulty accessing financial services are NOT the result of failures within the black community, but the result of centuries-old racist, self-serving beliefs. Believing in these "truths" also allows contemporary whites to view any attempt to correct historical injustices to be "reverse" racism.

In the concluding chapters, Asim describes a black community caught between a desire to "own" the "n" word and those who wish to bury the "n" word, along with all of attendant white lies about the limits of black genius. Asim points out how, by perpetuating the use of the word, blacks may be reinforcing this "folklore" of black inferiority... to young blacks and, worse, to a new generation of whites, such as Quentin Tarantino, all of whom feel the liberty to play in the "n-----" sandbox". Using examples such as "Archie Bunker" and Dave Chappelle, he points out the limit of even intentional satire -- that those most in need of understanding the joke may be those most likely to dangerously misinterpret it. (In fact, on THE ACTOR'S STUDIO, Chappelle, himself, admitted that seeing too many white kids use his show as permission to use the "n" word was part of the reason he so publicly pulled the plug on production. This isn't mentioned in the book, but lends tremendous credibility to Asim's point.)

Asim feels that artists and historians should have permission to work within the poisonous world the "n" word created, but that for all others, the use and it's legacy should be ended, in favor of a more uplifting vision for black (and white) America, saying:

When Lemuel Haynes composed LIBERTY FURTHER EXTENDED in 1776, he wrote: 'I think it not hyperbolical to affirm, that even an African, has Equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen.' He made no mention of "n-----s." When David Walker published his remarkable APPEAL in 1829, he addressed it to 'my dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens.' He did not mention "n-----s." When W.E.B. Du Bois published his landmark collection of essays in 1903, he called it THE SOUL OF BLACK FOLK -- not "n-----s." When Marcus Garvey formed his organization in 1916, he called it the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He made no mention of "n-----s." In his speech at the March on Washington in 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "America has given the Negro people a bad check"; he did not say America has given "n-----s" a bad check. A year later, when Malcolm X began his "Ballot or the Bullet" speech with a greeting to "Brothers and Sisters and Friends", not "n-----s" and friends. In her 1971 lecture at Tougaloo College, Fannie Lou Hamer urged, "Stand up, black men, this nation needs you." She did not say "Stand up, n-----s."

"Africans." "Negroes." "Black men." "Brothers." "Sisters." "Fellow Citizens." Each falls off the tongue with ease. None is hard to pronounce.

I for one can still visualize the "n-----," and perhaps because I'm a man, I usually see him as a man, odious and shiftless, violent and stupid, contemptuous of black women and obsessed with white ones -- a self-hating, devilish phantom whose footsteps can still be heard as we tread through the tentative early years of the twenty-first century... As long as we (meaning African-Americans) embrace the derogatory language that has long accompanies and abetted our systemic dehumanization, we shackle ourselves to those corrupt white delusions -- and their attendant false story of our struggle in the United States. Throwing off those shackles would at least free us to stake acclaim to an independent imagination.... I dream of a world where "n-----" no longer roams, confined instead to the fetid white fantasy land where he was born.

THE N WORD is ESSENTIAL to any parent adopting transracially. It provides the Rosetta Stone for the iconography of African-Americans in the mainstream (white) culture. Better than any other book I've read, explains WHY racism exists and HOW racism came to take the form it did. Are there better histories of African-Americans? Undoubtedly. Better books about the effects of racism? Sure. But no other book I've found articulates the psychosis of racism and it's origins as completely and powerfully as this one. This book explains, for example, that weird opinions about blacks my grandmother held actually date back to Jefferson, directly.

Through this book, a white parent is empowered to deconstruct contemporary examples of the "n-----ization" of black culture and politics -- by white and blacks (or, more specifically, by blacks serving the vision of -- and financially renumerated by -- whites). When a white college frat dons blackface, pull this book off the shelf and explain the history of minstrelry. When blacks are viewed as oversexualized -- either as predatory men or eager, available women, this book will be invaluable in explaining the root causes of that portrayal. Conversely, when blacks are the sexless facilitators of white nobility, allowing the white hero to save the day and get the girl, that, too can be explained through the prism conveyed in this book.

One last use for this book I wish to convey. This book could even lift the veil from the eyes of white racists, explaining that they have bought into a wholly fictional worldview. This is a personal issue for many, as I know a handful of you have family members who disapprove of your adoption. This book may help them understand their own unexamined racism and, hopefully, see their grandchild (for example) as the possessor of no less genius than any white grandchild.

NYT article about adoption from Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, Open Doors for Foreign Adoptions

By JANE GROSS and WILL CONNORS
Published: June 4, 2007

ST. PAUL — Ethiopia was not on Mark and Vera Westrum-Ostrom’s list when they first visited Children’s Home Society & Family Services here to explore an international adoption.

From Ethiopia to Minnesota Ukraine was first, because of their family heritage, until the couple discovered that the adoption system there was chaotic, with inaccurate information about orphans’ health and availability.

Vietnam was second, after they saw videos of well-run orphanages. But the wait would be at least a year and a half.

Then they learned about Ethiopia’s model centers for orphans, run by American agencies, with an efficient adoption system that made it possible for them to file paperwork on Labor Day and claim 2-year-old Tariku, a boy with almond eyes and a halo of ringlets, at Christmas.

From Addis Ababa, the capital city, they traveled to the countryside to meet the boy’s birth mother, an opportunity rare in international adoption. And at roughly $20,000, the process was affordable compared with other foreign adoptions, and free of the bribes that are common in some countries.

It is no wonder, given these advantages, that Ethiopia, a country more often associated by Americans with drought, famine and conflict, has become a hot spot for international adoption. Even before the actress Angelina Jolie put adoption in Ethiopia on the cover of People magazine in 2005, the number of adoptions there by Americans was growing. The total is still small — 732 children in 2006, out of a total of 20,632 foreign adoptions, but it is a steep increase, up from 82 children adopted in 1997.

Ethiopia now ranks 5th among countries for adoption by Americans, up from 16th in 2000. In the same period, the number of American agencies licensed to operate there has grown from one to 22.

The increasing interest in Ethiopia comes at a time when the leading countries for international adoption, China, Guatemala and Russia are, respectively, tightening eligibility requirements, under scrutiny for adoption corruption and closing borders to American agencies.

Ethiopia’s sudden popularity also comes with risks, say government officials there and in America.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to handle it,” said Haddush Halefom, an official at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, which oversees adoption. “We don’t have the capacity to handle all these new agencies, and we have to monitor the quality, not just the quantity.”

Capping the number of agencies is one solution. And that is what some international adoption officials in the United States are now urging the Ethiopian government to do.

Of concern is the ability of agencies to handle the rising demand, which may have contributed to a recent mix-up involving two families sent home with the wrong children by Christian World Adoption, an established agency, although relatively new to Ethiopia. That case prompted inquiries by the State Department and the nonprofit Joint Council on International Children’s Services in Virginia, a child welfare and advocacy organization, and the adoption agency itself, said Thomas DiFilipo, president of the joint council.

Officials at Christian World Adoption did not reply to e-mail messages or telephone calls. But Mr. DiFilipo said the agency was reviewing its procedures and has hired immigration lawyers to resolve the mix-up.

The consensus, Mr. DiFilipo said, is that the mix-up was “an honest mistake.” But, he added, “This could be the byproduct of a staff handling 35 placements when they’re used to handling 20.”

Children’s Home Society & Family Services, founded in 1889, began working in Ethiopia in 2004. The agency completed about 300 adoptions in its first three years in Ethiopia, and expects to complete that many in 2007 alone. Along with Wide Horizons For Children in Waltham, Mass., the society is credited with helping Ethiopia create a model for international adoption.

Ethiopia, with a population of 76 million, has an estimated 5 million children who have lost one or both parents, according to aid organizations. Many African nations have outlawed or impeded the adoption of their children by foreigners. Ethiopia has welcomed American and European families who are willing to provide homes for children who have lost both parents to AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis or starvation, or who come from families too destitute to feed and clothe them. (The adoption process includes routine screening for HIV infection.)

Two elements distinguish Ethiopia’s adoption system, according to dozens of experts. One is the existence of transitional homes for orphans, in the countryside and in the capital, with services and staffing that are rare in the developing world — paid for by American agencies.

Not long ago, Sandra Iverson, a nurse practitioner from the University of Minnesota’s international adoption health clinic, the first of its kind in the United States, was invited to visit the Children’s Home Society’s Ethiopian centers.

She arrived with a neonatal otoscope, to diagnose ear infections; the Red Book, the bible of pediatrics; and scarce antibiotics. She left confident that Ethiopia’s orphans enjoyed unusual care.

“You don’t hear crying babies,” Ms. Iverson said. “They are picked up immediately.”

The other signature of the Ethiopian system is that adopting families are encouraged to meet birth families and visit the villages where the children were raised, a cutting-edge practice in adoptions. Some agencies provide DVDs or photographs that document the children’s past.

Russ and Ann Couwenhoven, in Ham Lake, Minn., recently showed one such video to 6-year-old Tariku, one of three children they have adopted from Ethiopia. The boy seemed proud of the beautifully painted house he had lived in, they said, and the uncle who had sheltered him for as long as he could.

Linda Zwicky brought 2-year-old Amale home five days before the Memorial Day weekend, with a letter from the child’s grandmother that described holding the motherless infant at her breast even though she had no milk. Sometimes such vividness is too much. Melanie Danke and her husband, of Minneapolis, adopted 6-year-old twins and a 3-year-old, all siblings. One of the twins “would work herself up until she was inconsolable” looking at photos of the aunt and grandmother who raised her, Ms. Danke said. So she has tucked the photos away for now.

David Pilgrim, vice president of adoption services at the Children’s Home Society, said the agency spends $2 million a year on its Ethiopian facilities.

At the main transitional home, on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, a staff of 170 care for about 120 children, ensuring that the children have consistent contact with adults, which experts say mitigates the most damaging psychological effects of institutionalization.

During a reporter’s recent visit, the two terra-cotta buildings where the children live, usually for no more than a few months, were spotless, with staff members scurrying to pick up toys and food spills as they hit the floor.

The transitional home has a primary school, open also to local students, where the children begin learning English. There is a medical clinic with two full-time doctors and 10 nurses. Down the road is a guest house for adoptive parents, who also can stay in a sleek hotel.

The children also enjoy the services of a “laugh therapist,” Belachu Girma.

“These kids come here and are very depressed at first, all with their heads down and not talking,” Mr. Girma said. “I come in and try to help them relax.”

There was laughter also at the nearby guest house, more of the nervous kind, as American parents waited to take their children back to St. Paul from the Horn of Africa.

Araminta and Jason Montague, from Atlanta, who picked up 17-month-old Natan last week, compared their experience in Ethiopia to an earlier adoption of a girl from China (where Americans adopted 6,493 children in 2006).

“Our daughter was in an orphanage with about 300 children and she was very dehydrated,” Ms. Montague said. “We were never told her origins. Her sheet just said ‘Status: Abandoned.’ ”

Some parents anguished, as did Karla Suomala of Decorah, Iowa, when she arrived in Addis Ababa to adopt 5-year-old Dawit and his 21-month-old sister Meheret.

“It’s hard to know what the right thing is to do,” Ms. Suomala said. “Should we just give all the money we’re spending on this to the children’s mother?” Ms. Suomala and her husband, David Vasquez, had already spent time with her.

“It was obvious the birth mother loved her children,” Mr. Vasquez said. “She said to us, ‘Thank you for sharing my burden.’ ”

Alessandro Conticini, the head of child protection at Unicef Ethiopia, is one of many who believe that international adoption is a good thing but must be “part of a larger strategy” that focuses on keeping children in their families or communities, with the help of humanitarian organizations.

Indeed, the Ethiopian government has taken the unusual step of requiring foreign agencies to provide social services and document the results. As a result, agencies like Children’s Home Society and Wide Horizons have built schools and medical facilities — including one for HIV-infected children.

But Mr. Conticini, of Unicef, worries about the mushrooming number of private adoption companies that “are not properly regulated by the government” because two different ministries are involved and working at cross purposes.

At the State Department, visa applications for children adopted from Ethiopia are getting extra attention, said Catherine M. Barry, deputy assistant secretary for overseas citizens services. “We will very quickly see if patterns are emerging,” she said, “and we will intervene in a timely fashion with anyone doing less than quality work.”

While the governments collaborate to protect a delicate adoption system from the perils of growth, adoptive families arrive each week in Addis Ababa to ease their children into new lives.

Last week, these included Mr. Vasquez and Ms. Suomala. While she had no trouble escorting Meheret from the orphanage, Dawit refused to budge, so Mr. Vasquez carried him toward the gate.

There, the child grabbed the bars and would not let go. Mr. Vasquez considered prying his hands loose and thought better of it. Instead he told Dawit that it was O.K. to cry.


Jane Gross reported from St. Paul, and Will Connors from Addis Ababa.