FacePalm: Special Edition
The following offensive adoption merchandise was discovered over the weekend warranting this Special Edition.
Many adoptive parents want to share the love by creating tee shirts and other merchandise spotlighting the new addition to their family. Never mind that doing so alerts the prying eyes of the world to their new child’s private history. Doubtless these shirts are intended to be cutesy or sweet, but they aren’t about adoption. They’re about satisfying the emotional needs of the prospective adoptive parents or the adoptive parents, and have nothing to do with the best interests of the adoptee. All of them should be banished or burned. Especially this one. No other shirt has ever come close to the unbelievable offensiveness of this one, http://weloveourlucy.blogspot.com/2011/01/wess-first-gifts-arriveand-special.html sent to an adoptive family of a child from Ethiopia by the owner of the adoption agency, Celebrate Children International (according to the blog writers)! The shirt reads “Special Delivery from Africa” – and it has a picture of a monkey on it!
Are you kidding me right now? This post has to be the most RIDICULOUS attack I have seen to date.
I initially came to this site hoping to see supportive encouragement for reforms that ARE neeeded within the adoption community. So far all I have seen are negative attacks and self-serving propsals.
There is no mention here of the fact that it is obvious in the mentioned blog post that the agency provided numerous gifts, which all appeared to honor the child's heritage and to me that seems the sign of an agency that "gets it".
Adopting internationally rarely allows for the obviousness of adoption to remain private. If we as adoptive families do not chrish and honor our children's heritage, please tell me where you expect them to learn from?
Crabbina's response:
It really doesn't matter if other gifts demonstrating some sort of understanding of the adoption process came in the package with the tee shirt. The shirt is still grossly offensive and racist. It is even more offensive and racist having been sent by a white person who runs her business with black people in Africa.
Have you asked any adult Ethiopians what they think of that tee shirt? Or any of your black friends? Please feel free to share their comments here.
And can you also please explain how an adoption agency owner giving a client a racist tee shirt is somehow showing adoptive families how to "chrish [sic] and honor our children's heritage"? Since when precisely have tee shirts become heritage-honorees? Do you think that John Q. Public is going to see that shirt and somehow make the leap from monkey = Africa = international adoption = deep understanding of cultural heritage?
And if "adopting internationally rarely allows for the obviousness of adoption to remain private," why do you care whose business it is? Do you live with a child of color in a lily-white community? Is it anybody's business whether or not this child came to a family through international adoption or domestic adoption or even biologically? My sister married a black man and she doesn't feel the need to put a "Half-white/Half-Black/Made in America!" tee shirt on her obviously black children. She honors their heritage as she sees fit. She doesn't feel the need to trumpet her private life to the world.
If you really want to honor your adoptees' heritage, you could live with them in a predominantly black community with many expatriate Ethiopians (if you don't already). Or you could get your advice from adult adoptees or citizens of the same heritage for advice. Call me a cynic, but I think the advice I'd get from an Ethiopian about heritage would be a lot more valuable than a tee shirt from an adoption agency.
I just came across your blog. I took a look at the blog post linked, and can't find anything saying that the t-shirt has a monkey on it. Where did you get that information?
This is Rally. Beth, it looks like they removed the picture of the shirt and their son holding it up from the blog. LOL. Guess it wasn't so great after all. I think they got a lot of traffic from this blog to it and that probably influenced the decision to take it down.
This is Rally again. Their blog has copyright wording all over it so we did not post the photo at the time of this post when we happened upon the photo. It was accessible for quite a while. We have a saved image of it. It even has their name of their blog emblazoned across it, which is unlike other people's personal blogs. It was the 7th photo down and the shirt that the boy was holding up out of the CCI package had "Special Delivery" in brown outlined letters, then in the middle was a picture of a brown monkey and underneath "From Ethiopia" in brown outlined letters. You could email the blog owner if you wish to see the photo and hopefully you would be satisfied with the response.
This is ridiculous . . . Why is a monkey inherently offensive or racist? There are in fact MANY monkeys in Ethiopia . . . just as there are kangaroos in Australia and penguins in the Arctic . . . I have asked a few black friends and one said it was harmless and the other found it offensive . . . It's a matter of perspective and perceiving the intent of the giver. I am sure the adoption agency meant no harm, nor did the parent perceive any harm . . . It's only uber sensitive people hell bent on finding something to be ticked off about all the time who are going to label a harmless gesture as racist . . .
This is Rally. Are you for real? You have never heard a racist equate a Black person with a monkey? This is not just a shirt with a monkey and a map. This is a shirt representing the special delivery(child) WITH a picture of a monkey.
Even if you are young and have never heard of this slur, surely you have seen dozens of offensively racist cartoons equating our US president with a monkey.
That is quite an assumption that you make of the adoption agency. Have you seen what has been in the news in the past 24 hours about this agency? If you want to know what kind of harm this agency did,look at this link: http://findingfernanda.com/2011/08/breaking-update-in-the-karen-abigail-case/. Care to comment on that?
So go ahead an call us “uber-sensitive.” We like the term. We are the first to admit we are “uber-sensitive” about lying, trafficking, hypocrisy, racism, stupid tee shirts and yes we are bold enough to "label" it. We cringe for the child that will unknowingly wear this shirt around town.
This is Rally again. Shortly after I posted my last comment, I saw a story from August 4, 2011 that might enlighten you to the realities of this slur and how it is still used by racists today. See http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/08/video_six-year-old_talks_hate.html
A 6-year-old Black girl was leaving the Smurfs movie with her family and white adult males threatened them while calling them…monkeys. If they are found, they will be charged with an ethnic intimidation crime due to the use of the word monkey.