... Fittingly named, because it does relativism so well. A blog attempting to educate on transracial adoptions, Choices features mostly posts by these select adopters themselves (one is a Barnard alum). But, as the New York Times often is with its tunneled, caring-white-person stories, the blog has had quite a number of very iffy, "othering" posts by adopting parents. Take a read...



The inaugural post of Choices is exactly the story of a first-world savior discovering the "magical" history of third-world innocent. In "Finding Zhao Gu", the adopting father writes about his search for the origins of his daughter. In doing so, he says a lot of generally self-righteous and Orientalist things - like "yearn[ing] to know the secrets that he, alone among millions in China, held within himself," how the events of his saviorship "felt like fate", and talking in English at the person who found her in order to achieve his personal sense of closure.

Not all of the posts are terrible. In "Beyond the Lion Dance," the same man writes about offering his two Chinese girls (pathological Chinese baby adopter?) a semblance of cultural belonging in Chinatown and worrying about the identity issues they might be faced with in the future. Another explains how she avoided the demeaning videos from African adoption agencies (but only until she actually forced her way to a child that she found particularly adorable, "with darling eyes and nappy hair that was tightly curled and uneven in appearance.")



One article, however, is just ridiculous. In "The Real Thing", Tama Janowitz tries to make herself immune to criticism about what seems like crass child-rearing ways while telling us the deeply ignorant things she says to people about her motherhood... things like, "I say to Willow: 'Well, you know, if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!'" Her snarkiness knows few bounds. After calling her daughter's features "Mongolian", she proceeds to minimize the problems that other Asian adoptees have had with not having forged a cultural identity. Great writing, Tama - let me know when you want to peddle more of your irreverent, insensitive garbage over the internet... unless after Googling your own name you found that to be a bad idea.

I'm not alone in my disgust. If you want to see the problems that bloggers have already found with this writing, every word in this sentence links to a verbal lashing of this blog. And this is just what Carmen linked on Racialicious.

There's more... Carmen reports that the Times bloggers have been censoring dissenting comments from adult adoptees. Denying claims of their own racism... wow, we haven't seen this before. Relative Choices, all in all, makes me slightly sick. Of course the posts by adoptees themselves are pretty okay, but this should be a reason why we "loosely ethnicity-oriented" blogs exist - to catch mainstream writers in the very troubling things they say.

This Friday on October 5th, Carmen Van Kerckhove, CC '99, of New Demographic will conduct a workshop for Columbia's Center for Career Education on racial stereotypes in the workplace.

"Racial stereotypes impact our perceptions of and interactions with others and are often at the root of workplace diversity issues. This seminar examines the most common racial stereotypes—both negative and positive—and demonstrates how these widespread ideas can manifest themselves in the workplace. Building consciousness around these stereotypes will help your employees to proactively examine and improve their interpersonal interactions within the company, as well as with external clients."

So The Blaaag, as tremendous fans of Carmen (she was the keynote speaker for the 1st Annual New York City Asian American Student Conference in which AAA took part spring this year) is telling you to do the following things:

1. Register for the event online here.
   
2. Join the Facebook event.
3. Email Carmen at carmen@newdemographic.com if there are any specific questions or issues you would like addressed.
4. Come on Friday. The workshop will be from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm in the Broadway Room of Lerner Hall.

Carmen is the president and co-founder of New Demographic, an anti-racism training company. She also writes for four (4!) of her own blogs: Addicted to Race, Racialicious, Anti-Racist Parent, and Race in the Workplace.

Dear Carmen,

The Blaaag is dying to be able to write Heroes recaps for you.

Please take us.

Love,
The Blaaag