I’m working on some Russian updates. What were once simple and straightforward reviews of cases have turned into tales of Tolstoyan proportion.
Meanwhile, yesterday I was censored again by Huffington Post. This time over daring to suggest that international adoption isn’t white bread. My comments came under Adam Pertman’s new blog entry, Lessons in Adoption from BJ Lifton, Harvard, and Oprah. I’ll post some comments on that in a separate blog and try to get it on HuffPo as well, but I may be expelled to the Bad Bastard’s corner unless I limit myself to commentary on Kim Kardasian, Melissa Etheridge, and the decline of the American Left.
Gaye Tannenbaum responded in part (her post is still up):
You haven’t been talking to enough adoptees at any depth. I know several Korean adoptees who grew up either thinking that they were white or wishing that they were white. I even know adoptees who shared racial characteristics with their adoptive family but not ethnicity. If they “wished” they hadn’t been adopted, it wasn’t “just because” of the racial or ethnic difference. It goes far deeper than that but certainly includes racial and ethnic differences.
I followed with:
I agree, Gaye. Racism, fetish, neo-colonialism, imperialism is a huge issue amongst the transracially adopted. Over the years I’ve been continually impressed by the work done by the Transracial Abductees and what has come out of them later. The best political critique of adoption I’ve seen anywhere. From the TRA page:
Abduction is the word we like better than adoption. “Adoption” conceals the unequal power between abductors and abductees, and in the abduction industry in general.
Who Can Be An Abductor?
White people, white governments, the abduction industry.
Why Talk About This?
It’s important to talk about this because nothing else we’ve seen out there is politicized in this way. Transracial abduction is secretive, silencing, and abusive, and it’s really hard for transracial abductees to speak out against this racist system of forced assimilation and brainwashing. We wanted to create a forum where abductees can talk about our experiences and share our analysis of them.
Damn, Marley, you should not have been censored for that. I did see Margie’s post and I though, great. The Adoptive Parent Sensitivity Police are out in force.
Great post Marley! You should have the right to explain things from an honest perspective without fear of censorship.
Hmmm, Do I smell an IAP or 2 over in the HuffPo editorial dept?
Did they take Margie’s post off too? I don’t see it on there.
They must be censoring a lot of comments, there’s only 7 on there.
Well, that’s interesting. I don’t know what “name” Margie posts under, but there’s nothing there that looks like her now. I was away for a few days and missed a lot.
Just as all TRAs are not “happy dappy”, not all were abducted. Some were sold by a parent or parents. Some were available for adoption only because their mothers wanted their children to survive and to grow up not in the nations of their birth, but in America. Some simply had been abandoned and found themselves in orphanages with insufficient resources to provide for them.
As in all things, no one story tells the entire tale.
Abuses have occurred, continue to occur and no doubt will occur in the future, domestically and internationally. Efforts to curb those abuses and to ensure that children are adopted internationaly only where no other reasonable course is available must continue. I don’t see, however, much chance for their complete elimination, at least not in the decades left to me.
Just catching up on my reading and was shocked to read that your comment had been censored from Huffpost!
I’ve heard that this is pretty common at HuffPo and just not related to adoption topics. I’m curious since, it’s not like I used a lot of 4-letter words or accused somebody of a heinous sex crime! So far, I’ve heard of 2 other people who posts were either removed or never made it up to start with.
It seems that “moderation” is the new fuzzy wuzzy word for censoring adoptees.
This seems to be the case no matter where we go, no matter where we post.
What we have to say could bring to ruin the multi-billion dollar baby pimping industry. No wonder our politicians wont help us. Baby pimping stimulates the economy!!!
I can just hear the NCFA lobbyists now:
“So what if 2% of the population is sold and used, right? After all, they will eventually die and be silent FOREVER. Right now, they are worth oodles of money!!!”
Anonymous has a point. “Baby pimping stimulates the economy”. I find a correlation between the economic “boom” of the early to mid-00s and the incredible amount of children imported at the same time.
I.A.P.s -like myself – drew on home equity loans, raided IRA and 501(k) accounts and attempted any and all means necessary to fund an I.A.
The loss of the easy credit days are gone; without easy credit, the numbers of I.A.s have drastically decreased.
As for censorship at the HuffPo – yeah – it’s censorship. No need to call it by another name.
E.Case I.A.P. Class of 2000