I found this sitting in the “pending” pile; Girl4708 has given me permission to update and post. She originally wrote: As I approved another comment today on a blog post I wrote about Woody Allen, I wondered about tan fever, brown fever, and black fever as Asian adoptions decline and other countries become sources for […]
Tag Archives: Orientalism
I came across this essay by Prof. Asma Barlas [ link ], entitled Racism’s Labyrinth. It’s a quick read, but quite interesting on a number of levels. An excerpt: Whether white people want to claim their whiteness or not, whiteness claims them by positioning them as potential saviors of people of color. Liberals speak on […]
This question comes from the title of an article at Counter Punch [ link ], and I feel it is addressed to adoptive parents in one sense, coming as they do from the class with the will and the privilege to change things domestically if they so desired. Here is a quote from the article: […]
I’d like to touch back on to two discussions we’ve had so far, one on nature vs. nurture as posited by Snow Leopard, and the other one having to do with Russian adoptions, and the idea of a second-best race-based adoption, i.e., one that does not (seemingly) require those adopting from having to mythologize their […]
Many adoptees who have returned to their places of birth can identify I think with the reality of countries such as Lebanon, which boasts 7,000+ “non-governmental organizations”, which is one NGO for every 500 people who find themselves within this country’s current borders. We often joke here that the millions of dollars that these NGOs […]
I was talking to a former student of mine who has taken to traveling through South Asia. This time around, she was heading to Nepal, and she met a man there who was formerly working in Iraq. She asked why he had to return, and he replied that after the U.S. invasion, much of the […]
Let’s forget about falafel, and kimchee, and dumplings, etc.; let’s forget about lamps, and dragons, and carpets and I don’t know what else; all the other superficial aspects that the “West” sees as “culture” from abroad. What instead have you learned from the culture of your place of birth that contradicts what we now refer […]
I stumbled across this article in Asia One, which was discussing the appointment of Fleur Pellerin as a minister in the new French government. The article states concerning the Korean-born Frenchwoman: Newspapers in Seoul on Friday splashed frontpages with her picture and carried stories about her life while the ruling New Frontier Party expressed hope […]
Sometimes I catch myself thinking/acting in a privileged or colonizer way and I’m appalled. I feel like I’m 99% white inside and the more I learn about the world, the more I regret that, despite all my opportunities. How white are you? Do you want to reduce that? Is that even possible? How much does […]
I saw this post on the Huffington Post web site: Abyssinian Princess on Horseback: Inspiration for all Orphans And I was literally dumbstruck. Abyssinia? The European colonial name for the former kingdom of Ethiopia? They refuse to post my entire comment, so I would like to put it here: In adoptee circles, we joke about […]
I was talking to “someone” from a chat 3-4 years ago, and he somehow stumbled across one of my blogs and decided to e-mail me about my adoption privilege and all the benefits associated with it (from an economic standpoint). I told him that “happiness” is merely subjective to the perspective of the person. He […]
Transracialeyes 