Writes Elizabeth Spiers, who was adopted, in "I Have a Pretty Good Idea Why Michael Oher Is Angry" (NYT).
By the way, do you know what the ocean is? The ocean. There's only one. Did you know?
August 28, 2023
"It is often in the interests of adoptive parents and the adoption industry to imply that adoption is charity work..."
"... rather than something that benefits the adoptive parents as well. This perception of adoption as an act of altruism is exponentially more pronounced when Black kids are adopted by white parents. Mythologizing the role of those parents goes beyond just suggesting that adoptees are second-best choices to biological children. It implies that Black children need to be rescued by white people, and that makes white people feel good about doing it.
This is often referred to as 'white savior syndrome,' which makes it sound like mild arrogance or a convenient delusion. I believe that’s too generous. The idea that Black children are automatically better off with nice white parents than their own biological parents is just white supremacy, which does not have to be produced by official hate groups to be insidious. It is often banal, and so commonplace that its ubiquitousness renders it just part of the background.... The Tuohys don’t regard themselves as racist... but the book and the film portray Mr. Oher in ways that serve to reinforce racist stereotypes.... ...Mr. Oher is referred to repeatedly as a 'freak of nature,' and... not mentally capable of understanding simple things. In the book, Mr. Oher is portrayed as literally not knowing what an ocean is...."
Writes Elizabeth Spiers, who was adopted, in "I Have a Pretty Good Idea Why Michael Oher Is Angry" (NYT).
Writes Elizabeth Spiers, who was adopted, in "I Have a Pretty Good Idea Why Michael Oher Is Angry" (NYT).
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Ann, actually there are 2 oceans on Earth. The larger one is about 400 miles beneath the Earth's crust in ringwoodite.
https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/there-ocean-below-your-feet#:~:text=The%20finding%2C%20published%20in%20Science,surface%2C%20is%20trapped%20inside%20rocks.
We’ve adopted, white people adopting black children is nearly non-existent. Most black women with unplanned pregnancies get abortions. I haven’t seen the film but I follow NFL football and Oher has a barely workable IQ. He had a halfway decent career but still had 4 kids out of wedlock. He probably needs money
I agree that it is absurd to describe adoption as altruism, as though adopted parents are not primarily (usually solely) motivated by the desire to have a child that their own biology won’t grant them. But the rest of this quote gives an indication as to why that line is sometimes wheeled out—the demonization of cross-racial adoption, especially in the case of white couples adopting a black child, would naturally make those parents defensive. They’ll reach for every justification they can to preserve their family, even though they shouldn’t have to and, but for people like Elizabeth Spiers, wouldn’t have to.
“ By the way, do you know what the ocean is? The ocean.”
The audience of a Led Zeppelin concert?
Now there’s a case of whites getting rich “adopting” black…music.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6XIQR4p30Wo
Today’s Black kids living with Black parents also don’t seem to know much about “the ocean”:
“A little girl plays in the living room while her father talks on a business call. She looks up from her toy boat and innocently asks him how big the ocean is. Realizing that his daughter has never seen the sea, he decides to answer her question the best way he can: by taking her there. The two hop into their Genesis GV80 and begin their journey. They drive past the skyscrapers near their home, through lush green forests, and finally reach sandy shores just as the sunset casts a beautiful glow over the ocean.”
"Ann, actually there are 2 oceans on Earth. The larger one is about 400 miles beneath the Earth's crust in ringwoodite."
I wrote about this recently on the blog. I don't think this is classed as an ocean. Notice in the text you link to: "synthesized ringwoodite, the blue mineral that may contain oceans' worth of water." The amount of water is as much as an ocean but it is contained within rock and could become an ocean if the water were squeezed out.
How would I know?? I am not a Oceanographer!!
Spiers let few facts, such as what Oher wrote in his memoir, get in the way of her opportunity to talk about herself.
Is the fear of your child being raised by people outside of your race one reason women choose to abort, if they can’t raise the child themselves?
Look up Rule of Acquisition #285.
The Ferengi knew a thing or two, the greedy little big eared bastiches.
Surely, THE CURE is mandatory abortions for ALL Blacks, Queers, and Leftists in general..
I mean; This ISN'T My Idea, it's the Left's idea.. Isn't IT?
Seven seas--and one ocean to rule them all.
I found the linked to info about the ocean fascinating...esp. the fact that " A far greater percentage of the surfaces of the moon and the planet Mars has been mapped and studied than of our own ocean floor."
I'm sure that it sucks to be adopted. It has to hurt to know your parents didn't love you enough to keep you. At least that's the way a child sees it. A child can't fathom the idea that maybe your parents or parent felt they didn't have the ability to care for them and chose to give them life over death. And, I suppose you never feel like you are really a member of the family who has taken you in. I can see how that would cause some deep emotional wounds that would be difficult to overcome, even though I was not adopted. However, those emotional wounds CAN be overcome, unlike the finality of abortion. It seems that some gratitude is in order for people like the author of that opinion piece.
The football player case, however, is completely different. I think his resentment doesn't stem so much from being adopted as being used.
Aren't all adopted kids presumed to be better-off with their adoptive parents than with their natural parents?
How do you end up as an orphan?
1. Your parents have died. Dead people aren't good at anything, let alone parenting.
2. Your parents gave you up for adoption, they thought you'd be better off with other parents.
3. You were taken away from your parents because they were deemed unfit or abusive.
@Breezy 40% of all abortions in the US are by black women, nearly 5x the amount of white women
“ I am not particularly lucky, or I wouldn’t have needed to be adopted in the first place.”
Yes. Your lifetime luck value is determined at birth.
Michael Oher had white people as conservators and he still got put in the school where he got no education and had a movie made about him where he still got ripped off by Hollywood
Another ungrateful adoptee. With the costs associated with raising a child, there’s a great deal of “charity” that is lost in the vituperative mix.
David French rebuttal incoming.
Spiers was adopted, but she hasn't been an adoptive parent, and her understanding of the process is nonsense. Applicants are treated as supplicants, begging for favors. The system sees the parents as recipients of charity, not givers.
Tell you what, fix the fact that 75% of Black kids grow up with no father in the home first, then we'll deal with White people adopting Black kids.
“The idea that Black children are automatically better off with nice white parents than their own biological parents is just white suppremacy. “. If you include the word automatically then this is true as a tautology.
If he were adopted formally would his parents be required by law to give him an equal share of inheritance? I thought you could leave a child out of the will if you wanted to. So damages may be small?
Adopting is worlds better than fostering just because of the paperwork. A friend has taken the care of 4 children ( ages 7-2 ) from a grand daughter because said grand daughter had them taken away for good reason. My goodness the paperwork that is involved. Forced conference calls with the parents ( when they are out of jail/medical care, weekly home checks, no baby sitters allowed who have not been fingerprinted and vetted.
Anyone would choose adoption just to make it stop.
The football player case, however, is completely different. I think his resentment doesn't stem so much from being adopted as being used.
I bet it has more to do with the fact that he's already blown his football millions and is now broke like most ex-professional athletes.
Not being able to contemplate what the ocean is is scarcely confined to black children raised in inland environments. Fifty years ago as a Spec 4 assigned to an agency in the Pentagon one of our lifer sergeants go orders for Okinawa. He was trying to get his car transported there and having trouble. One of the young female admin assistants — white — asked why he couldn’t just drive it there.
"I Have a Pretty Good Idea Why Michael Oher Is Angry"
At his biological parents, right? I mean, if remember correctly, his "father" was nowhere to be seen, and his mother preferred drugs over caring for kids. But I'd be happy to learn if the mean white supremacist conservators stole Michael from his loving caring black family.
"More than 80 percent of the ocean has never been mapped, explored, or even seen by humans."
Color me skeptical. Define "mapped". As to "seen", well yeah, what do you expect?
Iman said...
Another ungrateful adoptee.
Saved by someone who probably can't imagine going through their entire life expected to be grateful
Reading about adoption issues from people who have never adopted almost always get my dander up. It's like reading about issues important to flyover people from urban elites. Anyway, that's all I have time to say. I have to take my kids to there therapy session so they can understand the resentment they have over their parents white savior complex.
“Saved by someone who probably can't imagine going through their entire life expected to be grateful.”
Crack… ALL of us should go through life feeling grateful… for all the sacrifice of those who came before us… who made our lives possible. We aren’t owed anything. It doesn’t take a belief in crystals or new age thinking to come to grips with reality.
"One of the young female admin assistants — white — asked why he couldn’t just drive it there."
Well, that's cuz the ocean isn't mapped yet!
This is possibly yet another area where our betters have cultivated a backdrop of racial division at the expense of the well-being or better-being of all involved.
"The ocean"
The concept is being invoked to advance the notion that Stanford and Berkeley belong in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Adoption... the third choice, is not charity, but it is charitable work.
Mom and dad raising their conceived children is also charitable work. Thanks mom and dad. Happy mother and father's day, respectively, and every other day, too.
What about the idea that black children are automatically better off going to school with white children? Is that white supremacy too? A whole lot of white people would back up off THAT supremacy if given the chance. Such a program needs a nice catchy slogan. How about “integration yesterday, integration today, segregation tomorrow!”??
I was close friends with a woman of color for many years. Her mother died when she was young. She went to live with her grandmother. Then her grandmother died. Then she went to live with a succession of foster parents. The foster parents were all people of color. They were, according to her, in it for the money. She wasn't abused in any way, but neither was she loved nor did she ever feel that there was anyone in her corner.....Her early life was somewhat screwed up, but she settled down and became successful in her career as a nurse. Then she died of cancer....The moral of the story is that there are no morals in anybody's story. Life just happens and then you die.
"Writes Elizabeth Spiers, who was adopted, ..."
That clearly worked out well.
Gator said...
40% of all abortions in the US are by black women, nearly 5x the amount of white women
which is, The ENTIRE Purpose of abortion.
Don't like that statement? How about The ENTIRE Purpose of Planned Parenthood?
The Real Question IS: WHY are black women committing racial suicide?
Oh, I did not read the article. With that said, the woman is a fool. There is literally nobody in the world that says all black children will be better off if they were raised by white parents. No one is going into black household and snatching children to be adopted by white people. This is not the movie get out. Most rational people would agree that if the child is in a destructive situation, it is better to remove them from that destructive situation. This is the situation with adoption. No one is taking children from loving environments where they will thrive. Any child I think will be best, if in an environment, where he is loved, and supported and given appropriate resources. ideally and in nearly all cases, this is the biologic parent. Rarely the situation is so destructive that it is not appropriate for the children to stay with biological family. It is simply bizarre to me that the quthor get it does not understanding pretends not to understand this.
Oh, I did not read the article. With that said, the woman is a fool. There is literally nobody in the world that says all black children will be better off if they were raised by white parents. No one is going into black household and snatching children to be adopted by white people. This is not the movie get out. Most rational people would agree that if the child is in a destructive situation, it is better to remove them from that destructive situation. This is the situation with adoption. No one is taking children from loving environments where they will thrive. Any child I think will be best, if in an environment, where he is loved, and supported and given appropriate resources. ideally and in nearly all cases, this is the biologic parent. Rarely the situation is so destructive that it is not appropriate for the children to stay with biological family. It is simply bizarre to me that the quthor get it does not understanding pretends not to understand this.
I think Michael Oher is angry because the people who *say* they adopted him actually did not, and instead put themselves in charge of any decision he could legally make. They ended up with more control over him than they would have over an adult son. And they don't have to treat him (financially) like their child. And when they were called out on it, they didn't just say "Oh, we shouldn't have done that".
I'm sure he feels lied to by people he thought loved him, and that makes him look suspiciously at everything else they've done.
As is typical of liberal female writers, Elizabeth Spiers does not let facts get in the way of her Narrative. Things she gets wrong include (but are not limited to) the following …
First, it’s not clear that altruism had that much to do with the actions of Sean Tuohy. He found an enormously talented football player in the local high school who was effectively homeless and likely to be forced to drop out of school. He wanted the child to succeed in high school only so that the boy could be recruited for the football team at “Ole Miss,” Toby’s alma mater. Any altruism was merely implied by the script of the Hollywood film.
Second, Oher was never adopted — under NCAA rules the University of Mississippi would not have been permitted to offer him a scholarship because Sean Tuohy was an Ole Miss alum (and varsity athlete). Hence the conservatorship. There was never any secret about the conservatorship, and there is ample evidence that Oher has known that all along. For one thing it’s why his surname is Oher and not Tuohy.
Third, if the Tuohy family had not taken him under their wing the most likely path forward for Oher would be dropping out of high school, recruitment into a gang as its enforcer, and his eventual murder at the hands of a rival gang. (Not the only path, merely the most likely one.). So he may very well owe them his life. He wouldn’t be living in a $1.3 million dollar house and be worth an estimated $16 million, he’d be in a pauper’s grave in his old home town.
Fourth, the producers of the movie “The Blind Side” have stated publicly that Oher and the Tuohy family received a lump sum payout just under $800,000. Irrespective of how much the movie grossed, the notion that the Tuohy family “made millions” because of the movie is simply wrong.
Fifth, if Oher doesn’t like the way he was portrayed in the movie (and he says he doesn’t) his issue is obviously with the Hollywood scriptwriters and the movie’s director, not with the Tuohy family.
Michael Oher is trying to shak . e down the white couple who helped him. I guess he has blown all that NFL money and knows that family is rich.
I've read the book. I have no insider knowledge if everything is accurate. The book is an excellent read. I have no idea what the movie rights situation is or what Oher received, if anything.
Oher is a "freak of nature" because he is a freak of nature. He's huge and strong, which has been to his benefit in many cases. Seems like an odd objection.
As to not being able to understand simple things, two questions. First, is this inaccurate? If it is factual, I don't see the point. Second, probably all of us misunderstand simple things for the reason that it was not relevant to us. If you are a poor boy living in the ghetto with a barely there mother and a barely functioning school system, lots of things that would be taken for granted by most people are not especially relevant. Simple things that were never explained to you will remain mysteries until such a day when the information is revealed. For that matter, I suspect Oher has a much better understanding of some things that I know nothing, and they are probably simple to him.
Then she went to live with a succession of foster parents. The foster parents were all people of color. They were, according to her, in it for the money
When I was at Dartmouth I met a girl who had been raised in foster care. She said she would rather have been in an orphanage. She was white and getting Master's degree.
Now, let's revisit the "Native American" adoptees being forced back to squalid cess pools, aka "reservations', because "culture"!
Oher wasn’t adopted.
He also played 8 years in the NFL.
This writer can’t relate to him at all.
The idea that Black children are automatically better off with nice white parents than their own biological parents is just white supremacy, which does not have to be produced by official hate groups to be insidious.
Hear that, white couples thinking about adopting? If you think a potential adoptee will be better off with you than with their biological parents (who, for some reason, aren't actually parenting the child in question) then choosing to adopt that child is ENACTING WHITE SUPREMACY and there's (literally) nothing worse than that these days. Better be safe and just leave 'em, I guess.
Barak Obama was raised by his white mother's rich parents after his nonwhite father abandoned him/them, wasn't he? Hey come to think of it Colin Kaepernick was raised by white adoptive parents.
Charlize Theron is raising her adopted Black child as a girl--she said something like she knew her "daughter" was trans at 3 years old. Charlize is from (South) Africa herself though so she probably gets a pass. I'm not sure about Angelina Jolie and Madonna.
I'm pretty sure Oher wouldn't have had the life he has had if the racist couple had left him to the streets . . . but I'm a MCSWM who was neither adopted nor has adopted, so what do I know? (Something about fools and money.)
Two W/white faculty colleagues that I know of--one in history, the other in music--adopted KOC; my boss, a B/black woman my age, married late and adopted two B/black girls, almost teens by then.
I wish then all well.
What about the idea that black children are automatically better off going to school with white children? Is that white supremacy too? A whole lot of white people would back up off THAT supremacy if given the chance. Such a program needs a nice catchy slogan. How about “integration yesterday, integration today, segregation tomorrow!”??
@Oso Negro, that was back then. Today the position of Progressives has reverted to the Democrats’ slogan in 1963: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Please make the appropriate changes in your worldview.
"The idea that Black children are automatically better off with nice white parents than their own biological parents is just white supremacy, which does not have to be produced by official hate groups to be insidious. It is often banal, and so commonplace that its ubiquitousness (sic) renders it just part of the background...."
It's disgusting and lazy, the practice of writing about an unidentified "they" who are "all" asserting that black children are better off with white parents than with their own parents. Who, exactly, is saying this? And if the NYT writer is referring to Oher, the whole point of the Tuohys taking him in was that Oher was literally not WITH his biological parents, at all. He was living on the street, his mom didn't want him or couldn't take him, however you want to frame it.
My white gay friend adopted two black toddler girls, from two different mothers. Their mothers loved them but couldn't take care of them and voluntarily relinquished them. If their own biological mothers judged that these girls were not better off with their black parents, how is that racist? Oh, I forgot. It's racist because everything is racist.
I know of a white couple who adopted a black child as they were desperate for kids - any shade would do. They went on to adopt again, this time they lucked into a white child. They didn't realize how much they'd been led down the garden path by the agency and their "placement expert" until the whole George Floyd fiasco in 2020.
Suddenly they had an angry teen on their hands, struggling to make sense of the event and its aftermath. They had no idea what this child was feeling or the things she experienced going to school every day, struggling to find a place for herself in a very white suburban environment. It wasn't enough that they understood the common issues of being a teen and all the angst that went along with it. They were completely out of their element dealing with a teen who was a POC. It took a lot of soul searching and communication to get through it. As far as I know they all came through largely unscathed.
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