A few days ago, we were all in the car coming home from church. This is a pretty rare thing. Not coming home from church. Or going to church, for that matter.
No, usually the whole family isn’t in the car together. Our daughter has her own car and her own apartment, so usually, she’s driven to church by herself or she leaves with her grandparents because we’re all going to end up there anyway and we just need to go home and change.
This day was unusual. We were having company at the time the rest of the family usually goes to church so we went early.
Anyway, as we were driving home, Noah said that some of the kids in his class at school asked him if he was Italian.
This seems to me, based on my admittedly limited experience, a standard Catholic school question. My daughter was asked if she was Irish or Italian. (Neither – she’s Scandinavian. We’re converts so we don’t fit the “cradle Catholic ethnic mold.”)
So, he asked us what to say when he’s asked that question.
Well, clearly he’s black, but it is an interesting question and not an easy one as he was adopted by us when he was 8 weeks old. He has no memory of his “other family” nor any memories of any “heritage” before ours.
Now, in a diverse environment like his school, which is mostly white but with a decent showing of other races, it should be clear that he’s not Italian or Irish or whatever, but he’s in third grade and how aware are kids at this age?
I said, “Sweetie, your mom is half Scandinavian. Your dad is half Scandinavian, and your sister is half Scandinavian. If you want to tell people you’re Scandinavian, I’m totally okay with that.”
What do you think?
The bigger issue of whether he’s Scandinavian is an interesting one. If your family maintains Scandinavian culture and he’s being raised in it, he’s Scandinavian by culture but not by nationality. He doesn’t owe people an explanation or a pedigree. I’d just be clear with him so he’s not confused that his race is Black, that his culture is Scandinavian-American, that his religion is Roman Catholic, that his nationality is American. Then I’d explain that his bio family has the same race because that’s genetic and we can’t choose or influence that, but the rest is maybe different between his bio family and his adoptive family because the rest describe how we live our lives. Just like Uncle John is Protestant and Great Aunt Mildred is Korean, and the neighbor Mrs. Amanda is raising her family in her husband Mr. Julio’s Hispanic culture, people in the same family often have different answers to these different parts of themselves. In the same way, he might have some things that are the same as you and some that are different and some that are the same as his bio family and some that are different. No biggee that his answer is different from yours. Yours is most likely, at some level, different from your husband’s. And that means your children don’t match either one of you precisely, either. He’s no different from any of the rest of us in that regard.
It is a respectful, honest, direct way of addressing the similarities and differences between his bio and adoptive families without making him feel like he’s forced to choose one or the other either internally (to show loyalty) or externally (to fit in).
And then the issue of how to respond becomes much simpler because it doesn’t have the bigger issue of “Who am I really?” attached to it.
Catherine’s advise is great, but you know, I’m really tired of questions about where we came from. When people ask for my race I tell them I’m an American. I’m not white, black, yellow or red, I’m not Irish, Italian, Swedish, Yiddish, or Janapnese, I’m an American. The family has been here for as long time, they were met, when they arrived by other members of our family. Does that make me anything other than an American? Noah’s skin may be black, the culture of the hom Scandinavian, the relgion Catholic, but he’s an American. Why do we have to identify children or for that matter, people with such designations? Noah can be whatever he wants to be, as long as he knows he is loved by you, by his country and his God.