Lovely post, thank you.
I have no specific response, but reading it I found myself thinking of Joan Armatrading singing, "I heard somebody say once I was way too black / And someone answers she's not black enough for me"
Looking up the lyrics of that song I'd forgotten just how pointed they are. In this context the line, "it must be something I have no control of" seems particularly sharp.
Some people want to see my blood gush out
And others want to watch while I cry
I heard somebody say once I was way too black
And someone answers she's not black enough for me
I bite my tongue and it bites me back
I bought a house and the neighbors moved
I had a dog but it was stolen
Some people say that it's coming
And I'll get it
It must be something I have no control of
They'll put the skin of the fruit on the ground
And I'll slip and fall
...
That's wonderful and moving, and better written than Coates, I think.
This is lovely, Thorn. This part--"about how you are able to love me while still not wanting a white mom like me"--is very well-put and sad.
Oh wow, Thorn. Read that with tears in my eyes too. Speechless.
3: That part was easy because it's pretty much a direct quote. There were some rather biting remarks made about why I don't just believe in God and Jesus while I was walking them to the fireworks this weekend and oh well!
The more serious piece is I have a fair amount of guilt and grief about essentially taking yet one more black parent out of their lives, though they still see Lee regularly. It's still better than the alternative, but as in previous scenarios for them, that doesn't really make it less sad or problematic.
I think I have the flu, so that's my excuse for being so unmanly, but I was crying by the time I got to the end of this.
Beautiful and very moving, Thorn!
1: Or as Digital Underground put it,
I smell the message from the TV
Does my Humpty nose deceive me?
Smells like the blacker the wacker
Polly wants to be a cracker, if you let her
But see for me, the bigger the nose the better
They say the lighter the righter
Oh yeah?! Well, that's tough
Sometimes I feel I'm not black enough
I'm high yellow, my nose is brown to perfection
And if I was to change it'd be further in that direction
So catch me on the beach, I'll be gettin a tan
Make sure there's no mistake that Humpty Hump is from the motherland
Whatever, Thorn, I'm going to adopt some adorable black children too and write an even better response.
I really wasn't trying to come up with a post that would prevent responses. I just also didn't feel like there was anything much I could say directly to the commenters here. So this is what stuck eventually.
I was trying to respond. I just don't do emotion and such very well. But that was great.
Moby, tell us about your favorite childhood toy.
Or your favorite Humpty Hump lyrics.
I wish I could provide an extravagant and deliciously varied supply of profiteroles for the french-themed party! I love this letter, thank you for sharing it with us.
1,8: I guess I'd ask what that means to you as white (actually I haven't met you, ned, and perhaps part of what's cryptic is your racial identity?) listeners, whether the specificity resonates with your own experiences or you're just thinking "yeah!" or if it clarified some experiences different from your own? I do half-assedly think there may be more explicit discussion about colorism in music than in other forms of popular media. The movie Dark Girls has its flaws, but the interviews are powerful.
This may be my favorite thing to have read about BTWAM so far.
I really wasn't trying to come up with a post that would prevent responses.
Too late! Your post was lovely and perfect and nothing can be added.
And yet I have at least been able to become your mother, which is an act of selfishness on my part rather than charity
This brought me up short. But you should say more about it if you wish, Thorn, before I start my interpretive song-and-dance. I imagine you chose those words pretty carefully and I'm not sure how much positive or negative valence you want to attach to each. But it's hard for me to imagine a real scenario where it would be either one or the other.
Wow. I don't know if you would consider making this available to be at posted at a more-trafficked venue (I'm sure someone here either works or knows someone who works at one), but it's such a unique and thoughtful piece that I kind of wish more people would read it.
18: More will probably have to wait until bedtime because we just finished dinner and so it's time for a new hairstyle and some Batman viewing for Selah, but there are certain narratives about fostering/adoption and especially transracial adoption that I give uncomfortable. I felt ready to be a parent (when I wasn't dealing out about it) and had specific skills I thought could make me a good match for them, and that I think white adoptive parents in our area tend not to be great about their black children's racial and cultural development. But they would have needed to go somewhere if they hadn't gone to me and so to me we are a family not because they were needy but because I had wants and said yes and we lucked into these connections instead of different ones.
This was truly beautiful, Thorn. One minor editing note: is there a missing "not" in the final clause of this sentence? "I was older than any of you by the time I made my first black friend at summer science camp in junior high, something I could do at my all-white school."
21: There totally is and I noticed this morning but had already made heebie change one thing and didn't push her on that, figuring people would get it or not. And you did!
15: I just was impressed by the sophistication of the lyrics of what superficially appears to be a pretty stupid song about Humpty Hump's abnormal nose. And your quoting of the other song immediately reminded me of it.
I guess I'd ask what that means to you as white (actually I haven't met you, ned, and perhaps part of what's cryptic is your racial identity?) listeners, whether the specificity resonates with your own experiences or you're just thinking "yeah!" or if it clarified some experiences different from your own?
Good question, I hope you don't mind a long answer.
I have to admit, I've never completely connected with Joan Armatrading, and I don't know whether racial dynamics play any part in that. I've heard a couple of her songs which I think are great, including "How Cruel" but overall I find her performance style too mannered. I like the way her voice sounds, but I often have a hard time connecting to the emotion of the lyrics.
When I first heard "how cruel" that quoted line cut through that completely. It immediately made sense, not as an experience that I've had myself, but as a very specific instance of, "you can't win. No matter what you do somebody will criticize you."
Looking at the lyrics now, it's interesting that those were the lines that stood out. The opening line, "Some people want to see my blood gush out" never hooked me emotionally in the same way. Hearing the song now, in the context of discussing BTWAM, I recognize the weight of the fact that that line could refer to very real threats of violence (I do think it is, at least partially metaphorical. The chorus of the song is, "Oh how cruel to make a girl cry" which I still hear as emotional wounds rather than physical. But, certainly, a line like, "I had a dog but it was stolen" is terrifying taken literally, and I never thought about it as a literal statement until today).
So, in way, the answer to your question is, "neither." I recognize it as a powerful song, and I appreciate it, but I still feel somewhat disconnected from understanding what, precisely, the intention of the song is.
Delurking momentarily to join in the chorus saying that the post is moving and beautiful.
I agree with 21, including the part about the "not".
I've always been bothered by Joan Armatrading due to the fact that I grew up friends with a family called "Arma" that owned a general goods store called "Arma Trading." It always felt like she was ripping them off. I'm not kidding. She should change her name to something less confusing, like "Target."
I don't know. The longer we go without Witt's response, the more I'm leaning towards declaring Thorn history's greatest monster not named Carter.
Also, I am very excited to hear about how the France-themed birthday party turns out! That sounds so fun! Maybe Unfogged could club together and hire a Pierrot to attend?
32: First we need to find an Eiffel Tower, apparently. She's already chosen her dress. Lee and I did successfully navigate co-hosting Selah's party the week after she moved out and I know what Beaujolais she prefers. My aunt is planning to come from Wisconsin to meet the girls. Usually Mara's parents make it too, though one arrives and leaves early and one late to minimize overlap. Her younger sibling might be able to make it if we plan early. The girls are all excited and strategizing about it, so I just get to be backup.
Lurkey, I never did get back to say anything more meaningful. Feel free to riff on any of it!
Oh wow. I deliberately didn't read below the fold all day because I was trying not to get sucked into commenting when I really had to work, but Thorn, this is really extraordinary. What a gift to your daughters.
Okay, quick break in the work-deadline/family-life action. I guessed that one of the things you had in mind was a general critique of the idea of fostering/adoption as rescue, but wasn't sure whether you wanted to disclaim "charity" as something you wouldn't want as a motive even if you had it, or if you did mean it as a good kind of other-directed virtue. You're totally entitled to disclaim some/any forms of charity, as the (partial) author of your own moral code; but claiming to be entirely unmotivated by altruism is, you know, not true.
Musing further: while I'm an atheist as well (raised as such), to me that question of charity seems pretty interesting, especially in the context of the later discussions of faith. You clearly and truly don't want to be a hypocrite. However, in my mind you are obviously the most charitable person here. So I'm really curious about what you see as the limits of charity, broadly construed.
http://www.amazon.com/Feet-Tall-Eiffel-Tower-Prop/dp/B002QSX132
Get someone to make a large batch of paté à choux and turn half into gougères by heaving in a load of cheese so with the Beaujolais the adults are sorted and the other half into plain old puffs. Then they make a plain old chocolate mousse and pipe the puffs full just before handing round to children. This will work, I mean it has never failed me. The key is piping in mousse and the handing round directly to avoid sog setting in.
I cannot help with the Eiffel Tower, sorry. Drawing on butcher paper? By someone channeling the Madeleine books vibe?
Of course, le Restoration Hardware has a handmade artisanal 8' model for $1,500. I swear, who possibly shops there? You'd need at least $250,000 to outfit a reasonable-sized house with their stuff. Who spends five grand on a bed? That's just crazy. Is their customer base limited to King Farouk and the Aga Khan?
(I've sent a few disjointed reactions to heebie, and I assume she'll post them in the morning. Don't expect well-formed thoughts.)
35: Partly it's that I wrote a really bad and clunky sentence because I couldn't figure out how to do it better. But you're right in recognizing "charity" is a term I avoid in general. Tonight's the first PTA meeting and I'm starting year two as the entirety of the executive board despite loathing running the PTA, but no one else is going to do it and so of course it will be me. Is that charity? Stupidity? Stubbornness? I don't know! (The part where I gave them way more money than I probably should have to save myself having to run a fundraiser? Charity, technically, but selfishness and laziness too!)
There's a cliche in talking about adoption that "You can save a child once; after that it's called parenting." I don't like that "save" language and I know that message is pushing back against the idea of child-saving but not hard enough for me. I'm just a parent even though the kind of parenting I do comes with extra complications. I mean, to pick on some people here who probably don't care, will has different challenges in caring for his daughter given her autism than apo has in caring for his oldest son, but both of them are juggling shared parenting with an ex while LB's teens are in an intact family. That doesn't mean any of the are being more generous or charitable or selfless, just that each child has specific needs and as a parent you meet those as well as you can, which is going to vary at different times. The children who've been in my home are my children I love, whoever their parents may be otherwise, and what I do for them doesn't feel like I would think charity feels. And I didn't take any of that on to do a good deed or heal a broken world or anything like that, just there was something that needed to be done and I thought I could do it and I was lucky enough to do it much more easily and comfortably than I'd expected.
I'll have to think a lot more about what charity means, because clearly I don't have it worked out at all. You've given me a lot to think about but I don't have good answers. I actually feel that in terms of financial giving I'm way at the low end for the blog, though almost all of that is in direct gifts. Other people volunteer more than I do, I'm sure, though I think having three small children is a good enough excuse for that for now and I should slowly be able to add more. But I think most of what sets me apart here is becoming connected and (in the most positive way) enmeshed with families living in poverty and I think that has been hugely positive for me and for how I live in and understand the world.
I really like to keep as broad of a definition of "charity" as possible. My goal is to find as many things as I can that count as both charity and laziness. Synergy.
I learned my ethics from a combination of nuns and lawyers.
I should hire you as a charity consultant, Moby, and you can not charge me and write it off. Deal?
I know I'm idiosyncratic about how to talk and think about these virtues. Too much early Catholic masochism and hagiography, too much scrupulosity, too little certainty about anything else other than that I can do what I do. But I believe I'm entirely ordinary and am uncomfortable with other theories. I just have the opportunity because I live somewhere cheap and am downwardly mobile and don't have the demanding sorts of jobs many of the rest of you do to participate in different ways.
...a combination of nuns and lawyers.
World of Warcraft gets weirder every year.
43.1: In that case, I can charge whatever I want. No taxes again this year.
43.2: You have noticed how much time I spend leaving puns on the internet?
I'm sure I've said this before (and I should be talking about Witt's post rather than avoiding work) but the nuns at my high school tried to talk me into considering rushing. I got to go to special prayer services in their chapel and have breakfast with them on the top floor of the school and they gave me a necklace (a Jerusalem cross) that made my girlfriend super jealous because she thought, probably rightly, that she was more deserving. I was open with them about the not-into-Jesus thing but they thought that didn't seem insurmountable. I guess other than that and the chastity and obedience I might be game, but I missed my window of opportunity.
Aside from that, Sister Lincoln, what did you think of the convent?
By the process of elimination, the poverty was fine.
Well, I'm not actually living in poverty either, but I could.
At least you can work with it better than obedience or chastity.
I guess I'm not living all that disobediently or unchastely either. But I could!
Why is Witt's post tacked onto the end of Thorn's post? It's really very jarring and unfair to both authors.
Because I thought they should have a continuous comment thread? I can unlink them if it would be less jarring and unfair to both authors and unhurt your eyes.
52 It's a bit unfotunate I think. Not too late to do a new post.
Also, I did it this way for the past two installments, each featuring two authors. So there was a precedent.
Plessy v. Ferguson was a precedent.
But Witt and Thorn are both white.
If you're changing things, could I get you to make the correction (adding a "not") pointed out in 21? I saw it yesterday morning but then realized I was going to make myself sick if I reread any more and figured I'd just let the rest stand.
Sure, done.
(And I can break up the posts if there's a consensus that it's the true fair way to do things. I'm happy to indulge whiny commenters.)
I think you should leave it as one post but with two separate "Read More" things so that you you see the start of both on the front page.
I kind of like the two-post thing.
It took so long for comments to get going on Thorn's that I was worried you all had BTWAM fatigue and that if Witt had a standalone post, it'd get under 10 comments and I'd feel bad. Now you contrarian fuckers will deluge her with comments just to be yourselves, so I guess I'll go split them up. And bump Thorn back down the page? That seems weird but ok.
I'm fine with being bumped, heebie, and with weirdness. Nobody much talked about the book here, so maybe that will take off in Witt's spot.
If I really wanted to BALB I'd go split up Minivet and LW and LB and Halford and post the neglected ones up at the top. Then you'd all be sorry.
Well, thanks for putting up with my badgering you about a single partial sentence (and if you wonder what I think of the piece as a whole, all I can say is that I think I've read it eight times already, and not looking for nits to pick). There's charitable giving and interpretive charity; when I said you were the most charitable person here I was thinking a lot about the latter kind. Everyone has to make decisions about what to do with their money or what is best for children, you're right, and no kind of "charity" can divinely inspire the right decision. But when there isn't a decision about action, when the question is what to think or how to see things, there I've always regarded you as impressively and reflexively charitable. For what that's worth. I'm not trying to give awkward compliments so much as to offer an alternative definition that might be useful.
I definitely need to set up monthly giving to causes I care about, as a bulwark against spending all that money on despair-chocolate, yes my tastes are expensive shut up.
(Good luck with the PTA! That sounds punishing.)
Despair-chocolate is fantastic! I am forever in ajay's debt for suggesting I need a gin-and-chocolate fund, which is one I'll decidedly be hitting up after PTA tonight. (Hate hate hate.)
And thanks for trying to reframe charity. It's giving me a lot to think about. Part of it is that I just reflexively try to define things away from making me look good, so assuming that what I do is either normal or defective, what kind of moral definition can I build? That is maybe not a good plan.
Thorn, the way I read your line about charity was that I think that most parents chose to become parents from a mixture of selfish and altruistic motives, and you were disclaiming the idea that it was purely altruistic on your part. If that's what you were expressing (while pushing back against the stereotype of cultural supremicism masquerading as rescue parenting), I get that.
But I would be very surprised if there wasn't a significant amount of altruism in the mix. I would identify that impulse of "someone's got to do this, and no one clearly better-qualified is stepping up, so I will" as primarily charitable in nature. Your line if taken literally suggests an either-or dichotomy between selfishness and charity, while I think of it as a both-and.
I agree that it's both, Dave, and that it's in many ways typical.
Fantastic PTA turnout for which I did an excellent job ordering the right amount of pizza and fruit, therefore now I get gin. Whew! Eight more and I'll be free forever!
Nine gins is a lot for a Wednesday.
I don't actually work tomorrow, but no. I'll drink responsibly, promise.
I finally read this and I just wanted to say it's beautiful. Thanks for sharing, Thorn.