Sometimes Racism Hides Behind Friendly Curiosity

“Why are you kissing that child?”

The Los Angeles police officer, dispatched to investigate a stolen car parked in front of my house, barked the question as I stood holding and smooching my 3-year-old daughter, whom I adopted as a toddler in China in 1994.

Stunned by his implication--that I had no business kissing her--I could only answer feebly: “Because she’s my daughter.” His disbelieving eyes peered first at her dark skin and almond-shaped eyes, then at my blond hair and pale face. Then he said: “The father must be--what?--Japanese?” Luckily, at that moment, my daughter defused the tension by burbling “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.”

Chalk up another episode in the life of one of Los Angeles’ growing ranks of trans-racial families. This one tops my collection of strange or insensitive or downright ignorant comments from strangers. But there are plenty of others.

There was the Macy’s sales associate who said, “You must be the baby sitter.” And the countless others who have wondered: “Is she yours?” “Where did she come from?” “How much did she cost?” “Does she speak with a Chinese accent?”

For more than 2 1/2 years, Nora Tai-Xiu and I have experienced the probing eyes and questions. Adoption experts call them “grocery-store scenes,” in which parents or other family members are approached in the children’s presence and asked about their origins.

Until lately, my standard response has been to recap the high points of how Nora and I got together. I’ve felt obliged to do this in part because, as often as not, the person who asks is seeking information about overseas adoption, and I love proselytizing. Plus, as my friends know, I still get a huge kick out of telling our story. It pleases me to think that I might be helping someone else start down a path that has led me to such overwhelming joy--and, in fact, my experience has encouraged friends and acquaintances to pursue trans-racial adoptions, many of them in China.

But, with my daughter having just passed her fourth birthday and becoming much more aware of the physical differences between us, I’ve been rethinking my candid approach with strangers. As the experts see it, it’s not really my story to tell. It’s Nora’s.

For a time, I considered this a harsh stance. After all, most strangers who comment are merely curious. But adoption experts view the questions as an intrusive and not-so-subtle form of racism. However well meant a remark--”My, what beautiful almond eyes she has!”--it still serves to highlight the differences and undermine a child’s sense of belonging to the family.

“Answering such questions in any depth at all tells the child that he needs to be explained or justified,” wrote Holly van Gulden, a nationally recognized adoption speaker and counselor, in her book “Real Parents, Real Children.”

Choosing not to answer, she added, helps teach your child how to protect her personal boundaries. And instilling some reserve in nonwhite children, Van Gulden and others say, can help prepare them to deal with the more overt forms of racism they will inevitably encounter as they grow up.

Cheri Register, a Minneapolis educational consultant and the author of “Are Those Kids Yours?” recalled the day she “resigned from the freak show” when she was beset at the grocery store by a woman who plied her with irritating questions about her two Korean-born daughters: Are they sisters? How long have you had them? Finally, the woman asked: Do you have any of your own?

“I have these two daughters,” Register responded. “They are my own.”

One single mom years ago, when trans-racial adoption was far rarer than it is today, had the ideal retort for a woman who asked, “Does she look like her father?” about the mother’s Indian-born daughter. “I don’t know who the father is, so I couldn’t really say.” I’ve occasionally tried a similar rejoinder, when I’m feeling mischievous and revel in seeing a shocked look cross the questioner’s face.

A woman I met at an adoption conference said that misunderstandings about adoption can lead to sticky situations even when the children are of the same race. The woman, a dark Caucasian, told of taking her adopted blond son to a Bay Area restaurant. She noticed that a couple at a nearby table kept staring. After arriving back home, she answered a knock at the door to find a San Rafael police officer, who sheepishly asked her whether the boy was indeed her son. The couple had apparently reported her as a possible kidnapper.

The topic of insensitive or dumb remarks gets quite a bit of attention among adoptive parents in Internet chat groups and adoption organizations, such as our local chapter of Families With Children From China. One Caucasian woman shared online two of her favorite questions: “When she grows up, will she look like you?”--from a 6-year-old--and a less charming query from a 40-year-old: “Are you going to tell her she is adopted?” To that, the woman replied: “No, we’re hoping we get a dumb one and she never notices.”

Last Christmas, Nora and I had a tree-trimming party. Of the children there, two were girls from China, one was a boy of Vietnamese and Korean heritage whose mother is Caucasian and whose father is Japanese American, one was an adopted Caucasian boy whose blondness contrasts sharply with the appearance of his dark-haired parents, and the other was a girl whose single mother visited a sperm bank. Other neighbors--an Italian American woman, her African American husband and their biological daughter--could not be there. I hadn’t planned for my guest list to look like the United Nations; it just turned out that way.

And it often does these days in Los Angeles and other cities big and small. I guess I wonder when nontraditional and mixed-race families will become so commonplace that people will begin to assume that Nora is my daughter.

As I wrestle with these issues, I still find it difficult to follow the advice of other adoptive parents or experts such as Linda Bothun, a Washington teacher and lecturer whose newsletter promotes positive attitudes about adoption in the media and who agrees with others that an ideal way to handle nosy questions is to turn things around. If someone asks, “Where did you get her?” respond with: “Why do you ask?” That helps restore the balance of power, rather than leave the adoptive family in the spotlight. The details are, after all, none of their business, Bothun said.

Maybe it’s not their business, but I happen to think that these new ways of forming families eventually will be the business of us all. For now, when people ask incredulously, “Is she your daughter?,” I just smile and say emphatically and proudly: “Yes!”