REFLECTING ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLACK AND INVISIBLE

Social media is full of personal stories on the topic of identity when it comes to transracial adoption. Here are two examples:

A young South African adoptee recently posted the following on Facebook: “I am adopted. I am black and my parents are white. I only speak English and a couple (of) phrases of Afrikaans I caught while fooling around in class. I speak no vernacular language and missed every 30-minute Zulu lesson we had once a week for just under a year of our 12-year schooling career. Basically, I missed the one brief opportunity school gave me to learn ‘how to be black’. Back then I wasn’t fazed; my friends were white, my family is white, and I truly thought that my characteristics and the way I spoke made me white.

“I remember being called a coconut and people jokingly saying God made me the wrong colour. It was only after I had been out of school a few years that what made me feel superior suddenly made me feel inferior. My accent no longer made me feel more white, but simply less black. I felt like a circus act, invited to places simply to be gawked at, the entertainment of the evening.

“I’d always wonder if I was acting too ‘white’ in a situation and would counter that by just not doing anything. I so longed to be seen as black, to be seen as equal to the people I never considered befriending at school. This caused me to try recreate myself, to try embody what made a black man a black man.

“The problem is there is no definition; there is no rule book on how to be black. I fumbled my way through the scarce amount of black male representation in the media, trying my darnedest to act this way and that way and hopefully pass my self-made ‘black-ness’ test.

“I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but after several failed attempts at acting how I thought a black man should act it hit me like a freight train: to be black is to have black skin.

“Regardless of how I spoke and acted I had always been and would always be a black man. I still have insecurities but they are quelled by me being 100% authentically me, a black man who coincidentally has white parents, whom I love very much, who was raised to be intellectual and respectful.”

The white mother of a black child recently posted the following on Facebook:

“Today a mom invited my daughter to a pony riding camp with her daughter. I was surprised to hear myself ask if my daughter would be the only person of colour at the camp.

‘Well,’ she answered, ‘I never think about colour,’ she said, like this was to her credit. ‘I never used to either,’ I answered. ‘I’m sure she’d be included,’ my friend said. Then a little later I noticed that the stable hands are all from the local township. I asked my friend, ‘What do you think that might be like for my child to be in a context where the only people of colour are stable hands?’

My friend huffed. Didn’t I think that identity was more than skin colour, something that lay deep inside?

‘No,’ I answered. ‘I think identity is skin colour AND something that lies deep inside AND the social context we are in.’

Didn’t I think that I might be robbing others of the chance to learn to relate to my child by not allowing her to go to an all-white kids pony camp?

No, actually, I thought that maybe I was protecting her from all the subtle ways that people of colour are made invisible. For example, when she has a dance event she gets a note about putting her hair in a bun. The note doesn’t say if your hair is long put it in a bun. It just says “girls hair”. So, my daughter’s hair is invisible, or wrong.

After this conversation I felt bad and sad. I decided to check with my daughter. ‘How do you feel when you go somewhere and you are the only person of colour?’ I asked.

‘I feel awkward,’ she said.”