The air is heavy here in Minneapolis again.
Heavy with the stench of tear gas.
Heavy with tears of a community.
Heavy with the trauma of a trial, the pain of last May is still raw.
The all too familiar sounds of sirens and helicopters and flash-bangs fill the nights.
A police department, less than 2 miles from our house, being guarded like a fortress.
A memorial again placed in the streets just minutes from our doorstep.
Candles glowing.
Curfews in place.
Schools closed.
A community again grieving the life of another Black man taken away by the hands of the police.
A community again coming together to protest and donate and support.
It’s been 4 days since Daunte Wright was murdered.
Pulled over for an air freshener and expired tabs.
And already, we’ve begun to hear what have become normal responses
“He shouldn’t have run”.
“He had a warrant.”
“It was a mistake.”
The little black squares that flooded our screens not even a year ago have now been replaced by home renovations and trips to warmer weather.
The stacks of books on racism and Jim Crow and white supremacy are now filled with “easy” reads.
People “celebrated” Black History Month and then went back to business as usual.
Because their business isn’t affected.
Because we still haven’t learned.
We still refuse to acknowledge the real truth.
We still refuse to see this country for what it really is.
A country founded on white supremacy.
A country still reveling in the benefits of it.
A country afraid of a real reckoning.
The history taught in our country is one that has been and continues to be white-washed. One that tells of pilgrims and European “explorers” and past Presidents who just happened to own slaves. One that tells of “wooden” teeth and “kind slave owners.” As a white woman, who was educated in largely white spaces, the history I learned is not that of my Black daughters.
Black history isn’t mine to claim but it’s mine to learn.
I’ll be the first to admit that it wasn’t until we started preparing to bring our Black daughter into our family did we realize the significance of Black history. It’s important to not just our future family but us. It wasn’t until I started to learn myself that I realized how much education I was lacking. I realized it when I watched Hidden Figures. I realized it when I read The Warmth of Other Suns. I’ve realized it time and time and time again over the past several years. I continue to realize it.
This learning and unlearning is a process.
A process that’s more than just reading books and taking classes and completing workbooks.
It’s a process that will never end. It’s a process I do for my daughters but equally for me, for all of us.
So going forward, I challenge you to commit yourselves to an un-learning and a re-learning. An undoing of the history you’ve been taught and an awakening to our country’s real history. A realization that as white people, we’ve been taught a history to make us feel better about ourselves. A history that is greatly lacking in the true story.
During the month of February, I had the benefit of listening to two adult transracial adoptees (Hannah @heytra and Torie @wreckageandwonder) discuss WAP (white adoptive parents) of transracial adoptees and what they are learning, and how they are learning.
We need to do better than taking one class on diversity offered by the adoption agency we are using.
We need to do better than reading one book or even ten on anti-racism, Black history, etc.
We need to do better than buying our children “diverse books” and “diverse” toys. Side note on that-I read another post last month that I can’t find for the life of me, but it talked about how one day, hopefully soon, we can just say books and toys because them being diverse is just normal and a given.
We need to take what we are learning and apply it to our lives.
We need to apply it to the choices we make. The vacations we take. The schools we send our children to. The activities they are involved in. The restaurants we eat at. The stores we shop at. The neighborhoods and cities we live in. The list could go on and on and on. The knowledge needs to wreck and uproot our very existence.
It needs to change us forever.It needs to change how we look at the world and how we interact with it.
Because if it doesn’t, if we aren’t open to that, should we really be adopting transracially in the first place? That needs to be the ultimate question.
So below, I’ve included resources that we’ve found helpful as a family and I hope you will too. Ones that we utilized for Black History Month but also ones that have become staples in our family.
Kid Books & Resources
- The Fierce 44
- The Undefeated Side note on this one, this book is included in Hannah Matthew’s (@heytra) Blacktivity Pack in honor of Black History Month. If you don’t follow her, go now. Pay her. Buy her resources. She has selflessly made her experience as a transracial adoptee available to us and it is beyond a blessing. She also has a Black History Month Calendar
- Young, Gifted and Black
- The ABCs of Black History
- Little Leaders & Little Legends
Adult Books & Resources
- Stamped from the Beginning
- The Warmth of Other Suns
- Caste
- Me and White Supremacy with the guided journal
- Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
- Hannah’s Black History Month Calendar We used this last year and found it so helpful again this year.
- Standing in the Gap Another of Hannah’s resources just for transracial adoptive parents
Keep in mind, this is by no means an exhaustive list. There are more, many more. Read them. Ask your friends and family to read them. Ask your book club to read them. And then let them move to you to action.
At the end of the day, these are just first steps.
Easy ones at that.
Reading a book or working through a workbook should be just the beginning of a lifelong journey.
And remember, you will make mistakes. You will say the wrong thing. You will offend someone. You may lose friends and even family members.
Be ok with all of the above.
Because it does not compare to the losses felt by the Black community.
Daunte Wright.
George Floyd.
Philando Castile.
Jamar Clark.
All losses felt here in Minneapolis. The losses are too many. Be willing to learn. Coming from a person who still is.
And let me say it again, BLACK LIVES MATTER.
WRITTEN BY LAUREN RASMUSSEN
Lauren lives in Minneapolis/Saint Paul. Wife to John, stay at home mama to Luca and Jona. She is a lover of coffee (most always with cream) and Mexican food. A Northern girl through and through she loves spending time outside no matter the season. She has a deep passion for adoption and the community she found through her own adoption process. She hopes these stories will inspire and more than anything assure others they are not alone.
