Scott Simon vs. Adoption Talk

Well, there's always more adoption news than I can keep up with! I never got around to posting about Scott Simon's book BABY, WE WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER, released late last year, but with a little online conflict comes a new opportunity.

Simon, of course, is the genial host of NPR's Weekend Edition. His book, subtitled "In Praise of Adoption," chronicles how he and his wife came to adopt two girls from China, and also profiles other adoptions among their circle of celebrity friends. The book has turned out to be unexpectedly controversial; for many in the adoption community, to "praise" adoption actually means that "you just don't get it."

Among those disappointed in Simon's book was the influential blogger Malinda of Adoption Talk. Like Simon, Malinda is the mother of two girls from China, but in her review of the book last August, she said:

It's  so disturbing when a well-known adoptive parent forwards this "race/ethnicity doesn't matter" meme, contrary to what adoption experts, and most importantly, adult adoptees of color, are saying.  All Simon is doing is giving explicit permission to other white adoptive parents of non-white kids to ignore race and ethnicity.  I have to admit, my life would be easier if I did.  But my kids' lives wouldn't be.

 

Commenters on Adoption Talk took Simon to task as well, calling him "insensitive,"  and accusing him of "using his daughters" to sell books;  one poster even said Simon's opinions made her "want to throw up."

Simon, in fact, does not ignore the race and ethnicity of his children, who study Mandarin and attend Chinese cultural events, but he does dare to go against the conventional wisdom by positing that race and ethnicity are only aspects of identity, and not the most important considerations.

Today, some six months later, Simon came across Malinda's review and posted his own response at her site. He says in part:

I doubt that there’s much I can say to assuage the enmity expressed towards me in postings on this blog. Let me simply state that my wife and I understand that it’s important for our daughters to know and be proud of their culture, and will have our unstinting support to do so.

I find it incongruous, in this month in which we celebrate the Rev. Martin Luther King for hoping his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” that we are assailed for trying to do just that for our daughters. I am keenly aware of America’s racist history and bigoted tendencies. Not a week goes by that I don’t receive anti-Semitic or gay-bashing emails. But as I note in my book, “(I)n China, our daughters might have faced bigotry for being Hui, Miao, Manchu, Yi, Mongol, or any of the other of China's 55 other nationalities that they could be.” They have already been stung by prejudice toward women in the land of their birth, and if someone looks a little funny at our family, or makes some boorish remark, I do not assume that the Klan rides again. We receive about a thousand times more consideration.

I reject the idea that my wife and I should feel guilt for taking our daughters out of their native culture because we remember that our daughters had been relinquished and left to languish in orphanages. Those orphanages, not the China of the Qing dynasty, Chen Rong, or modern adventure capitalists, were their culture. Our daughters will stand a better chance of appreciating the majesty of Chinese culture by growing up and learning about it in our American and French family, than if they’d been left in those orphanages, and slotted into factory or farm work by their teens...

We cannot rewrite their lives, or the laws of China, that would restore them to their birth mothers and the culture into which they were born. But we can give them a loving family to grow strong in, and the background to make their own choices. 

 

Malinda has already written a follow up post,  "Scott Simon Responds." She takes exception to his use of the term "enmity," among other things. Most of the current comments support her.

I read Simon's book last year, and found it to be a gentle-yet-provacative challenge to the strident anti-adoption rhetoric that is becoming more and more prominent in our public conversation. Is he clueless? Personally, I think he is he daring.

 

 

Comments

[Judi Kloper]

Hi Sharon (and Malinda),
Thank you for this conversation. My kids are Indian and Chinese, with one birth kid thrown in the mix as well, all between ages 17-34. My feelings about the importance of race, culture, and heritage have grown stronger from having traveled throughout India more than 20 times and having worked there to find homes for kids with special needs, as well as from parenting my kids in a mostly white university city in the northwest. To sum it up for this blog, let me just say that we gave to our children more exposure to their heritage and culture (though I believe you can't teach culture, you have to live it), and more connections to others of their own ethnicities (including our daughter from China and our birth son's connection to his siblings' birth heritages) than they'd ever get from their orphanages. What did their orphanages (or any orphanage, or most orphanages, for that matter) provide for them? Culture? Only the culture of an institution with four walls that didn't provide an education for the kids, didn't let the kids out to play much if at all, and didn't allow them to experience life outside of those four walls so that they could observe and live their country's complexities, beauty, contrasts, magic, pain and joy. Two of my kids came home at age 7 and 9 years; their connection to India and their Indian heritage was maintained by us. We worked hard to instill in them and the younger kids a pride of their birth country and heritage. They would have had none of that had they stayed in their countries of birth. So...to summarize (at this too early on a Saturday morning hour), race, culture, ethnicity, heritage, they're all important parts of an adoptee's identity though not the sum total of who a child is, and international adoption (i.e. placing a child with a family not of the same ethnicity or race), when following guidelines to protect children and birthfamilies (i.e. an ethical process) is the best solution for most children without families who cannot be placed within their own country or with a family of their own ethnicity overseas. I've come to this belief after 29 years of personal experience in international adoption and the same amount of time as a volunteer and a professional in the field.

[Malinda Seymore]

Sharon, I saw the NYT report of the study about people identifying as mixed race -- very interesting stuff. Of course, there are some similarities between mixed race kids and TRA kids, that between-two-worlds stuff; but there's one big difference, that mixed-race kids are with parents of both races! I'll be interested to read your thoughts about it.

I think the race part is the thing international APs want to deal with the least. It's scary stuff, having to recognize that race still matters in America, when we, as white parents, have always been the advantaged ones in the race wars.

No matter how thoughtfully one considers how race should matter or not matter, it doesn't change how race does matter to others and how race might matter to TRA kids/adults. I am concerned that Simon is much too dismissive of race -- preferring the softer "ethnicity" is one symptom of this -- than a white adoptive parent of non-white children should be. But the issue isn't really about Scott Simon -- he's just better known than most adoptive parents!

[Sharon]

Malinda, thanks for stopping by and commenting! I know that you and many others who feel discomfort with Simon's book aren't anti-adoption, so maybe that isn't the right term. I do think the adoption conversation tends to be very polarized and there is a lot of anti-adoption sentiment "out there," along with the idea that "adoption is always great," neither of which is true.

Simon truly seemed to be coming from a perspective in his book that I don't hear much: thoughtful and mindful about race and ethnicity but not "worried" about it. Is that a dangerous influence? I don't know. Maybe adoptive parents who aren't thoughtful or who are scared and nervous about dealing with race issues might see Simon as giving them permission to avoid them. However, I also think it's possible he's onto something too. In the next few days, I want to post a follow up about a study of young people that found more are identifying as mixed race, more entering into mixed race relationships etc. Adoption adds it's own layer of complexity for our children, but at the same time society is shifting and evolving and the society our kids live in as a adults will be different from ours. I guess I found his approach fascinating, and something to think about.

[Malinda Seymore]

Thanks for continuing the conversation here! Not "praising" adoption is not the same thing as being "anti-adoption," though. I take issue with Simon's characterization of race as not an issue in his transracial adoption. There's a difference between culture and race, and while Mandarin school and cultural events are important (we do those things, too!) they are not sufficient, especially when children are told that ethnicity doesn't matter. It might well matter to them, but when their parents tell them it doesn't matter, it creates huge identity problems. And it isn't anti-adoption to say so! Well-respected pro-adoption organizations (like the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute) say the same thing! I hate to see someone with a natural platform, like Scott Simon's, to advance a view of adoption that replicates all that we've learned NOT to do in raising transracially adopted children!

[Jennifer Zilliac]

Thanks for this post, Sharon. I hear Simon's voice as I read his comments. I'm really trying to wrap my mind around the anti-international-adoption rhetoric. While there are certainly problems in the world of adoption, I can't fathom how little weight people give to the heartbreaking problems associated with the alternatives to international adoption.