Yes, I Expect Better from Adoptive Parents

The backstory is kind of long so bear with me:

To set the backstory: Our adoption agency sponsors a Christian Rock concert tour every winter- the goal of which seems to be, at least in part, to gain new sponsors for their child sponsorship program. Now don't get me wrong- I think that their sponsorship program is wonderful as they work to keep children, alive and healthy and with their birth families and birth cultures and doing all those things takes money so I have no issue with the concert to promote sponsorship philosophy. And imagine my shock to see over 17,000 people at a sold out venue. Apparently, as I now understand, the concert is sort of a Christian Woodstock. So it's not a small venture.

I also saw that the sponsorship video contained images of K so I volunteered because I am completely altruistic nosy and I wanted to help out with check out what they were doing with my kid's picture. Seriously, all kidding aside since I think it is a wonderful cause, I convinced my amazing friend K to come along and volunteer with me.

We have a significant amount of free time while we wait for intermission (which is when people will come to the booth to sign up) so we watched the concert in little bits and chatted the rest of the time. Right before intermission is the big presentation to guilt convince people of the need to sponsor children. There are two presenters speaking, one from one of the bands who has traveled extensively with the agency to see first hand the work they do in country. The other is a motivational speaker/preacher (not really sure the fitting term) who has written a book. So this guy is preaching and (surprisingly, given my liberal beliefs) I am agreeing with a lot of what he is saying. He is getting the crowd all fired up and cheering and he starts talking about the 4 kids his family sponsors. As he reaches the climax of his speech he says

"And not only do we sponsor four kids, we did even more.

We went and got us one of those."

Got us one of those?????? Are you freakin' kidding me?????

Now people were cheering and screaming so it became hard to understand exactly what he was saying so (in the interest of full disclosure I could have heard him wrong) but he then says

"We brought our little ching chong cho home from China"

As adoptive parents we have to deal with ignorant questions and comments all the time (and whether they are asked innocently or with malice) we have to constantly fight the perception that our children were bought, that you just run out and get one- the same way you pick up a gallon of milk on the way home. We often overhear our children talked about as if they are nothing more than a commodity. Not to mention the inherent white privilege when we talk about "going over there and getting one of THEM" So to hear an adoptive parent- especially one with such a visible platform use this kind of language- well it turns my stomach. And then to not use the child's name but instead use something that sounded exactly like the taunts our Asian children have to hear on the playground- well that is beyond offensive. I truly hope he said something that has a logical and appropriate explanation- but what the audience heard was fake Chinese.

So yeah, I think it is SO much worse coming from adoptive parents because we should know better. And if we don't know better, or don't understand why this is an issue, or even that it IS an issue- well then maybe we'd be better off sticking with sponsorship.