Overwhelmed? There's one choice we always end up making

I walk my kids to preschool in the pouring rain. It’s about a mile and a half and it wouldn’t be so bad except the main road through town and the buildings on either side of it are a couple of hundred years old. This means that massive regional traffic is now being squeezed through a single-lane road that was originally meant for nothing more than the occasional farmer’s handcart. To get around this bottleneck my kids and I would have to walk an extra couple of miles.

A deluge of mud and water sprays across a narrow sidewalk from the wheels of a passing bus. Creative Commons image by Matt Biddulp.

The sidewalks are often no wider than a sheet of printer paper (and sometimes they’re entirely non-existent). Add in overloaded drainage systems and the fact that most of the inhabitants of the hilly country around our town drive large vehicles and live lifestyles in which walking is considered eccentric (and voluntary).

All told, it isn’t very pleasant to get to the preschool or to the medical center on the other side of town. 

An endless stream of cars roars by, pushing and then exceeding the speed limit even though there isn’t much space between them. Each one in turn sends a wave of dirty, oily water spraying across my legs and across the torsos of the children. Each driver would have to look in their rear view mirror to see the spray of water they have personally hit us with. But they can all see the car in front of them squirting the sludge on us.

If they looked... if they thought at all, they would know that their car is going to do it too. They don't think or they don't care. Hard to say which.

We come to a tiny cramped parking lot for three vehicles in front of a shop. I go in front, keeping my children behind me as I carefully make my way around their bumpers, just inches from the zipping, roaring traffic. Sure enough one of the parked cars jolts into motion without warning just as I step behind it. The driver was probably trying to get into a tiny break in the traffic on the main road. He slams on his brakes and I jump backward but his bumper still comes in contact with my leg. I make my way toward the front of his car, to get around in the gap he has now left there. (Yes, he turns out to be a man.) We exchange angry words.

“People shouldn’t walk out in this. It’s ridiculous!” He looks frazzled and he is obviously not thinking about the fact that I’m carrying a white cane. If I want to get to work, get to a doctor or get my kids to school, I have to walk. 

We continue down the tiny sidewalk--walking the gauntlet of deafening noise, noxious fumes and greasy spray—with the very real possibility of sudden death only inches away.
I’m juggling a white cane and an umbrella against the pouring rain, but my small daughter takes my hand anyway and when the sidewalk broadens enough that we can walk side by side, she asks, “Mama, why are people so mean?”

A woman holds an umbrella to try to block a gush of muddy water showering her from a passing car. Creative Commons image by Brett Jordan. 

I’m already having enough trouble with my emotions and I clench my teeth, unable to answer without saying something hateful that a child shouldn’t hear. 

But right then the car coming toward us on the road slows remarkably. The driver doesn’t slam on the brakes, but simply slows to a more reasonable speed. There is nothing else around except us in the narrow road and the street is open and empty in front of the car. The frustrated drivers in the cars behind the slow one crowd up on the bumper, but that one vehicle goes past us without spraying dirty water. I can only tell it’s silver. I can’t see anyone behind the windshield or even the make of the car. 

But it gives me the chance I need. “They aren’t all mean,” I tell my daughter, while I reach back to make sure my five-year-old son is still right behind us. “Did you see that car slow down?”

“That was a nice one,” my daughter says.

“That’s right. We get to choose if we’re kind or cruel,” I tell my kids.

Your Choice

When a kid grows up with any sort of significant disadvantage, she'll necessarily have some limits on her choices in life. But this is one thing my kids get to choose, even if they don't have all the privileges bestowed by wealth or white skin. One day they will be adults in this hectic, crazy-making world and they'll get to choose to be thoughtful about their actions and words... or not. They'll get to drive and slow down when they see someone trapped between a gutter of water and a wall... or not. They'll get to carefully avoid racially loaded language, ablelist metaphors and national slurs... or not. These are all part of the choice to be mindful of our impact in the world (or not). 

Here is a truth. I actually don’t think all the people rushing by and drenching us want to be cruel. I know how hectic and pressured their lives are—bait-and-switch professional jobs, kids who have to be all-stars in order to even be considered for the college track high schools, rising prices, bills to pay, health troubles of their own. There is virtually no one who doesn’t have to struggle. 

And to have the presence of mind to slow down in order to avoid drenching someone at a narrow spot in the road? It isn’t easy. 

Another thing. White people don't want to be cruel when we accidentally assume the one person at the meeting with brown skin must be the maid or when we let racist rhetoric slide in our professional, social or religious circles and pass it off as "a difference of opinion." Most white people today, if they stop to think, know better. But thinking... taking action in a group like the driver who made sure several other cars slowed down and didn't splash us... takes mindfulness and focus. And it is damned hard to focus with what's going on around us--in life and in the media. 

Presence of mind is key though. It isn’t enough to want to be a benevolent. We must also cut through the chaos and focus enough to see where we may unwittingly do genuine harm. Being mindful of our impact both on other people and on the environment (and thus on future generations) is no small thing. But it is what differentiates kindness from cruelty and often defines self-respect.

A Mindfulness List

Some of us like to make lists and lists can help us to remember, not just to buy bread, but also to remember the things we are aware of sometimes but need to be mindful of all the time. Mindfulness lists might include changing habits of speech that have become offensive in society, doing less harm in our consumption, moving and relating in ways that don't hurt others and so forth and anything else where you've thought "I didn't mean to hurt anyone by doing that but I did."

Here are a few examples of the things I want to remember to be mindful of myself—despite how overwhelmed or frazzled I might be with my many hats and roles in life. This is my personal list--not the most important things in the world. Many things that are important I am already am mindful of. That's why I don't have avoiding racially stereotyped language or recycling on this list. Those were on my list twenty years ago and now I'm constantly mindful of them. Here's my current list:

• Say hello to and thank people in low-status jobs, such as cleaners and catering staff.
• Whenever possible buy from companies that pay their employees a living wage no matter what country they work in. 
• If I want to ask a person of color to speak on their ethnic group, make sure I've asked them to speak on an area of professional, academic or other expertise unrelated to their ethnic group in the past.
• If I'm around when someone makes a dismissive or belittling comment about a disadvantaged group or uses derogatory language (even if they don’t mean anything by it), I  want to be someone who speaks up. Educate gently at first, then firmly if necessary. 
• Speak to children, foreigners and people with developmental disabilities in a normal voice. Take a smidgen of extra time to make sure you’ve understood them. 
• When attending a racially diverse meeting, make sure someone of a background different from my own has been heard from before speaking up for a second time. 
• Notice when I accidentally judge and jump to conclusions about another. Stop and reconsider. Weigh the known facts and toss out assumptions and statistical probabilities, when it comes to another person.
• Don’t swat honey bees or bumble bees, use a rag to swipe them back outdoors. (I know that one sounds trivial by comparison but in the scheme of things, who knows. It's my current environmental awareness goal and it's hard because of my vision impairment and moderate bee allergies.)

What's on your mindfulness list?

We won’t be perfect. Life can be crazy and we're often trying to do things more long-range than these as well. These are just acts of mindfulness, not anything that will change the world. We also want to do serious work for positive change. 

Maybe that is the most important thing I wish to remember. 

• Expect that everyone you meet is probably pretty frazzled and usually for reasons beyond their control. Cut people some slack.

Keep trying to be the sort of person you respect.

Simple Living in Suburbia

I roll out of bed at dawn, put a jacket on over my pajamas and stumble outside. I take a quick look to make sure the ducks and the rabbit are okay. I open the greenhouses so the plants won't get fried. Then I pick fresh spinach for my husband's sandwich and herbs for the day's cooking. Then I go back in to see if my kids are up and dressed yet.

No, I'm not a farmer and I don't live in the country. Other than the tangled empty lot next to us, we pretty much live in suburbia. My husband and all of the neighbors head off to work between seven and eight in the morning and drive into the city to professional jobs. After I get the kids off to school, I sit at a computer and do a professional job or teach classes. 

But now that we have poultry I think I can finally claim to be a real urban homesteader. That's a new movement that tries to take the better parts of the old 1970s back-to-the-land movement and make it compatible with professional, middle-class lifestyles. 

It's a tall order. But our gardens do have a lot more fun gizmos that the dirt-poor back-to-the-landers of yesteryear. Half of my garden is now watered automatically by gravity flow from stored rainwater. 

The thing is that for most of us the desire to grow our own food comes from more than just the avoidance of pesticides and vague feelings that a smidgen of self-sufficiency is good security. It comes from a deep-seated need for a simpler and less frazzled way of life. 

When I went to pick up my kids today, I almost got run over by a guy pulling out of his parking space in to horrible traffic. Later I talked to a woman who runs a modest company and barely has time to eat a regular meal once a day. Most of the kids I see in my ESL practice are already chronically tired and stressed--by the age of nine. 

What does this have to do with raising ducks and growing lettuce?

Everything actually. 

Studies show that fifteen minutes in a natural environment has measurable health effects on everything from blood pressure to immune function. My brief morning scramble to do what most needs doing on our urban homestead first thing in the morning vastly improves my day. I feel better. I don't get depressed as I used to. I wake up worrying about six things and by the time I'm done with the outside bit, I'm ready to stop worrying and just deal. 

Yes, you can theoretically get the same thing out of just having your breakfast out on the back deck, if you have one. But the fact is that you won't when the weather turns bad. I go out early every day--rain, sun or snow, because I have to. My body naturally falls into rhythm with the sun, because there are things that matter that are governed by that rhythm. Simple living doesn't work too well unless its enforced. Apparently, we have a natural human tendency toward hectic stress.

I'm glad to see that it can be done, even in suburbia. It has taken ten years to build our little oasis of simple living, but now it blooms with life. The latest addition is a kitten--a replacement for our hardworking cat (akka, mouse hunter) who has gone to the great sunbeam couch in the sky. There is something about a kitten that epitomizes simple living. Kittens have no appreciation or respect for professional careers, but they really don't demand that much. A tickle here and there, a pant-leg to climb, a bit of food multiple times a day. And for your trouble, they'll keep you in a simpler rhythm. 

Tips for working with a blind colleague

Creative Commons image by Irish Typepad of Flickr.com

The other day someone asked me about working with a blind colleague in a professional setting. It brought me back to the days when I used to work in offices. Sometimes I hid the fact that I was nearly blind. In other situations, I cautiously let people know about it. Neither approach made the work environment very pleasant. Never did I work with people who asked how they could work with me--a legally blind person--more effectively or how we might increase our flow and productivity and ensure more good camaraderie and less stress in the office. I very much appreciate this question now. And being a lot wiser (and older) than  was in my office days, I actually have some answers. 

Here are a bunch of ways you can make working with a blind colleague a blast and get the most out of your talented team. 

Creative Commons image by Sonia Belviso

1. Tell the blind colleague who you are the first time you meet.
2. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you return from getting coffee. Say, “It’s (your name).” No explanations or embarrassment necessary.
3. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you return from getting something off the printer.
4. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you want to ask a question.
5. Tell the blind colleague who you are when need to borrow something.
6. If you borrow something, return it to the blind colleague's hands, not to the desk or shelf. There can be exceptions to this rule, if you have discussed the item specifically and there is a very precise (within four inches) designation of where the item belongs.
7. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you say good morning.
8. Have everyone say their name at the beginning of meetings. Every meeting! Even if your colleague “should” already know who the people are. Even if the blind colleague has learned to recognize every voice in the room, some people may not speak at all unless they are asked to say their name. In informal and repeated situations just going around and quickly saying names is enough and it usually takes no more than a few seconds if done without embarrassment and unnecessary argument.
9. Tell the blind colleague who you are when you ask if he/she wants to go to lunch with you and other colleagues.
10. Do ask your blind colleague to come to lunch or for other social engagements with colleagues.
11. Stop telling your blind colleague who you are if he/she tells you you can stop. Usually this means the person has learned to recognize your voice.
12. If possible, let your blind colleague have his/her own tools and utensils and don’t touch them without asking. Do not “put away” something that your blind colleague owns or uses. If you have to share certain things agree on an exact location where they will be kept.
13. A place for everything and everything in its place.
14. When someone who is less familiar comes in your office, let your blind colleague know, even if it is an informal visit and the blind colleague has met this person many times before. Say, “That’s (person entering’s name) coming in.”
15. In meetings, be aware that conversation flows primarily through eye contact and visual cues. Your blind colleague may either appear to be overbearing and interrupt others or may not engage in the meeting enough. This is largely because of the inability to see other people’s eyes. It is helpful if meetings are structured and someone is in charge of designating who will speak. In less formal meetings, it is good if the leader or facilitator is aware of the issue and watching for when the blind colleague is trying to work into the conversation.
16. When showing visual materials at a meeting, describe them briefly. Say something like, “This is a graph showing our results from the last quarter. It shows that…” or “This is the new logo for X. It’s an abstract shape in blue.”
17. Include important information from meetings in an accessible format—digital or Braille (if your colleague uses Braille. Not all do.)
18. If attending a conference or larger meeting together, you may want to let your blind colleague know who is speaking, read name tags or describe images presented.
19. If your colleague asks for help with physical navigation, you can help, but generally he/she won’t and physically getting around is not the issue. Helping in social situations is much more important.
20. Avoid touching your blind colleague without permission. Don’t gently touch your blind colleague’s shoulder to announce your presence. Use a soft voice and say “It’s (your name).”
21. With a blind colleague who is new to the office, “show” your colleague the locations of objects in one of two ways. Either 1. let the blind colleague sit at the desk and tell him/her where to reach to find certain objects. You can most easily do this by imagining that there is a large clock in the middle of the desk and imagining where the hour hand would be pointing toward each thing. Say, “the phone is at four o’clock. The keyboard is at 9 o’clock. The screen is at twelve o’clock,” and so forth. Or 2. allow your colleague to put his or her hands on the backs of your hands as you indicate items on a shelf. Allow enough time for the colleague to touch the objects and then return to placing his/her hands lightly over yours. People who have been blind for a time will usually be familiar with these techniques and you won’t have to explain. Avoid grabbing the blind colleague’s hand and forcing him/her to touch objects.
22. Many blind people are not totally blind. Legally blind people will often use a computer screen much as sighted people do, but they may have to look much closer to perceive what is on the screen. If you are teaching a blind or visually impaired colleague how to do something on a piece of equipment it is imperative that your colleague be seated in the position to do the task and that your colleague does the task with your instructions. There is no “showing” a visually impaired colleague something on a screen, even if you describe each step you are doing. It may seem to take longer to describe the actions necessary but it will never take longer than “showing” someone who cannot see your actions.
23. Be aware that visual impairments vary widely. Some legally blind people can see very well close up but little to nothing beyond six inches. Some blind people can see quite well in a very narrow field of vision, so that you may be surprised that your colleague can see some things at a distance but still not see you come into the room to his/her right. Try not to be judgmental of what you can’t understand and ask if your colleague wants to describe his/her vision to you and other colleagues at a meeting. It can help to know technically what your colleague’s vision is like.

When there is no face to put to a name

Navigating a social event while blind is tricky for reasons you probably never imagined.

As we approach the venue for a parents-with-children workshop, blossoms drip from the trees and land softly on my hands--so close I can make out their delicate pink color. My kids and I pause to breathe in the dizzying scent. The sun glitters through the branches, refracting sparks in my distorted vision. Birds twitter on every side. It’s an achingly beautiful May morning.

Creative Commons image by Mary of Flickr.com

“Oh, hi Arie!” A voice cuts across the bliss and I turn, constructing a delighted and eager smile. 

I have to correct for height in a split second. The woman is short and standing one curb down. I focus as hard as I can on the upper half of the pale, fuzzy oval that should be her face, judging by the sound of her voice. Somewhere in there are her eyes and like a foreigner in a land with strange but strict greeting customs, I have to struggle to simulate the correct visual communications etiquette. 

I’m pretending to make eye contact. But this woman doesn’t realize it. Unlike me, she isn’t thinking about eye contact. She’s simply getting the impression that I’m friendly… or not, depending on how successful my pantomime of eye contact is. 

I beam at her, projecting warmth—even though I don’t have the slightest clue who the woman is. I only know she is one of the people from the foster-and-adoptive-families support group and they are all wonderful people who I enjoy. She might be one of several who consider me to be a friend, who I’ve had intimate and intense conversations about parenting and society with and whose name I would instantly recognize, if it were offered. Or she might be one of several dozen parents in the group who know my name and expect me to know theirs, even though we aren’t all close. 

Creative Commons image by Carolinqua of Flickr.com

Recognizing people and connecting names to them is one of the most difficult things for visually impaired and blind people to do. When dealing with a large group of people who only see one another every few weeks or months it's downright impossible. Everyone knows everyone else and assumes you should, but you don’t hear the voices often enough to get a solid read on them.

In this case, it has been at least a year since I have seen the other support-group participants and their children. I can hear the footsteps and the breathing of a child beside this woman and I detect the fuzzy shape. I direct a smile and fake eye contact to where I guess the child’s eyes should be.

I do care. I know that eye contact is very important to people who can see well. It is hardwired into their brains and a child might be frightened of someone who didn't do it. Aside from that it's like good manners. If I came to a foreign country, I would make a valiant attempt to learn their words for "please" and "thank you." So, I try to fake eye contact for the benefit of sighted people. It isn't fake caring. It's just something I'm doing for them, rather than doing it automatically.

Still, I yearn for clues as to who this woman and child are. I get the feeling from the woman's tone that she probably isn’t one of those I’m closest with. I decide to take the plunge. My stomach twists with anxiety, but it must be done.

“It’s so good to see all of you again, but you know I have trouble recognizing people.” I raise my white cane and give it a gentle nod. Sometimes this doesn’t work. People often don’t take the hint and I don’t want to be rude. Sometimes they are even offended when they realize I’m asking for their name.

Creative Commons image by Shannon Kringen

Many of my acquaintances have scoffed in reply, “You have better hearing than other people. If you cared, you’d remember people’s names after three times.” Once a woman at our local community center told me directly that I wasn't welcome there because I didn't greet people I had already met on previous occasions with enough recognition. She said this while I was holding my white cane. 

That’s the reason for my sweaty palms and queasy stomach. Will this be another one of those blistering responses that make me feel like a dismal, anti-social failure? Or will she just ignore me, like most do, and let me continue to wander in anonymous confusion? I hold my breath.

“Of course, I’m sorry. I’m Zora,” she says. “We were in mommy-and-me swimming class with you about four years ago.” 

“Oh, yes, I remember, but haven’t you dyed your hair?” I say, automatically trying to make her feel comfortable and recognized. 

I am mostly guessing again, just like with the eye contact. I don’t remember her hair. When and if people were introduced at mommy-and-me swimming class it was in a huge echoing swimming hall. I rarely got the other women's names even once and if I did I had no image to go along with the name. But I do remember others calling out to Zora, so she was there and I can claim to remember it. 

The part about her hair popped out before I could think better of it. I'm grasping at straws and I can just make out the color of her hair. It's the type of dark blond that often results from dye. It’s a good bet and it works. She is pleased and believes that I truly remember her. 

“Yes, I love to dye my hair all the time. Matilda was smaller then, of course, but your kids too.” 

Okay, Zora and Matilda. I’ve got that now… until they take their jackets off and are dressed in different colors at least.

The problem is that I probably do remember Zora much better than this in another way. I probably had a wonderful conversation or two with her and felt a genuine connection to her. There have been many such conversations when I wished I knew who the delightful person I was speaking with was. But if so, I didn’t know her name was Zora when I had those conversations.

While she was nice enough to tell me now, almost no one does it consistently. I have no face to connect those conversations with either, so it is likely that I’ll never be able to truly reconnect. Each time I meet a person without a name it might as well be our first meeting. 

Still I’m grateful beyond words to this woman who took the hint well, was not offended that I couldn’t recognize her and provided her name this once. I want to plead with her and beg her to tell me her name on future occasions too. I want to assure her that I care and I want to be friendly. I am not aloof as many people often say of me. Far from it! I desperately want to know it is Zora the next time I have a great conversation with her around the break-time coffee table at a workshop. But if she doesn’t tell me again--even later today--it’s unlikely I will know it's her.

We enter the building and split up to circulate around the room. I’m boggled again. I didn’t manage to watch Zora and Matilda take their jackets off because I was dealing with my kids, so I can no longer recognize them. Still I repeat to myself silently, “Zora, dyed blond, brown jacket. Matilda, a bit taller than my daughter, blue jacket,” over and over, hoping to remember these little factoids in the barrage of similar small facts that I try to use to connect names to people.

Creative Commons image by Taston of Flickr.com

Here’s the thing. The human brain is hardwired to memorize human faces. Even though a face is more complex than the color of a jacket, it is much easier for most people to remember what Zora’s face looks like than that she has a brown jacket. Most people’s brains do it automatically and even when people do struggle to memorize names, they are memorizing the name, NOT the face. The face is quickly encoded in the brain as the fixed point to attach the name to. 

I have no such fixed point. I have only the two facts to memorize like vocabulary words in a foreign language, “Zora = brown jacket.” Two facts that will probably never be useful again because Zora will wear a different jacket next time and several other women here will have brown jackets too, but I’ll try because it’s all I’ve got. I can’t see any detail beyond the smudge of color.

I am relieved to find that I do recognize the voices of the three organizers who are at every one of these workshops. It has taken several workshops for me to know their voices instantly, but I’ve got them down now. Voices can be used like faces to identify people, but the imprint of it on the memory isn’t as quick, even with all my practice. It takes several exposures, and most importantly, it only helps if I actually know the name attached to the person when they speak. If I know who is speaking and hear them maybe four times, I will probably recognize their voice.

But four times of knowing their name! That isn’t likely to happen, unless the person is a workshop presenter who people call by name repeatedly. 

This is probably the single largest problem I encounter from blindness—not tripping on things, not losing my keys, not even the inability to drive. No, the worst is not being able to recognize people and all the consequences that go along with that. Many people will ask me solicitously over and over again if they can take my hand to help me walk down a slightly bumpy trail in a park, even though I show no signs of difficulty, but they almost never offer their name each time they approach me. Most don’t even take the hint and let me know their name without a fuss when I make the terrifying effort to ask.

Zora is above the curve. 

There has been only one person I’ve met in the past ten years who consistently told me her name every time I met her until I actually had to ask her to stop because I knew her voice so well I could have picked her out of a crowd on the street. This woman came to a meeting for foster and adoptive parents that I attended years ago and immediately after meeting me and seeing my cane, she went to the coffee table and then returned to the conversation. 

“It’s Blanka again,” she told me as she rejoined the circle where I was discussing something with others. A few of the others stopped speaking and seemed to be confused by her comment. My jaw dropped from the sheer newness of it, but I quickly caught myself and gave her a smile.

Creative Commons image by Shannon Kringe

Later she came over to where I was playing with my toddler to ask me where we lived because she had heard her home was close to mine. Again, she started the conversation by announcing, “Hi Arie, it’s Blanka.”

I thanked her briefly that time. 

Then at another meeting three months later, I saw her again… or heard her. I came to the door and was unloading my children from the stroller when I heard a voice raised from the far side of the crowded room, “Hi Arie, it’s Blanka!” 

I had to fight back tears. 

I told her later how much it meant to me and she seemed surprised. “Well, of course you can’t recognize people’s faces,” she said and moved on to another topic. 

I have now known Blanka for over five years and she no longer has to announce herself because I told her that I can recognize her voice now. We aren’t close friends because life hasn’t taken us that way and she's a busy foster parent, but I’m always overjoyed to meet her at support groups. I remember the things she has said, her interests and her parenting struggles. I truly know who she is and recognize her.. Many other people have attended the same groups with us for the same amount of time, and I cannot connect their names to their voices, stories, interests and identities. At this point, they would be utterly confused and offended if I admitted that I still don’t know their names after even five years of acquaintance in the group. 

Don’t get me wrong. I know them--the people. In some cases I can even recognize their voices. But I recognize them with labels like “the woman with three little boys all close to the same age” or “the woman with reddish frizzy hair” or “the man with the loud voice and bald head.” I have relationships with these identities because I don’t have their names and I have mostly stopped trying to hint and get them to tell me. The reactions are often too offended. 

I am curious about how others view this topic. Do most sighted people realize that visually impaired people can’t recognize faces and that voices are not that easy to recognize? Is there a way that I could ask more effectively for people to let me know their name? Don't be afraid to comment or to discuss your own difficulties. My page is always free of ridicule and judgement.

And even more urgently I wonder if other visually impaired people have any tips or ideas for how to improve my skill in recognizing people? Do most blind people learn to recognize voices after being introduced to a person only once or twice? How do other visually impaired people keep track of who is who in a crowd? Please feel free to comment below.

Being too different: Do some people just ask for it?

“You had to know it would be this way,” my friend says on the sunny veranda over glasses of refreshing elder flower lemonade. “You chose this.” 

Our two boys leap and roll on the trampoline. “Mama, watch me! Watch me!” They’re both five. 

Creative Commons image by Mizrak of Flickr.com

I am silent. I don’t want to argue with her. She means well and she is one of the few people in this small town who will do playdates with me and my kids. I can’t afford to say what I’m thinking. 

She means that when we adopted two Romani (Gypsy) kids and settled down in a small town in an Eastern European country, we must have known what we were getting into—that we must have chosen to do so because we were kind of picking a fight with society or... something.

The Roma are extremely unpopular here and the wildcat is out of the bag. A few mothers at my kids’ preschool are making a stink, saying my son should be committed for psychological treatment because he pushed another boy. 

But the thing is that it was an absolutely normal preschool altercation. No one can point out a pattern of problematic behavior--not the teachers, not the other parents and not my family. No, of course, he shouldn’t push and all little boys get in trouble for it sometimes. But my son can’t afford to make a normal childhood mistake. 

“You can’t expect people to change. It was your choice,” my friend says into the silence. 

“I didn’t set out to do it,” I finally answer. But the kids come running for pie and juice and I never get to explain. 

How can I explain anyway? What kind of choice? 

There were six years of infertility treatments. Four rounds of IVF. At least a dozen IUIs. A traumatic miscarriage. There was the reality of adoption in Europe today. The mothers who sobbed beside me in support group because they were thirty-five and had almost no chance of getting to the top of the waiting list for a baby before the age of forty, when the state system cuts women off from infant adoption. 

Uncomfortable fact 1: There is a shortage of healthy white babies needing adoption.

Uncomfortable fact 2: Systemic racism and discrimination makes families in marginalized groups more likely to crumble. 

Uncomfortable fact 3: There are a lot more Romani babies needing adoption than white babies. Widespread racism has it’s consequences. 

Creative Commons image by Monica Semergiu

Yes, I stood in the social work office and checked the box that says, “We’ll accept all ethnicities,” despite dire warnings by our case work That is the choice my friend means. 

I chose this.

My friend doesn’t even know about the African American friend who recently unfriended me when she found out my kids are trans-racially adopted. In America, it is often considered immoral—a stealing of a child’s culture because of an adult's selfish desire for a family. They call it “cultural genocide.” 

Yes, I ticked the box. I chose. 

But what was the alternative? 

I think back to the little boy in the sterile orphanage with toys displayed on high shelves on the walls. When they handed him to me the white nurse said with bit of a smirk, “Everyone here has a favorite kid, but he was no one’s favorite. Good luck.”

I noticed immediately that he had a strange low-pitched cry. He was lethargic. They had diagnosed him with “mild neurological delays.” He was ten months old.

It turned out he had been on a high dose of prescription sedatives since he was two months old. Nobody’s favorite and they didn’t want to hear him cry from the desperate loneliness of a baby never held. They didn’t give us any sedatives to wean him off the drugs, so he went off of them cold turkey. We didn’t know until the pediatrician explained it a few weeks later. 

But we knew that baby suddenly learned how to scream. He would scream the sharpest, loudest scream I’ve ever heard a child make every time I got more than ten feet away from him. He now had someone to hold and comfort him and he wasn’t about to let me get out of his sight. I had to stay with him every moment for a year and a half. I couldn’t carry him much. He was too big, even at ten months. It was like having a ball and chain. 

Yes, I chose that. I didn’t have to. I could have resigned myself to my own depression and left him there. It was a choice. 

Now at five years old, the teachers say the only difficulty they have with him is that when they speak sharply to him for some small infraction, he sometimes starts screaming in terror as if his whole world falling apart.

Otherwise he’s on track in all respects. He has good friends who he only fights with moderately--like all the other little boys. He has no neurological delays or other problems. Just about a textbook case for healthy child development. 

But I can’t tell the other mothers that history. I once made the mistake of telling one of the mothers about my daughter’s intense temperament. Now she uses that little tidbit to slander my children, telling other mothers that my kids are psychologically unhinged and genetically degenerate “Gypos.” If they knew about how hard my son’s start was, what more would they say?

My husband mildly chastises me for being open about our differences, for not trying harder to hide the children’s Romani background. I never actually told anyone, but the whole town knows. I didn’t go to great lengths to hide it and I do multicultural education classes as a volunteer at the preschool. My friend says that’s a dead giveaway. 

Supposedly I also chose to be open about difference. For thirty years, I hid the fact that I'm legally blind and didn’t carry a white cane. But the dangers of traffic and the misunderstandings grew unbearable, so now I carry the cane and don’t hide it. But technically it’s still a choice. 

Me and my borthers in the 1980s

My friend adds in a whisper before she leaves, “It doesn’t exactly help that you don’t wear makeup or dye your hair.”

Yet another choice. They reject me for the very things I am proud of--my children, the cultural background I embrace, our bilingualism. my environmentally friendly lifestyle, the disability I don't hide...

I chose to be an immigrant, I choose to raise my kids without a lot of junk food, I choose not to have a TV… I’ve chosen a lot of difference. And I like my choices. 

You could make a case that any resulting difficulties are really my fault. That is essentially what my friend is saying--you chose, so you shouldn't complain when people judge you.

But I know something that is strangely hard for most people to admit. For those of us with some unavoidable difference--a disability, a different language, race or culture or some odd life situation--the choice is an illusion. You can try to hide it but when you are different, you are different. You can obtain a rickety and temporary measure of social acceptance by covering up your differences. But you will never be treated entirely well socially and if you slip, you will pay a heavy price. 

I tried to fit in and be the same for thirty years. I tried desperately to learn how to make eye contact and smile as if I could recognize the blurry shapes of people. I tried to dress the way I thought I was supposed to and always failed miserably at the fashions. I detested fashion trends anyway.

I was really very bad at hiding my differences. And I was deeply depressed, almost suicidal at times. 

It was not until I was holding my infant daughter and looking down into her face that it finally clicked. I knew she could never hide her olive skin and non-European-looking blue eyes framed by dark lashes. I had never been able to hide my differences and neither would she. 

Something broke inside me. I don’t remember the exact moment, but I remember the year--that year with my first baby. I swore I would not put that burden on her. I would not doom her to a lifetime of trying and failing to be “normal” at all cost.

My children know their own roots. They know and love the Romani culture and people. They practice Romani dance and Romani vocabulary words. We go to every Romani cultural event we can find. They need close Romani friends, and that is a bit of a challenge, given the vast segregation of society here. But still they are proud of their heritage at this point. 

My seven-year-old daughter told her class she is Romani. I was nervous but the kids don’t know the word “Romani.” They’ve only ever heard the insulting word “Gypo,” so they don’t even know what she’s talking about… yet. 

The thing that I wish I could tell my quiet friend who always stays within the lines is this: I didn’t choose to be different. Neither did my children. But I do choose not to be ashamed. There are many things we don’t get to choose in life, but there is one thing we can always choose. 

I choose to be true.

Why are white people so often unaware of racism and white privilege?

Tackling an issue like this is like kicking a nest of rattlesnakes. I was recently asked this question in an on-line forum and Í am very unlikely to please everyone with my answer no matter what I say. However, I think it is an honest question that deserves a real answer. 

I can easily see how it seems preposterous to people of color that most white people in highly developed, multicultural societies in the twenty-first century remain almost entirely ignorant of and oblivious to racism and white privilege. I mean haven’t we just spent the better part of a century learning the hard way about these issues? The civil rights movement came and went and we learn about it in school. We work, study and live with people of color—well, many of us do—so why does it seem that we are no wiser than we were seventy years ago? 

Original creative commons image by jamesapfairlie of flickr.com

Are white people just self-centered and willfully ignorant? That’s the question I hear behind the confusion of people of color when they ask how it is possible that white people still don’t get it. 

So, here goes. I’m a white person. And I honestly agree that most white people—including myself for an embarrassing number of years—are unaware of both white privilege and most of what constitutes racism. That’s the sad truth. But the other side of it that I have to say is that it isn’t because we are self-centered or willfully ignorant. It has to do with lack of experience and perspective. It is an honest lack of understanding. 

Let me start by illustrating the problem on my own sorry self. When I was a college student in the 1990s I thought that African Americans were constantly going on and on about racism even though the worst of it had been left in the past. I had nothing against black people. I grew up in a very rural place and the only African American I saw growing up was my mother's friend from college who came to visit. 

And I was brought up in a very anti-racist family. My mother was the only white student made an honorary member of the Black Students Association at her college in Michigan. This was not because my mother was a great activist for civil rights or something of the sort. It was simply because as a young girl thrown out of her home at the age of seventeen (in 1968), she crossed a bridge between St. Joseph to Benton Harbor and got herself a room to rent. I have a hard time seeing my mother, who has never been a big risk taker, in this role, but that’s what happened. 

So, this was my claim to lack of racism when I was a young white liberal. My mother was open-minded at a time when very few white people were. I, on the other hand, grew up in a rural, even isolated, place in the mountains of Eastern Oregon. I was told that people of color are just as good as anyone and that racism is bad. And I learned the history of civil rights and all that came before. It was history. I thought it was quite interesting, but I also thought it was over.

Thus—as I said—in college myself in the 1990s, I silently thought my African American classmates were a bit obsessed with the issue. I never said anything. I tried to be supportive, but I didn't really understand. I thought it was because of past trauma, because so many white people wanted to whitewash the past. I had no idea how much of it was still happening. I had no idea of the white privilege all around me.

I could very well say that this is because I am actually physically blind. I am. I could not see people's facial expressions and so there are certain social things that go over my head at the best of times. And perhaps a white person with as much desire to understand as I had could have understood sooner, had they been visually observant. but I couldn't be visually observant and the fact is that most white people are not even if they can see well. It is not willful lack of seeing, however. It is truly lack of understanding. It took me many years and some hard knocks to get it--at least to the degree that I have "gotten it.”

One such hard knock was spending several months studying in Zimbabwe at a time when race was a very hot subject. I walked down the street and felt like I wasn't white but rather neon-colored. I was harassed doing nothing—going to a store, hanging out with my Zimbabwean journalist friends. I applied for an internship and was yelled at and demeaned by an editor over a tiny mistake in my application. I was not angry. It was a few months, not a lifetime. It was a small country, not a bastion of wealth and power like my homeland in America. I could walk away any time I wanted to and I came to understand the first bit about privilege. Privilege is not being harassed just for being, not being yelled at over a triviality. Privilege is being able to walk away from such a situation and go back to a life where that won’t happen.

Then I spent a year following children in a racially segregated school in Central Europe to make a documentary. I spent another few years writing about ethnic conflict in the Balkans. And then the one thing that I think can really change a person's understanding happened. My family became racially mixed. 

Now when I walk into a school with my children or just down the street, I am no longer a "normal" white person. It comes up in a myriad of ways—constantly. And it's exhausting. I know the difference because when I walk down the street alone, it is different. And I know that it isn't long dead history.

But it took all that. It took coming from a family that was open with parents who vehemently wanted me to understand, it took trying out being the only person of my color at a night club in a country with racial tension, it took studying racial and ethnic conflict intensively and in the end it took being part of a family that isn't all white in a country that thinks it isn't racist but is.

One little example. My son is five and in preschool. He has a best friend named Johnny and they are inseparable. But they also fight. And my son is slightly bigger, so when they push Johnny falls down. It has happened twice now in two years that Johnny has been physically hurt in one of these incidents. Once he had a goose egg on his forehead. This time, he had a raw pink scrape on his back from falling onto the Lego pile at preschool. Another boy who is quite trustworthy saw the incident. He said both boys were pulling at a toy and then my son pushed Johnny and Johnny fell on the Legos. There is no real controversy over what happened. I expressed sympathy and my son had no evening video for two days and lost his allowance for a week. And Johnny’s mother is up in arms. She sends me hate mail and detailed photos of her son’s scrape. She has been telling other parents that my son is evil and violent. She tells me that she teaches her son to hit back, so that he won’t become a victim. She is angry and I can’t possibly belittle it. I was bullied terribly as a child. I won’t ever turn my back on a situation that could possibly be bullying. 

But here’s the thing. My son is the only non-white kid in his class. The teachers say he is no more violent than any of the other kids. One boy is known for staying out of the scrapping. But both my son and Johnny are fighters and they tussle and push and sometimes someone gets hurt. The teachers insist that my son isn’t a problem and the boys still want to play together, even though Johnny’s mother has made the school separate them. 

She teaches her son to hit back, but I can’t afford to do that. I must teach my son to be careful and meek. I don’t even teach him to stand up for himself with loud words and a strong stance. I tell him strenuously that he must not push and shove at school. There are serious consequences both at home and at school. First off, he has lost the ability to play with his best friend. He’s five, so I don’t tell him what the consequences may be when he’s older. But I know. 

I know how many young men and boys of color are shot, arrested and jailed for the tiniest infractions. I know that society will not give him the same leeway it will give Johnny. I know that Johnny’s mother can scream and yell at me in the schoolyard and Johnny can watch and learn that this is how to solve conflicts. And when he grows up if he yells at another parent, nothing much will happen. But I cannot yell back even though it is well within my feisty temperament and it costs me a great deal to remain calm. Because my son cannot yell at another parent when he is older. CANNOT. Ever. 

I owe him this. I owe him a good role model because for a man of color to become loud in this society is hugely dangerous and would result in much greater response from authorities.

This is what I now know about white privilege. By becoming the parent of a non-white child, I lost a bit of that privilege. I lost the ability to respond in an argument with an aggressive parent without incurring significant consequences for my child. This is what parents of color know from the get-go that I had to learn. They must raise their children to be more careful, more courteous. It isn’t just a matter of manners. In many places it can significantly affect the chances of survival as a teenager. To be allowed to sometimes be vehement in a discussion with a rude person in public--that is white privilege. A little piece of it at least.

So, I am not as unaware as I once was. But I still have empathy for white people who don't understand this. That may piss you off, but I don't know how to explain it to other white people with words, not words I would have understood and taken under my skin twenty years ago. Many white people will read my description of the problem at my son’s preschool above and still be confused about why that was about white privilege. They’ll scratch their heads, even though I just put it as clearly as it can possibly be put. 

I cannot tell my former self these things in simple terms and if I couldn't hear it then, there are few people who can. I wanted to learn and to understand. I wanted to "see" in that way and I might as well have been physically blind twice over. I could not "see" without experience.

This is why white people are unaware. Because they lack experience. They lack understanding. They don't see the social cues going on around them because they are not exposed to the consequences of them. They take much of what is going on for granted. It is not their fault individually that they don't see these things. We are fallible and human and it would help move toward a less racist society if people of color could come to understand that these concepts are not simple for us—that many white people do try.

I try to educate people, to change things for the better. I now live in the Czech Republic. Here the group of color which is most feared and hated is the Roma. They have skin only a shade darker than most Central Europeans. Many Americans can’t tell any difference. But people here can. And that is the identity of my children.  In a few years, my children will be looked at with suspicion when they enter stores. They will be the first Romani students at their primary school because school desegregation is just beginning here. So, I do what I can to educate. 

I volunteered at my children's preschool the other day. Race and ethnicity is so controversial here that the preschool teachers would not let me do a craft and story session on Romani culture. Their faces go blank when I mention it. So, instead I did it on Zimbabwe. I read story books showing black children in nice city houses, playing with toys and making messes just as children do here. I gave them plastic containers and led them in a snappy African drumming session. And at the end I pulled out my red, yellow, white and black paints and mixed them up several batches of gradated brown paint to demonstrate that we are all brown, just different shades of brown. 

The teachers were stunned and excited with new understanding. They had never seen anything like this before. And yet I have no illusions that I have made a dent in racism with these volunteer classes. They are a tiny breath of fresh air against a tide of smog. I do it not because I think I can change other white people or turn around a racist society. I do it because my children are sitting in the class too and any bit of the endless explanation to white people that I can bear is a bit they won't have to. And they are my children and when you're a parent, you bear whatever you can to make the burden of your children lighter. I know about the huge burden of endless explaining to clueless white people that people of color bear. That's one of the things I know about now.

If you explain and try to help white people understand this, you give a gift to the children of your community. It is very hard to know where to begin and it is a very long road to mutual understanding. I hope it may be worth it to some to try.

Walls: A documentary of segregated schools

In 1999 and 2000, I worked with two film students Matthew McLean and Dantia MacDonald to make an independent documentary about the struggle of Romani children for equal education in the Czech Republic. It was one of those hidden stories journalists search for--a significant but largely unknown injustice. At the time, 70 percent of Romani (sometimes called Gypsy) children in the Czech Republic were channeled into special schools for the mentally disabled. Before our documentary only a handful of articles had been written about the problem in the English press. 

I was a young reporter working part time for The Prague Post and I was handed the thick government report on the special schools because no one else wanted to tackle it. But instead of feeling put upon, I saw in it one of the biggest stories of the decade. I spent the next several years writing about the Roma, often about the special schools. And I finished the documentary Walls.

The film was the kind of documentary I'd always dreamed about--raw, a real-life story with "plot" and fiercely rebelious. Public trains provided our film crew transportation and the kitchen floors of ghetto homes gave us our base camps. The result is an incredible story following nine-year-old Karel and fifteen-year-olds Anezka and Pepino as they grapple with the segregated schools and their own growing understanding of their desperate chances in a deeply racist society.

It's been sixteen years now, enough time for another generation to grow up and pass through the schools. Today desegregation is still the hot issue it was then. The names of institutions have been changed to muddy the picture, but much of the problem remains the same as it was then. 

The film remains relevant for all of those reasons, but the way I view it now is quite different. I am no longer a young, idealistic, foreign reporter. I have made this country my home. And I'm a parent of adopted Romani children. I too have been told to put my child in a special school. Now the line between journalist and everyday life has been blurred.

Smrak 3: Gender specific toys and media that promote either ditsy

When my daughter was a baby I thought it would be simple. I would scrimp and save and buy her the best and most beautiful dolls on the market--the big ones with all the accessories, the ones made of good quality materials and none of that cheap plastic that releases toxins. Then she would never want Barbies. End of problem.

Creative Commons image by Thomas Hawk

Right…

Where I live cheap Barbie knock-offs are the most common gift given to children, after candy with artificial coloring. My daughter was given one by the organizers of a nature walk we joined. She has been given these horrid bits of soft, easily breakable, toxic plastic with extreme body-image issues, by relatives and visitors to our home on a regular basis. 

And of course, her friends have real Barbies, which are slightly less likely to fill the house with carcinogenic clutter, but are no better for girls to play with. And that’s usually all they play with. 

Why do I have such an issue with Barbies? You might ask. My daughter is incredibly slim with a perfect figure. She’s not one of the girls in most danger of poor-body-image problems. She’s the type others will envy after all. 

My issue is only partly to do with ridiculously long, skinny legs and waists that look like a pulled taffy. Those are problematic. But the feet permanently bent into the shape of shoes that are harmful to kids’ feet and require women to tiptoe through the world are worse. The focus on clothes, clothes, clothes, shoes, shoes, shoes, makeup, makeup, makeup, hair, hair, hair is simply nauseating. Girls should have other interests as well. 

I know the company has made some Barbie firefighter outfits and other less impractical garb, but these outfits are invariably extra baggy and ridiculous looking. Face it. Anything that actually fits on that doll well wouldn't allow for much freedom of movement in real life. Little girls don’t actually use the firefighter outfits and the focus remains on clothing that obviously allows for no activities beyond primping and attracting sexual interest.

That’s my problem. I have given in to everything being pink. What I can’t abide is the fact that the girl’s section of any toy store is entirely focused on appearance and primping, as if that is the only thing girls can be interested in. Some girls resist it. But my daughter doesn’t. She has a natural knack for these things and I want her to have fun learning to do her hair and dress up. Who doesn’t? It’s fun. 

Creative Commons image by Fortune Cookie of Flickr.com

But I also want her to sometimes do other things. 

On top of toy stores, there are the girl-oriented TV shows. Disney has done a relatively good job with some of their princess movies, despite the close resemblance between Disney princesses and Barbie dolls. At least some of them do things other than primp and they usually use fairly normal voices. 

But these are never the videos my daughter and her friends want to watch most. I made the terrible mistake of buying a Lego Friends DVD to take overseas with us because it claimed to support “diversity” and “friendship.”  The videos make me nauseous. The “friendship” promoted is only that within one’s own little clique and is not open to others. The girls in the video are constantly focused on primping and will often dash back home in the middle of an “adventure” to change clothes or make sure they look dazzling. This is all spelled out in detail and presents such an unhealthy message that as far from English-language videos as we are, I’ve had to disappear it.

The worst part of the video and many others I’ve seen are the little vocalizations that the girl characters emit. There are constant “Ooo!” and “Eeeeh!” noises as if someone is making fun of the women of the 1950s. Except that this is done in all seriousness and presented as girls being pretty and attractive. My daughter now imitates these noises for hours on end.