Uncomfortable Truth

I've been reading a book entitled Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib by a guy named Jaiya John. It is his memoir of being a black child growing up in a white family and community. I like the book a lot. He's very descriptive in his writing. His perspective on white views about people of other races is quite unique. He is able to see things from so many different perspectives. He talks about how the people in his family and community loved him as an individual. But those same people who loved him had some negative views about black people as a whole. He just discusses how paradoxical this was to him growing up. He talks about how desperately he wanted people to really see him. To see his "essence." He felt like people overlooked his race in order to love him.

I'm reading it not because we are planning on adopting a black child, though I would not be at all opposed to doing that. I'm reading it because we are planning on adopting a child of another race and nationality and I thought this book might give me some insight. Reading this has really made me stop and think about what kinds of sterotypes I hold. I know I have them. Not all of them are negative sterotypes and not all of them are racially motivated. Just to judge an entire race, gender, people group of one kind or another based solely on my opinions is seriously not right. We all do it in one way or another. How do we shake these views? How do I train my brain to stop judging people based on whatever it may be...race, age, clothes, education, denomination, etc.?

There are poems that begin each chapter. I suppose they are written by the author of the book but I'm not sure. This is one that really made an impression on me. His friends loved him. He was their "token black friend." Have we had some token friends of one kind or another that we use to convince ourselves that we "love" all people "like" them? I have.

Dance for us
joke for us
run fast for us
make funny faces for us
stick pencils in your 'fro for us
be a 'bro for us
sing for us
scat for us
swing the bat for us
dunk for us
beat that punk for us
grin for us
get drunk on gin for us

just don't remind us
about the back of the bus
be like us
be like us