Althouse: "You see, my parents decided that they were going to approach my adoption as if they were completely colorblind..."

April 4, 2019

"You see, my parents decided that they were going to approach my adoption as if they were completely colorblind..."

"... despite the fact that we are not the same race. My brother was also adopted from Colombia, but we were both told that we were Italian and Portuguese, just like our adoptive parents. Your parents’ word is gold when you’re a child; at least that’s the best explanation I have for how my parents successfully passed me off as a dark-skinned Italian for 19 years of my life. Of course, during those years I asked them time and again. 'Mom, why is my skin darker?' or 'Why wasn’t I born in America?'... As an adopted child, I lost my birth parents, but because of my parents’ actions, I also lost my country, my language and my culture. I didn’t talk to them for a long time. I grieved. I raged. I went to therapy. I harbored a lot of resentment for my parents, who I blamed for depriving me of my culture. When you bring a child of a different race into a home, it’s hard to face certain realities. My white parents decided to teach colorblindness to try to protect themselves and me from racism in the world. But, instead, it taught me that my ethnicity was something to be ashamed of. It was something to be hidden."

From "My Adoptive Parents Hid My Racial Identity From Me For 19 Years" by Melissa Guida-Richards (HuffPo).

145 comments:

Bay Area Guy said...: A sane adult would be grateful for her American adoptive parents and not focus on stupid shit like this.

Alas, it's the Huffington Post.; 4/4/19, 8:09 AM
Michael said...: Yes, and really, who GAS?; 4/4/19, 8:11 AM
Tank said...: An extremely lucky person longing to be a victim.; 4/4/19, 8:11 AM
Dude1394 said...: What an ingrate.; 4/4/19, 8:13 AM
Sebastian said...: "it taught me that my ethnicity was something to be ashamed of"

Actually, no. From now on, adaptive parents will need to reckon with the likelihood of stupidity, ingratitude, and susceptibility to identity politics.; 4/4/19, 8:13 AM
Curious George said...: Boo Fucking Hoo; 4/4/19, 8:14 AM
Gahrie said...: Damn those people for bringing you into your home, loving you and creating a better life for you. Denouncing them is exactly the perfect Leftwing method of thanking them.

Fucking ingrate.; 4/4/19, 8:14 AM
hawkeyedjb said...: It wasn't your country. It wasn't your language. It wasn't your culture. Those are things that are lived and experienced - they are not hereditary.; 4/4/19, 8:14 AM
Paul Zrimsek said...: Sharper than a serpent's tooth, and duller than a pair of kindergarten scissors, all at the same time.; 4/4/19, 8:15 AM
Brian said...: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

MLK weeps.; 4/4/19, 8:15 AM
chuck said...: Ah, red meat, yum, yum. I thought for sure it would be the NY Times, but it was HuffPo.; 4/4/19, 8:18 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: Meta First World Problem:

Having to deal with First World Problems when you really wish you could be dealing with Third World Problems; 4/4/19, 8:18 AM
gspencer said...: "I grieved. I raged. I went to therapy. I harbored a lot of resentment for my parents, who I blamed for depriving me of my culture."

Hmmmm, sounds like a natural-born Democrat.; 4/4/19, 8:18 AM
Henry said...: Sadly, this level of secrecy does seem to be a poor decision on the part of the parents. But not a deal-breaker. Parenting is pass-fail. And the author acknowledges that:

I have loving parents regardless of what they did. And yeah, we still have our issues, but we’re making it through. Today, they listen to me when I talk about racism. They have stopped using stereotypes. They try to integrate Colombian food into holidays and talk about my adoption openly.; 4/4/19, 8:20 AM
Hagar said...: Good grief!; 4/4/19, 8:20 AM
Ignorance is Bliss said...: My Adoptive Parents Hid My Racial Identity From Me For 19 Years

I was born a poor black child...; 4/4/19, 8:21 AM
buwaya said...: Perhaps a too-personal comment, but I find it is accurate in many cases.
This sounds like a displacement of a source of personal unhappiness.
Her picture tells the tale.
If she was a slim and pretty girl there would be none of this.; 4/4/19, 8:22 AM
mccullough said...: Pablo Escobar was her native culture when she was born.

Columbia was a shithole like all of Spain’s former colonies.

The conquers mixed with the conquered for almost 500 years. So the people hate themselves.

What you ended up with are corrupt cultures with some pockets of medieval violence.

Fucking miracle she got to be raised in the United States. She knows it. She didn’t move back to the shithole. But she makes her money as a Woke Writer so she spews some bullshit.; 4/4/19, 8:23 AM
Rory said...: How can an editor let this pass without dealing with the question of the parents lying about the adoption, instead of the ethnicity? That she was rifling through her parents papers is a pretty good tell that there were trust issues in the family.; 4/4/19, 8:23 AM
Kevin said...: it taught me that my ethnicity was something to be ashamed of?

What does it teach kids to take them from their country, march them through Mexico, throw them over a wall into America, and beg them not to send you back?; 4/4/19, 8:25 AM
mezzrow said...: Here's an arepa. Now, let me describe the meaning of the word 'ingrate'.

Oh, and 'karma'. You're not doing yours any good here, missy.; 4/4/19, 8:27 AM
Sally327 said...: I don't think I would have appreciated being lied to either but deciding she's going to live as a Latina now, that seems close to Rachel Dolezal territory (the white woman who pretends she's an African-American).; 4/4/19, 8:31 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: “An extremely lucky person longing to be a victim”

And merely managing to show herself to be a melodramatic piece of shit. Is that better or worse than Victim in the Donk DSM? Perhaps it’s a wash.; 4/4/19, 8:35 AM
Wilbur said...: Another example of the most destructive tenet of The Left: The personal is political.; 4/4/19, 8:35 AM
Big Mike said...: Her adoptive parents could give her every advantage, but they couldn’t fix stupid.; 4/4/19, 8:37 AM
William said...: Buwaya's comment is perceptive. There's a lot of sorrow in the world that has nothing to do with class or race. The great trial of my adolescence was not my poverty but rather my acne........Do they integrate Colombian food into American or Colombian holidays? Does she wish to celebrate the Indian or Spanish parts of her ancestry?; 4/4/19, 8:37 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: I also lost my country, my language and my culture

They never was your country, your language or your culture, so you did not lose them.; 4/4/19, 8:41 AM
mockturtle said...: I harbored a lot of resentment for my parents, who I blamed for depriving me of my culture.

Honestly, I have known people like this. A biracial friend of my biracial daughter was adopted as a baby by a loving white professional couple. She grew up in a nice UMC neighborhood and was an excellent student. But as an adult she became a 'blacker-than-black activist', went to Howard University, etc.

A cousin of mine and her husband, white professionals in CA, adopted two black children who are now in their teens. We'll see if they go through this. Maybe it's being biracial that's the issue, like Obama, who pretty much dissed his mother and white grandparents who raised him.; 4/4/19, 8:44 AM
Tommy Duncan said...: No good deed goes unpunished.; 4/4/19, 8:45 AM
Omaha1 said...: This is really sad. The adoptive parents were open to giving a home and a good life to a child of a different race, and not only is the child ungrateful, but also resentful.

I have relatives who have adopted African-American children and they are the best parents anyone could ever want to see. Their natural born and adopted children all do well in school and are all treated the same, no matter how they came into the family.

I believe Martin Luther King Jr would be disgusted with the idea that black children can only be raised by black parents.

There is a "shortage" of white newborns available for adoption and I think it is a great and wonderful thing that people are willing to overlook race and provide a loving home for any child that they are blessed with.; 4/4/19, 8:46 AM
Jaq said...: He missed his opportunity to be a worship object of the culture.; 4/4/19, 8:46 AM
Ralph L said...: I'll wager the Portuguese and Italians look down on and resent the Spanish, and vice versa, but they were supposed to leave that in the Old World.; 4/4/19, 8:47 AM
Charlie Currie said...: Poster child of alt-left education.; 4/4/19, 8:48 AM
Maillard Reactionary said...: My first thought, just from the headline, was "What, there were no mirrors in that house?".

Then I saw her picture. Bet she still doesn't own one.

Lose the pink hair, babe, and do something with your life that helps someone else. It has been the cure for many a case of existential angst.; 4/4/19, 8:52 AM
Wince said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/4/19, 8:54 AM
Big Mike said...: I have nothing but contempt for this whining twit, but my heart goes out to her adoptive parents. Shakespeare had it right, you know.

“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is
To have a thankless child!”

Didn’t we recently have a post on “King Lear”?; 4/4/19, 8:54 AM
Ironclad said...: The implicit assumption in the HuffPo victim check box story was that culture and language and identity are somehow genetically endowed and that somehow her adoptive parents magically managed to “steal” that from her. It’s reflected in her last remarks about her “reclaiming” of her identity as a LatinX ( fake word). That type of belief says that people immigrating to the US will always carry their own genetically programmed culture - hmm, would that mean white folks “can’t help it” too?

I really wonder what her adoptive brother thinks of her now. Or her parents for that matter.

This was check the box victimhood, with a double dollop of racism based on her birth identity.; 4/4/19, 8:54 AM
tim maguire said...: I also lost my country, my language and my culture.

Fortunately, the currently top rated comment over there points out the obvious.; 4/4/19, 8:55 AM
JAORE said...: I'll bet the compromises that let this family now co-exist came exclusively by the loving couple that let this ungrateful whelp into their home and lives.; 4/4/19, 8:56 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: What can we do to improve the well being of traditionally-oppressed people?

I know: let's run articles making it seem like there's a risk that non-minority people who adopt children of a different race/ethnic background might be seen as racist and have that adopted child resent them, thus making such adoptions less likely at the margin and discouraging people in the majority from adopting outside their race/ethnicity!

If you raise the cost of something you'll get less of it. Adding "good chance your adopted child will resent you and others will see you as racist" is a great way to increase the "cost" of adopting those kids...but hey, that's the cost of wokeness I guess.

Solid, solid work.; 4/4/19, 8:57 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: I also lost my country, my language and my culture.

Stupid on so many levels.

Your country, your language and your culture are not genetic. They are what you are raised in.

No one is BORN speaking Swahili or Spanish. You are not born with an innate desire for crepes suzette or chicken mole. It isn't in your genes to wear certain clothing, like certain songs.

You are what you are because your parents adopted you and removed you from the ash heap. If you regret them adopting you.....I bet they regret it too now given your disgusting ungrateful selfish attitude.

Too late to return you to your "native" country. Maybe you should pack up and go there on your own. Adios chica.; 4/4/19, 8:59 AM
Amadeus 48 said...: How sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child. Old Lear got that one wrong with Cordelia, but I think he'd be on target with this one.

You could question whether these generous parents made the right call, but this kid has been taking loco pills. That's l-o-c-o, since she is learning Spanish. She's turning what could be an interesting hobby into a reason for being. She's ignoring that fact that she and her brother were orphans in the storm who were adopted by strangers. She shows no empathy with her mother. I think we have a great example of a moral mite here.

I am sorry she hated being dark. All the girls in my high school kept trying to get deep tans.; 4/4/19, 8:59 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: White people embracing other traditions, learning about them, enacting cultural signifiers = cultural appropriation, racism, ugly.

White people encouraging assimilation, acting in colorblind ways, raising their adopted kids in their (white person's) cultural traditions = colonialism, racism, ugly.

What a fun worldview!; 4/4/19, 9:00 AM
AllenS said...: I'm a lot darker than everyone that I'm related to. I know mom and dad are my parents, because of all the relatives that I know through taking a DNA test. Not sure what my parents thought about me being so dark.; 4/4/19, 9:02 AM
MikeR said...: "Sharper than a serpent's tooth, and duller than a pair of kindergarten scissors, all at the same time." +100; 4/4/19, 9:03 AM
Hunter said...: Similar to another recent story from BBC:
'A white family raised me - I learned to love being black'

If I could go back and choose what type of life I would live, I wouldn't choose a life where I was brought up by white parents again. I wouldn't want to go home and feel different.

While I don't doubt there are difficulties involved in being raised by parents of a different race, how can a person throw their adoptive family under the bus like that? It sounds like these individuals got fed racial grievance theory and it was all the more poisonous because of their personal situations that ought to, by contrast, have taught them an uncommonly healthy perspective on race.

Neo-Marxism ruins everything. It honestly makes me angry that people who spread this hateful garbage get to call themselves "progressive" and somehow dominate the bulk of popular culture.; 4/4/19, 9:03 AM
Wince said...: ...because of my parents’ actions, I also lost my country, my language and my culture.

And nobody, but nobody, would confuse her for Shakira.

"Hips don't lie."

I'm on tonight
You know my hips don't lie
And I'm starting to feel it's right
All the attraction, the tension
Don't you see, baby, this is perfection?; 4/4/19, 9:04 AM
Greg Q said...: "I also lost my country, my language and my culture. "

So "culture" is inherited?

Bullshit

Culture is a choice. She dumped a loser culture, and got a better one. This was a wonderful and enormous gift from her parents, and she's scum for rejecting it.; 4/4/19, 9:04 AM
Henry said...: I've know a number of people where adopted. Some were adopted as infants. Some were older.

Questions of identity vary, but they are profound.; 4/4/19, 9:07 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Melissa Guida-Richards is a stay at home mom to two beautiful boys and advocates for mental health and chronic pain awareness on her blog. She writes for The MIGHTY, SCARY MOMMY and will soon be published on MOTHERLY and on HER VIEW FROM HOME. She also has a humorous baby guide coming out in FALL 2019, with Skyhorse Publishing.; 4/4/19, 9:09 AM
Fernandinande said...: As a Latina, I speak with my family about cultural issues other Latinx people face, even though it makes them uncomfortable.

Aww, it's wonderful that your mental issues are so important to you that you don't have to care that your senseless whining, er..."speaking out", makes other people uncomfortable. You go girl!

My Chronic Illness List
Migraines
Chronic Back Pain
Sjögren’s
GERD
PTSD
Bipolar
Endometriosis
Microscopic Colitis; 4/4/19, 9:12 AM
The Gipper Lives said...: "You're welcome."; 4/4/19, 9:14 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Henry said...Questions of identity vary, but they are profound.

The problem is in the author's framework it's no-win--you can't have transracial adoptions.

Her parents lied to her, told her she was the same race as them, and took a colorblind approach--that's wrong because it stole her racial identity, or something.

If her parents had told her the truth and raised her as a Latina I 100% guarantee we'd be reading her article about how her parents never fully accepted her and treated her different in a thousand subtle ways because they saw her as "other," she wasn't fully accepted by their white friends, etc.

The only way to avoid the problem, given woke rules, is to avoid transracial adoption. (You'll then be called a racist for that choice, naturally, but at least there won't be a kid involved!); 4/4/19, 9:14 AM
Anonymous said...: The author is upset because her adoptive parents put at risk her standing on the intersectional grievance leader board.; 4/4/19, 9:14 AM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Culture isn't genetic. My mother, born in Peru, didn't teach me Spanish. I'm not all broken up about it.; 4/4/19, 9:15 AM
RK said...: I resent my great-grandparents for immigrating to America and depriving me of my true language and culture. However, I suffer internal turmoil because they didn't all come from the same country.; 4/4/19, 9:15 AM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: My ex-wife was adopted from Korea. She doesn't speak Korean and was raised by white people. She's not all broken up about it.; 4/4/19, 9:16 AM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: Neither are her four adopted brothers from foreign countries.; 4/4/19, 9:16 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Shorter HuffPo: White people bad.; 4/4/19, 9:17 AM
Henry said...: @HoodlumDoodlum -- I think the fact her parents lied to her about her ancestry is pretty important to this particular tale. We have no 100% guarantee about anything other than what she's written.; 4/4/19, 9:19 AM
Hunter said...: The rejection of culture you were raised in for the one you somehow inherit based on skin color, seems to have some connection with the idea that immigrants to the US aren't obligated to assimilate into our shared culture.

How much more evidence do we really need that it's the left, not the right, who have a core belief in racial determinism?; 4/4/19, 9:22 AM
Fernandinande said...: Now? Well, I’m just your average stay-at-home mom, with a container full of daily pills.

I have happy pills, mood stabilizing pills, and anti-anxiety meds (in addition to my non-mental health related meds) that I take every single day.

I’m bipolar, but I’m not crazy.

"Kids are different today"
I hear ev'ry mother say
Mother needs something today to calm her down
And though she's not really ill
There's a little yellow pill
She goes running for the shelter of a mother's little helper
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day; 4/4/19, 9:22 AM
traditionalguy said...: Adoptive parents are like that. They live in fear of the birth parents' family showing up. But you can't go home again.; 4/4/19, 9:23 AM
Q22 said...: As an adopted person I have mixed feelings.

First: It's much better to be honest with your adopted kid. In an effort to demonstrate full acceptance of the child it is tempting to give the kid, not just your home and your name, but your whole family heritage. It's generous but the kid knows (or will eventually know) that it's a borrowed legacy. My parents were open about us being adopted kids but I still grew up claiming to be of Irish and German heritage as if I were a true offspring of my parents.

Second: I felt a real need to find out who I am and where I came from. I did a search and found the identities of my birth parents (both dead) and discovered half siblings and a few relatives. In doing an Ancestry DNA test I have now compiled a pretty extensive family tree going back to the Revolutionary War. The problem is that these are only names that I have no real connection to. My brothers,sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins from my adoptive family are the people that I have a real bond with.

The challenge of EVERY adopted kid is that question of belonging and identity. Here's the thing - Adopting parents chose you and welcomed you into their homes. They treat you as if you are their own offspring; protecting, nurturing and creating a family bond with you. They do this out of love. Like all parents they they are pretty much doing it on the fly and make good and bad decisions based on what they thought was the right at the moment. Rather than airing your grievances publicly and assuming motives you should have a conversation with your parents.; 4/4/19, 9:23 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: I think the fact her parents lied to her about her ancestry is pretty important to this particular tale.

Perhaps they should have told her they found her in a trash can and have no idea where she came from?

The parents have no way to win with this ungrateful child. Tell her she is different and then be accused of treating her differently. Tell her she is just like them and then be accused of depriving her of her right to be different.

Moral to the story. White people are only eligible to adopt white babies. The other ethnic group babies....tough luck kiddos.; 4/4/19, 9:26 AM
Michael K said...: I understand there are one way airplane tickets to shithole countries that are available for HuffPo readers who want to experience the pleasures of authenticity.; 4/4/19, 9:27 AM
robother said...: It is easy to write this off as just another victim of SJW identity politics. But I wonder how many black adoptees of white parents experience some form of this rage or alienation.

I have read that human infants, like other primates, experience fear in the presence of adults of a different race. An instinctive survival skill, presumably. Imagine growing up with that primal fear in an entirely white world. Imagine being raised by parents whose virtue-signaling is the most important aspect of the decision to adopt.

Blank slate liberalism denies all such realities, indeed any notion that human genes have evolved around different environments and cultures. Indeed, thinking that you can just decide to raise a child "gender fluid" regardless of their X and Y chromosomes is just the most recent example of the blank slate, everything is culture view. Damaged human beings are the price of all such idealism.; 4/4/19, 9:28 AM
Fernandinande said...: "My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted."; 4/4/19, 9:31 AM
Jersey Fled said...: My grandparents were both born in Italy. Yet they rarely spoke Italian in the house, even though their English was very poor, because they wanted my father and his siblings to be "American".

My father and his siblings, born in America, loved them very much.; 4/4/19, 9:31 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Henry said...@HoodlumDoodlum -- I think the fact her parents lied to her about her ancestry is pretty important to this particular tale

I agree. I think if the POV was something more like anger or feeling of betrayal around that lie as opposed to resentment and racial grievance it'd be a more understandable argument. The point made wasn't "hiding the truth from adopted children is harmful so you shouldn't do that," it was "my white parents stole my true identity from me for their own selfish reasons but thankfully after therapy for my justifiable anger and resentment I am educating them so they'll be less racist in the future." That's a pretty big difference.

A discussion of the ethics of being fully truthful with adoptees and the "intersection" of racial, ethnic, and cultural choices in raising transracially-adopted children might be interesting. This author's approach and framing doesn't make that possible.; 4/4/19, 9:33 AM
Leland said...: For those thinking this person is a whiny, stupid victim, that should be grateful; would you feel the same if the parents denied the child's biological gender in order to raise the child gender neutral/fluid?

I think the HuffPo writer should show some gratitude. However, I'm not so sure she's wrong about her parents showing some shame in ethnicity. I think the message here is parents (biological, adoptive, step) should be honest. I'm a step-parent. I understand the urge to hide facts from my children. Ultimately, I didn't, and the result was a stronger bond with my children and their own edification, which resulted in more confident and successful adults. My step-children wouldn't write this story, because they wouldn't need to.; 4/4/19, 9:37 AM
Howard said...: Thanks Again Ann for a heap of race bait for the deplorables. They have been sounding peckish; 4/4/19, 9:46 AM
Greg Q said...: Leland said...
For those thinking this person is a whiny, stupid victim, that should be grateful; would you feel the same if the parents denied the child's biological gender in order to raise the child gender neutral/fluid?

Your biological sex is not a choice. Your culture is.

What she is babbling is racist BS: my culture is determine by my genes!

No, it isn't. She was from a country with a pathetic culture. So were my ancestors, They came here, to a better one. Yay!

Unlike your sex, your culture is a choice, and children's starting culture is chosen for them by their parents.

The parents made the right choice. Good for them. Bad for her for whining about it; 4/4/19, 9:50 AM
gahrie said...: Moral to the story. White people are only eligible to adopt white babies. The other ethnic group babies....tough luck kiddos.

This is the explicit stated position of many social workers and adoption agencies in the U.S., which is why so many White couples have to adopt from other countries.; 4/4/19, 9:52 AM
Wa St Blogger said...: I've got 6 adopted kids. One thing I absolutely hold to is that you do not lie to your children about who they are. By doing so you have created a clear breach of trust. If you lie about one thing what else did you lie about?

In my case, my kids have no chance of being convinced that they are just darker skinned versions of us. We are lily white and they are Asian. Unfortunately for them, We give them worst of all worlds in the racial grievance sweepstakes. They are Asian but not raised as typical Asian over-achievers with the the tiger mom, so they get the stigma of white privilege with Asian expectations but are just normal kids with normal lives. They "thank" me all the time for that! LOL

As for any illusions about life and culture, they are fully aware of what they left behind. Poverty, destitution, misery. They all have special needs and would likely be stigmatized both by the need and by being raised in an orphanage in a society that still values family heritage. Many of them would have had no chance in their old world. This is not something we've drilled into them, it is something they have discovered on their own, especially when we've made return trips to their home country.

We have always been very up front on why we chose them, and discussed reasons why they ended up orphans. It is a tough thing for all adopted children to deal with, but having parents they trust who love them can help them cope with the challenges. That is why we are adamant about always being honest so that they never doubt who they are or who we are to them.; 4/4/19, 10:01 AM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/4/19, 10:07 AM
n.n said...: Diversity free. Losing your PC.; 4/4/19, 10:09 AM
Seeing Red said...: As an adopted child, I lost my birth parents, but because of my parents’ actions, I also lost my country, my language and my culture. I didn’t talk to them for a long time. I grieved. I raged. I went to therapy. I harbored a lot of resentment for my parents, who I blamed for depriving me of my culture.

So, go get a Colombian passport, give up your American citizenship and leave. She’ll be Neck deep in her culture and getting an up close and personal view of what happens when a country collapses from socialism.

What BS.

I can say this since I’m an international adoptive parent.; 4/4/19, 10:12 AM
Henry said...: Dust Bunny Queen said...
The parents have no way to win with this ungrateful child.

Do you know them personally?; 4/4/19, 10:17 AM
jaydub said...: I made the mistake of clicking on the link to this woman's blog, Spoonie Mama. After scaning a few of her blog posts, I came to the conclusion that she writes like the whitest woman on the planet. A dollar to a hole in a donut that the only reason she submitted this article to Huffpo was to drum up interest in her blog. She's ugly on the inside, too.; 4/4/19, 10:21 AM
glenn said...: There’s are reasons some countries are s***holes. This is just one of them.; 4/4/19, 10:22 AM
robother said...: Greg Q; "Your biological sex is not a choice. Your culture is."

But you're ignoring the third factor, the one she is most angry about: race, like sex, is not a choice. Treating race as just a social construct, pretending that it's not rooted in genetic realities, and can be wished away with cultural platitudes is harmful to most of the pretended beneficiaries of that view.; 4/4/19, 10:22 AM
mccullough said...: Wait until her kids are grown up. They will hammer her with their resentments. Starting with the Mommy Blog bullshit.; 4/4/19, 10:31 AM
glenn said...: Ralph L wins the internet April 4th

“but they were supposed to leave that in the Old World.”; 4/4/19, 10:31 AM
JackWayne said...: May we’ve found the reason that a lot of cultures did not adopt out children? They just left them to die on the side of a mountain. I’m sure this person would have agreed with that final solution.; 4/4/19, 10:36 AM
Seeing Red said...: For those thinking this person is a whiny, stupid victim, that should be grateful; would you feel the same if the parents denied the child's biological gender in order to raise the child gender neutral/fluid?

As I go into my twilight years, I’m going to watch this vast social experiment.

Personally, I don’t think it will go well.; 4/4/19, 10:41 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: race, like sex, is not a choice

Well...she IS making a choice.

What is a race? Do you have a bright line that divides the races so that we can pigeon hole people?

In classic (old) Anthropology and Archaeology, people were divided into races that exhibited morphological similarities that were evidenced in the bones. Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid. Those were then divided into sub groups. I guess we can keep dividing people into groups that eventually will be a dozen or so.

Hispanic is not a race. Colombian or Argentinian are not racial classifications. You can't tell the DNA of a person by looking at the color of their skin.

pretending that it's not rooted in genetic realities, and can be wished away with cultural platitudes is harmful to most of the pretended beneficiaries of that view.

This woman, like almost everyone on the earth, with the exception of some rare isolated populations, her DNA is likely a mixture of many things. Most from Meso America are mixtures of Caucasian, Amerindian, African, and other contributions. The Caucasian can be from Europe, Russia, Scotland, India, Afghanistan to name a few. Maybe she should start eating Haggis or Borscht as part of her "culture"? Perhaps if the Amerindian is the major part of her DNA she should reestablish the religion of her ancestors and start cutting out people's hearts as sacrifices to the Mayan Gods?

Because she is a mutt like the rest of us, which one does she want to pick? Which parts does she want to ignore?

Everyone wants to know where their ancestral roots lie. It is interesting and it is historical information. However, that doesn't make you who you are now.

Race is not a choice? She is making it one.; 4/4/19, 10:43 AM
HoodlumDoodlum said...: Wa St Blogger said...I've got 6 adopted kids. One thing I absolutely hold to is that you do not lie to your children about who they are. By doing so you have created a clear breach of trust. If you lie about one thing what else did you lie about?

Wow, that's outstanding--good for you and congratulations!
I agree that lying to the kid is a problem. I think there might be some room for discussion about when to tell the kid, how to tell them, etc, but I'm certain you've given it more thought than any of us. Thanks for your perspective.; 4/4/19, 10:44 AM
Lost My Cookies said...: This jerk needs to grow up.; 4/4/19, 10:49 AM
President-Mom-Jeans said...: What a stupid ungrateful cunt. I wish a child who would appreciate what the people who raised them had been given wonderful colorblind parents and that her worthless sperm donor biological father had convinced her gutter whore of a mother to abort her. The moral of this disgusting tale is that no matter how wonderful white people are and what they do, some woke twat is going to villainize them. In this case for taking them into their home and raising her as their own.; 4/4/19, 10:49 AM
Greg Q said...: robother said...
Greg Q; "Your biological sex is not a choice. Your culture is."

But you're ignoring the third factor, the one she is most angry about: race, like sex, is not a choice. Treating race as just a social construct, pretending that it's not rooted in genetic realities, and can be wished away with cultural platitudes is harmful to most of the pretended beneficiaries of that view.

That's racist.

I mean that, quite literally.

My sex matters. If my race matters, then it is right for people to judge me by it, and racism is not just fine, it's reasonable and correct.

My race is human. So should hers be. She's from Colombia? Then even if you agree with the racists, she's still a Caucasian, just like her parents told her ("Hispanic" isn't a "race", it's "Caucasian with Hispanic Origins").

Either she's an American, in which case she should stop whining. Or she's a Colombian, in which case she should leave our coutry and go back to hers.

In no case does she have a legitimate point.; 4/4/19, 10:52 AM
Oso Negro said...: Some day Hollywood will be making weepy movies about the legions of unwanted Chinese baby girls dumped on America.; 4/4/19, 10:52 AM
Joe said...: I've one friend who tracked down his natural father, but always refers to him by his first name. "Dad" is the man who raised him. I've another friend who doesn't care in the least who his natural parents are.

Also wondering if this egotist did her genealogy; it may very well be that she's of Italian and Portuguese descent. "Colombian" isn't a race. And, what does her brother feel about all this?

My conclusion is that this woman wanted to be aggrieved and so found a way to be so.; 4/4/19, 11:04 AM
FIDO said...: Well, this just reaffirms my views: Feminism and intersectionality teaches a lack of empathy and gratitude. It teaches selfishness and dissatisfaction.

I grieve for her parents and hope that at least one of their children turned out better.

But they were probably liberal...in which case, sorry, but your ideology and political stance kind of opened you up to this kind of mistreatment.

See, here is the difference. I have very little empathy for liberals because they did this to themselves.

This girl has ZERO KICKS at a lack of empathy. Clearly, she would prefer to have been a teen foster care sex abuse victim but of the proper culture and language in a Third World Shithole than a woman raised in wealth and with values which would NEVER have been taught in her own culture.

What a miserable horrible and honestly stupid human being.; 4/4/19, 11:09 AM
Ralph L said...: They missed the serpent's tooth on Jeopardy just last night.; 4/4/19, 11:18 AM
Yancey Ward said...: The woman is mentally ill. Would she have been "feeling the tug" of her Hill Billy culture if she had been adopted from a holler in Eastern Kentucky, or from an orphanage in Russia?

This desire to be identified as a victim is a mental illness.; 4/4/19, 11:33 AM
Yancey Ward said...: So, when is she moving back to Colombia? Inquiring minds want to know!; 4/4/19, 11:36 AM
RigelDog said...: My best friend and her lesbian partner adopted two toddler girls in America; each girl had a white birth mother and a black father. We've been very close to their family the entire time and see that the adoptive/racial situation really does present dilemmas. Ultimately it would be fair to say that the girls (now in their late twenties) were raised and absorbed the culture of their white, educated, upper-middle class parents, although their parents made continuous efforts to try and figure out what could be done to give them the experience of being part of black American culture. The older daughter at first chose to identify strongly with being black and to attend a high school with a high minority population and to have almost exclusively black friends. She consciously refused to date anyone but black men. The younger daughter was comfortable with a fluid identity as far as race goes and seems to have never felt that she had to make a choice to immerse herself in all white or all black culture. The older daughter is very successful and now moves naturally through both black and white circles; in fact, she's has a serious boyfriend now who is white and not even particularly "woke." Her parents are happy that she's dating a good person but it drives them crazy that he's not a progressive, lol.; 4/4/19, 11:38 AM
narayanan said...: "Well intentioned' people can pretty much fund orphanages for dozens of children in home country for what they would spend in US raising single child.

Adoption (of children from other countries and not family) is virtue signal of bleeding heart in most cases.; 4/4/19, 11:41 AM
Molly said...: (eaglebeak)

They may have made some misjudgments, but they loved her. Does she understand that part of it? She should try...; 4/4/19, 11:44 AM
Achilles said...: She needs to go.

The public schools she attended need to be burned to the ground and the earth where they stood be salted.; 4/4/19, 11:45 AM
bleh said...: This is so lame and I believe she's just a lame person by nature. If I were her parents I would've told her at an appropriate age that she was adopted. Their failure to do so is worth criticizing, in my opinion. But don't say "they robbed me of my language, race and culture" -- that's garbage. It's tribal nonsense and you see a lot of it nowadays particularly on the Left.

Should I be mad at my ancestors who moved to the USA and thereby "robbed" me of the language and culture of the Old World countries from whence they came?; 4/4/19, 11:53 AM
Ralph L said...: Cindy McCain brought that black girl home and got her morbidly obese, but at least she got to live in Arizona and not McCain's real constituency (DC).; 4/4/19, 12:02 PM
mockturtle said...: Yancey Ward asks: The woman is mentally ill. Would she have been "feeling the tug" of her Hill Billy culture if she had been adopted from a holler in Eastern Kentucky, or from an orphanage in Russia?

Interesting question. My mother's ancestors were from Appalachia and, though I had been to the southeast several times on business, I had never seen the Blue Ridge mountains or the area at leisure having lived in the NW all my life. Traveling there with my husband in an RV in the 90's, I felt a certain attraction to those mountains and have traveled there a few times since. Appalachia tugs at my heart, though I wouldn't want to live there because of the humid climate. Is it just the beauty of the area [lots of places are beautiful] or something else?; 4/4/19, 12:04 PM
Wa St Blogger said...: Adoption (of children from other countries and not family) is virtue signal of bleeding heart in most cases.

I wonder if you actually know of which you speak.; 4/4/19, 12:42 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Q22 is the sensible comment in the bunch; the rest of you want to judge a situation you haven't experienced and know fuck-all about just for the sheer enjoyment of being sanctimonious know-it-all pricks.

I'm sure that background and genetics matters so little to you that you didn't care which newborn came home from the hospital when you became parents. Right? None of you is remotely interested in your heritage or history, right? None of you has done a family tree?

I am donor conceived, which fact was withheld from me until I was 35, and my son is adopted. Neither he nor I are mentally ill, ungrateful, childish, what the fuck ever other slurs you people are throwing around for having to reconcile the loss of identity related to being raised by people who are not our genetic parents. Until you have personally experienced this, you have no right whatsoever to judge people who have.; 4/4/19, 12:46 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: (sorry, Wa State Blogger is making worthwhile contributions as well.); 4/4/19, 12:46 PM
Joel Winter said...: When/If she has children, she then needs to move to Columbia with them so that her kids aren't also "deprived of their culture."

If it's really worth that much to her. If not, then please explain why not.; 4/4/19, 12:49 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Rory:

How can an editor let this pass without dealing with the question of the parents lying about the adoption, instead of the ethnicity? That she was rifling through her parents papers is a pretty good tell that there were trust issues in the family.

Yeah -- the concealment of the adoption seems a lot more problematic to me than the race thing. That said, to be honest, I have a little bit of sympathy with the somewhat Nazified Blut und Boden approach to race that many Leftists have adopted, and that we see on full display in this sad article. I can understand why she might want to understand more about her birth parents. Or why Obama might want to learn more about his absent father. But treating Spanish as though it's her proper "Latina" language to the point that she's singing (Korean) song "Baby Shark" to her baby in Spanish is a bit much.; 4/4/19, 12:49 PM
Yancey Ward said...: "Neither he nor I are mentally ill, ungrateful, childish"

Do you resent the people who raised you without disclosing that fact to you until age 35? Did you tell them that to their faces- that you resented them for it? Did you write a public article, for all to see, declaiming that resentment of your parents? If not, then you and the essayist are not really doing the same things.; 4/4/19, 12:51 PM
Krumhorn said...: I think the HuffPo writer should show some gratitude. However, I'm not so sure she's wrong about her parents showing some shame in ethnicity.

That’s odd. I got the distinct impression that shame in ethnicity was not. the animating feature of the decisions her parents made. To the contrary, their intention was to make ethnicity and skin color irrelevant to her development. It is that very consciousness of skin color and ethnicity that has caused such historical tribal injustices over thousands of years.

Lying to her was perhaps not the best choice, but the color-blindness is supposed to be the objective. It’s just that the grievance mongers can’t abide that. Such hateful nasty little shits.

- Krumhorn; 4/4/19, 12:56 PM
mockturtle said...: Q22 is the sensible comment in the bunch; the rest of you want to judge a situation you haven't experienced and know fuck-all about just for the sheer enjoyment of being sanctimonious know-it-all pricks.

The well-smudged pot dares to call the kettle black.; 4/4/19, 12:57 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: I enjoy many of 'I Have Misplaced My Pants' comments over the years. However, when I hear someone say --

"Until you have personally experienced this, you have no right whatsoever to judge people who have..."

-- I cringe.

This is the crux of where identity politics lead: white can't speak to black, straight can't speak to gay, male can't speak to female, etc etc.

The apparatus to make this multitude of tribunals work is a bigger and more invasive government entity.

Until you get a government that does ALL of society's judging, legal and moral.

All the ducks in a row.

And you are Duck à l'orange.

I am Laslo.; 4/4/19, 1:01 PM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/4/19, 1:03 PM
Biff said...: I think the parents were wrong to lie about the adoption background, but, at the same time, I can't help but notice that this person of another "race" is, indeed, fairer skinned than just about everyone on the Italian side of my family.

I had no idea that the Latin American immigrants in the neighborhood I grew up in weren't "white" until I went to an Ivy League university. Until then, we were just friends and playmates.; 4/4/19, 1:05 PM
Michael K said...: I'm sure that background and genetics matters so little to you that you didn't care which newborn came home from the hospital when you became parents.

When my younger son was born, his mother and I speculated that he had been switched in the nursery because he didn't look like anybody in the family. Then, ten years later, another daughter was born, to my second wife, and she looked just like Joe so I know he wasn't switched. I'm being a little facetious about this and respect your feelings. I don't know how a parent would go about explaining the situation you describe.

We recently discovered an unknown cousin who had been given up for adoption at birth. Genetic testing discovered the relationship. After asking her, we put him in contact with his mother. He is in his 50s, successful and content to just know his biological mother. It was just in time as she now has severe neurological disease.

I know another family member who gave a baby top for adoption at birth. We have never found out what happened later and she died a few yeas ago., I suspect this will be less common in a few years as abortion has probably caused a holocaust of adoptions.; 4/4/19, 1:09 PM
BJM said...: Guida-Richards hasn't said if she is an Afro-Colombian, Indigenous Native American, Romani or Mestizo Colombian. Her underexposed baby photo could be any of the above, but as an adult she appears to be Colombiano Blanco and/or Mestizo which make up the largest percentage of the population.

Anyway, given the nightmare that Colombians were living through 19 years ago, and the grim future she would have faced without foreign adoption. I totes agree with DBQ, she's an ingrate.; 4/4/19, 1:19 PM
gahrie said...: you have no right whatsoever to judge people who have.

And you have no right to judge those of us who haven't?; 4/4/19, 1:20 PM
ThunderChick said...: I've got 6 adopted kids. One thing I absolutely hold to is that you do not lie to your children about who they are. By doing so you have created a clear breach of trust. If you lie about one thing what else did you lie about?"

Totally agree! My husband and I adopted three children internationally, all the same race as us, but not resembling us. Our adoption agency always stressed the importance of being honest and up front with your kids about the fact that they were adopted. We have told our kids from the beginning that they were adopted and that is how we formed our family. We have told them as much as we knew about their biological family/ birth circumstances. All of their friends and classmates know they were adopted internationally. The parents did a HUGE disservice to the woman in the article by not being truthful about her adoption circumstances. I don't blame her for feeling upset about not knowing the truth.

Adoption (of children from other countries and not family) is virtue signal of bleeding heart in most cases.

That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard and is not true in our personal experience and experiences with others we have known who have adopted children internationally.; 4/4/19, 1:24 PM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/4/19, 1:24 PM
FullMoon said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/4/19, 1:32 PM
readering said...: We're all told little white lies by our parents. Like Trump being told his dad was born in Germany and that his parents had lost his report cards but he was first in his class.; 4/4/19, 1:32 PM
Tomcc said...: I feel most fortunate that my adopted daughter seems perfectly content to know where she came from and not at all anxious to explore her origins. My (former) wife is a Romanian national and we married late. We could not conceive, but both of us wanted children. The difficulties, of domestic adoption eventually led us to think about an international adoption (or maybe it was virtue signalling). We decided to pursue an adoption from Romania. The process took about 3 years and we were finally able to bring home a delightful 18 month old child.
We were quite open with her regarding her adoption and country of origin and her mom (and grandparents) was able to pass along elements of their cultural heritage and language.
She is due to graduate from college this year.
At the time of her adoption, Romania had a requirement that no child under the age of 3 could be adopted outside of Romania. The government made an exception in her case because she is not ethnically Romanian. She was born in a city on the Black Sea which has a population of Tatars. She does not have "Caucasian" features; she has almond shaped eyes and slightly darker skin. If she decides to explore her ethnicity, she may be surprised to find out that her antecedents were Muslim.; 4/4/19, 1:41 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: Forget the racial angle--not surprising that someone would feel angry and betrayed if the fact that he was adopted was hidden from him.; 4/4/19, 1:51 PM
Greg Q said...: narayanan said...
"Well intentioned' people can pretty much fund orphanages for dozens of children in home country for what they would spend in US raising single child.

Adoption (of children from other countries and not family) is virtue signal of bleeding heart in most cases.

Stupid idiots can give money to corrupt "orphanages" where children will be starved, abused, raped, and probably die of disease from the crappy conditions, while the people running the orphanage take the money to spend on themselves.

Or, they can adopt a child I bring him or her out of hell, and get to be parents.

Fixed it for you.; 4/4/19, 1:59 PM
Greg Q said...: I Have Misplaced My Pants babbled...
Q22 is the sensible comment in the bunch; the rest of you want to judge a situation you haven't experienced and know fuck-all about just for the sheer enjoyment of being sanctimonious know-it-all pricks.

I'm sure that background and genetics matters so little to you that you didn't care which newborn came home from the hospital when you became parents. Right? None of you is remotely interested in your heritage or history, right? None of you has done a family tree?

1: I have ancestors from multiple countries. I am an American, and proud of it. If you're not proud of it, GTFO
2: I have stop-children who I love very much. If I had a biological child, yes, I'd want to bring the correct one home.

But if I found out at age 6 that the wrong one had been brought home, I wouldn't stop loving him or her.

3: My heritage is America. Ben Franklin, George Washington, the Revolutionary War, the Civil War. All those are my heritage, though I did not have any ancestors in America during those wars, and am not descended from either man.

Her real parents, as opposed to her biological parents, gave her a huge trade up. She agrees it was a huge trade up, since she hasn't left here to go back to Colombia.

She's a wretched, ungrateful, brat; 4/4/19, 2:07 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: I have to agree with ThunderChick here. Parents shouldn't lie to their children about anything that concerns the child personally. (A example of something that deserves to be passed over in silence might be e.g. problems a parent had with now-deceased members of their family, or with a rarely-seen sibling.) It's hard for me to think of any situation in which out and out lying to a child would be the lesser evil.

I've known lots of foreign-born folks raised by white Americans (Koreans, mostly). They seemed fine to me, high achievers in most if not all cases. When there is a problem in an adoptive scenario, like here, it seems to depend on how neurotic one or more of the family members are, not their race, ethnicity, native language, or country of origin.

That said, I also agree the the great majority of commenters here that this woman is a miserable, ungrateful, whiny bitch, and well deserving of spending the rest of her life in her own company.; 4/4/19, 2:18 PM
Michael K said...: that his parents had lost his report cards but he was first in his class.

I didn't know you knew the family that well. When did you meet? Or is it all in your head again?; 4/4/19, 3:07 PM
Fernandinande said...: None of you is remotely interested in your heritage or history, right? None of you has done a family tree?

Not all that much and no.

Neither he nor I are mentally ill

The crazy Colombian Indian chick said she was crazy.

Until you have personally experienced this, you have no right whatsoever to judge people who have.

Until you have experienced not having a fucked-up family you have no right whatsoever to judge people who don't have fucked-up families like yours.; 4/4/19, 3:20 PM
Tina Trent said...: Victimization curation. It should be an Etsy store.; 4/4/19, 3:54 PM
Tina Trent said...: "A little blonde in a pink dress" attacked her for being dark-skinned in kindergarten.

It must have been Nellie Olsen.; 4/4/19, 3:57 PM
Freeman Hunt said...: So no one here, save a handful, would be upset to find out that you were adopted after being told that you were not?; 4/4/19, 3:57 PM
Clyde said...: Oh, for heaven's sake! This ditz is an American citizen despite the fact that she wasn't born here, and didn't have to sneak across the border. She has won the fucking lottery, and she's still bitching. She needs to STFU and show a little gratitude for the fact that she is living here. Or she can always pack up and go back to Colombia and reclaim her race, language and culture if she likes. Nobody is stopping her. Vaya con Dios, chica!; 4/4/19, 4:07 PM
Rabel said...: "I am a 25-year-old stay at home spoonie mama with Migraines, PCOS, IBS, Bipolar and PTSD."

"Since I have migraines, endometriosis, and an autoimmune disease you’ve probably never heard of, these disorders keep me grounded."

"I get wild though. I will admit that things do get crazy off meds."

"My husband can attest that I am a handful, and he prefers me medicated (what hubby wouldn’t?) but I’m not some loony psycho who should have CPS called on her."

"I have happy pills, mood stabilizing pills, and anti-anxiety meds (in addition to my non-mental health related meds) that I take every single day."

"Throughout my childhood, I was surrounded by 99-percent white students, in a white middle-class neighborhood, in my white family. The only brown people I really saw were, well ― nobody."

"As a child, I wasn’t allowed to hang out with other Latinos ― maybe they feared I would find out my true nationality."

1. She's nuts
2. She's a liar.
3. She has two small children and a blog giving advice on parenting.
4. She blows the top off the y-axis of the hot/crazy matrix.; 4/4/19, 4:30 PM
Balfegor said...: Re: Freeman Hunt:

So no one here, save a handful, would be upset to find out that you were adopted after being told that you were not?

I think a lot of people would be upset, and understandably so! I am a little curious about the fake birth certificate she claims she found, listing her adoptive parents as her parents (??). But that's not what the author is pointing at as the main source of her distress. She's pissed off that wasn't raised as a Latina, speaking Spanish (the language seems like a big deal to her), and with lots of "brown" people around her.; 4/4/19, 4:55 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I enjoy many of 'I Have Misplaced My Pants' comments over the years. However, when I hear someone say --

"Until you have personally experienced this, you have no right whatsoever to judge people who have..."

-- I cringe.

I agree, to be honest, and I hesitated in writing that, but stand by it, because so many of these commenters feel completely justified in judging her subjective experience and feelings, which is all she is reporting.

Emotionally/socially mature people have the humility and compassion to accept that others who have experiences they have not had may have feelings and viewpoints they don't grasp. Listening without judgement is a tenet of every religion for a reason. Being generally unable to do that makes people assholes.

I suppose all you blackhearted old cranks would be ok with informing my son that he should wake up every dayoh so grateful that white people adopted him and saved him from those brown drug addicts who were his fucking parents. People care about who their parents are ~ is this some amazing truth you've never heard of? Goddamn you people can be obtuse.

"When a trout rising to a fly gets hooked on a line and finds himself unable to swim about freely, he begins with a fight which results in struggles and splashes and sometimes an escape. Often, of course, the situation is too tough for him. In the same way the human being struggles with his environment and with the hooks that catch him. Sometimes he masters his difficulties; sometimes they are too much for him. His struggles are all that the world sees and it naturally misunderstands them. It is hard for a free fish to understand what is happening to a hooked one." –Karl A. Menninger; 4/4/19, 5:06 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: Let me put it another way. Those of you who can take the identity of your parents and your background for granted, maybe don't need to pass judgement on the pain and adjustment of those who can't.; 4/4/19, 5:14 PM
MB said...: I feel ashamed for this person, who apparently feels no shame.; 4/4/19, 5:38 PM
Wa St Blogger said...: narayanan said...
"Well intentioned' people can pretty much fund orphanages for dozens of children in home country for what they would spend in US raising single child.

Adoption (of children from other countries and not family) is virtue signal of bleeding heart in most cases.

I have to agree with the response given by Greg Q., but I would like to add:

It isn't just the orphanage existence that impacts these children in orphanages. There is significant stigmatization, lack of opportunity and the prospect of short but miserable lives. In addition, there is a world of difference between growing up at what amounts to a boarding school, verses a loving family where parents actually care about you. The emotional deficit that comes from living without a family is immeasurable. There is simply NO substitute for being loved by a parent.

While it is true I could feed and house a lot more orphans with the cost of one adoption, I will say that the bureaucratic hoops and expenses one goes through to adopt is why it is so expensive. I have adopted 6 times, and EACH and EVERY time I have to go though the exact same process. A new home study. re-finger printed, re-background checked, everything. I cannot even reuse a birth certificate as I have to order one that is dated less than 6 months prior. I'd have adopted a dozen more if I could cut out all the duplication of paperwork.

As for the cost of raising them, why don't you try selling that formula? You can tell people how many kids they can help by not having any of their own and sending the money overseas instead. Or if it is too late and they have kids already, they can team up with their entire neighborhood, convert the regular schools into boarding schools, and just keep everyone's kids there all the time. The savings would be tremendous. They could down-size their own home and with the saving support other kids with the efficiency of the new kid facility. Why, I think this would be rally popular! I mean like Green New Deal Popular!
Same with pet ownership . Don't have your own dog! It's much more efficient and cost effective to just donate to a shelter than can house them in bulk!

What a completely brain dead thought you had there.; 4/4/19, 6:03 PM
Krumhorn said...: So no one here, save a handful, would be upset to find out that you were adopted after being told that you were not?

I agree. Her parents shouldn't have lied to her. I'm quite sure that when the truth came to the surface, she looked into the mirror and had no idea who was looking back at her. It's fair to be upset about the lies and the resulting disorientation, but I'm not sure that adequately explains her venomous characterization of their motivations.

In spite of the lies, I like their motives better than I like hers.

-Krumhorn; 4/4/19, 6:36 PM
n.n said...: Diversity implies color judgments (e.g. racism). Assimilation does not preclude retention of history, culture, language, and lineage.; 4/4/19, 7:49 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: " Listening without judgement is a tenet of every religion for a reason. Being generally unable to do that makes people assholes."

I agree (and thank you for the thoughtful response).

Unfortunately, a lot of people don't make it through childhood without trauma(s); some are more extreme than others.

Some have terrible diseases, some incur terrible injuries, some lose their parents to accidents, illness and suicide, some are beaten and broken, some are mentally challenged or mentally ill.

And some are born in shithole countries.

It is not her feelings that irk me -- it is her choosing to air them in media. I can't help but think she wants to hurt her parents in a way that she feels they hurt her.

Being unable to listen without judgement may make one an asshole, but the inability to quietly forgive generally makes one a passive-aggressive asshole.

I am Laslo.; 4/4/19, 8:19 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Laslo said: "Being unable to listen without judgement may make one an asshole, but the inability to quietly forgive generally makes one a passive-aggressive asshole."

Very true. The older I get, the easier it is to forgive.

I am just a passenger on the Bozo bus, like everyone else.

The hard part is that some whom I would thank for their forgiveness, are no longer here.

Sad!

I suppose the moral is that time is of the essence, especially when it comes to forgiveness.; 4/4/19, 8:31 PM
Greg Q said...: Blogger I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
I enjoy many of 'I Have Misplaced My Pants' comments over the years. However, when I hear someone say --

"Until you have personally experienced this, you have no right whatsoever to judge people who have..."

-- I cringe.

I agree, to be honest, and I hesitated in writing that, but stand by it, because so many of these commenters feel completely justified in judging her subjective experience and feelings, which is all she is reporting.

Emotionally/socially mature people have the humility and compassion to accept that others who have experiences they have not had may have feelings and viewpoints they don't grasp. Listening without judgement is a tenet of every religion for a reason. Being generally unable to do that makes people assholes.

I suppose all you blackhearted old cranks would be ok with informing my son that he should wake up every dayoh so grateful that white people adopted him and saved him from those brown drug addicts who were his fucking parents. People care about who their parents are ~ is this some amazing truth you've never heard of? Goddamn you people can be obtuse.

1: You've been taken out of a bad situation, and put into a better one. If you're not damn grateful for that, you should be thrown back into the bad situation, and left there.

She's pissed that she's not Colombian? Fine. She can GTFO and go back to Colombia.
Not willing to do that? Then thank your real parents (the ones who adopted and raised you) for their incredible generosity, and STFU.

2: We "grasp" her feelings just fine: she's an inconsiderate, ungrateful, asshole. She was given a winning lottery ticket, and is bitching about the skin color of the people who gave it to her.; 4/5/19, 10:55 AM
Nichevo said...: She should be angry at her parents. Why didn't they install a lock on the refrigerator?; 4/6/19, 1:15 AM