But for today, our first hurdle is sleep!

Whew, thanks so much. Glad I didn’t step on any toes here. I’ve been really enjoying this blog, I hope you keep going strong in 2007! Happy new year everyone!

As for the etiquette question, I think we’re all making it up as we go along. I certainly understand why you asked Kwynne to join your team too! She’s a great writer!

Also Kwynne, sorry to do this so publicly but I couldn’t find an email address for you anywhere – I’d like to ask if you might be interested in being a contributor to ARP? Please email me at carmen AT newdemographic dot com. I’d love to chat with you about this. Thanks!

(I hope I haven’t violated any blog etiquette principles with this comment, moderator. If so, please feel free to delete this comment. But if there’s any way you could pass my contact info onto Kwynne, I would really appreciate it.)

Wendy

So good to hear your voice. This is stuff I’ve grappled with since trying to conceive a baby with my ex (a baby who would have been mixed-race) and now becoming a foster parent who will parent white children and children of color on a short-term and maybe eventually permanent basis. Look forward to reading more.

We’ve had our share of horrifying questions and comments (Where’s he from? What’s he mixed with? Is your husband mediteranean? And my favorite: the co-worker who asked if James was ‘milano’ Bwahahaha) and are working hard to educate ourselves as white mamas to a son of color.

As for what we’re specifically doing… We’re listening. To people of color. To adult transracial adoptees. We’re reading their blogs and extending ourselves and being willing to grapple with race instead of pretending it doesn’t matter. We’re working on expanding our circle of friends to include more people of color. We’re making decisions about our community, schooling options, etc that take race into consideration. We’re answering questions about what we’re doing even if we fear that what we’re doing isn’t ‘right’ or ‘enough’.

We’re raising our son to identify primarily as black, instead of ‘biracial’, but will give him opportunities to intersect with people of mixed race who primarily identify as multi-racial. If he feels that ‘biracial’ is a better term for his racial identity, that’ll be ok too.

We’re taking the two “Bill of Rights” I posted about here to heart: http://androckabye.blogspot.com/2006/03/bill-of-rights.html

And we’re not shying away from interupting oppressive speech, no matter how non-confrontational both of us are by nature.

Nice to ‘meet’ you all!

I’ve been wrestling with a lot of what you said here but haven’t managed to commit any of it coherently to paper (screen). Maybe you’re the inspiration I need…

But, rude questions aside, I’m actually finding that I prefer it when people address their questions to us. I’d rather confront their questions head on, and have Julia see that her mothers are willing to jump into discussions on race and slog through the muck of it all in order to teach (and learn!!) rather than have it all be Something Of Which We Do Not Speak. Still, it gets messy sometimes, and I worry that each mistake I make damages her in some irreparable way.

So, to answer your question: Yes. We’re very much working on and implementing Anti-oppression parenting philosophies, but they’re in constant flux as we educate ourselves, work through biases, untangle knotted intersectionalities. I’m hoping to learn a lot through your posts and especially the comment threads that follow.

And, LOVE the title of this post. Not just because it’s a great title (and it IS a great title) but because I can tell that you’re used to writing academic papers… oh the colon! the wonderful, wonderful colon!