All-American girls in Calcutta

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There are few real news programs left on U.S. television. You have 60 minutes, Nightline, and PBS’ excellent series Frontline. Two weeks ago I watched all six hours of a brilliant documentary called Country Boys that followed the lives of two poor teenage boys from Kentucky into manhood. I thought it exemplified what reality TV could be if only it had a brain. SM tipster “Anu” forwards us another example by Frontline of a great documentary. Frontline’s Rough Cut series posts a short film by Sasha Khokha (only on-line) titled, India: Calcutta Calling-American girls explore their roots.

In the wake of FRONTLINE’s broadcast last week of David Sutherland’s film Country Boys, about two teenagers coming of age in rural Kentucky, FRONTLINE/World presents Sasha Khokha’s video Calcutta Calling, about three teenage girls growing up in Minnesota… The twist in Khokha’s story is that the three girls — Kaylan Johnson, Anisha Pitzenberger and Lizzie Merrill — were all adopted as infants from an orphanage in Calcutta, India. Their Midwestern American parents raised them in loving families as all-American girls who sing in the choir, play soccer and shop at the mall.

Still, the girls know they are different. If nothing else, their brown skin sets them apart in Minnesota. People are friendly, but sometimes look at them as outsiders.

Khokha is allowed to accompany Anisha, Kaylan and Lizzie when they go back to India with their American parents. This is the first time they have returned to the land of their birth. It is a chance for them to learn more about their origins and to explore their dual identities. Surprising, honest and poignant, Calcutta Calling follows these bright-eyed girls closely as they venture into a country that both delights and disturbs them. [Link]

While watching the film I KNOW that many of you will have the same conflicted reactions as me. These girls were all raised in white families and in white neighborhoods. This is an entire step removed from Indian Americans that, despite being born here, still retain cultural ties to India through family and community. Except for their skin color, these girls have no connection to Indian culture whatsoever. And yet…their brown skin instinctively causes you to sometimes unfairly judge their often shallow reactions as the film unfolds. For example, one of the three girls helps a small child color in the picture of a girl while visiting the orphanage back in India (see picture at right). It isn’t until she is done that she realizes that she helped the child draw a girl with blond hair instead of black. The movie also brought to mind some of the issues we have been discussing on SM in the past week. All three of these American families adopted girl children from India. In the end you can’t help but appreciate that these three girls at least got the chance to meet each other. All three feel that in each others presence they finally belong.

I strongly urge readers to set aside 20 minutes to watch this film. For best viewing use the Quicktime option instead of the Real Media player and enlarge the screen size in the pop up window. Also keep in mind that by posting this I am going to substantially increase traffic to their site. I had no problem viewing it but some of you may want to wait until an odd hour.

Click here to watch.

74 thoughts on “All-American girls in Calcutta”

  4. i know a lot of koreans are adopted in minnesota. i don’t know how many south asians are, but does anyone know what it is about minnesota or minnesotans that encourage them to adopt from asia?

  5. i know a lot of koreans are adopted in minnesota. i don’t know how many south asians are, but does anyone know what it is about minnesota or minnesotans that encourage them to adopt from asia?

    Kimchi and Khichdi?

  6. Wow. talk about bringing back memories. i think i started bawling about 1/2 through the film. why? from may to august of 1997 i worked in a Missionaries of Charity orphanage in Mumbai. it was hard to watch mothers drop off their children, but never for a moment did i think less of them. i actually got really angry when the tour guide told the girls that the mothers who drop off the kids “breed like animals” and are akin to “cats and dogs on the street.” most of the kids that were there were there because their families honestly couldn’t afford to feed them and they felt by putting them up for adoption they were giving them the best chance they could at a good life. furthermore a number of the children were put up for adoption because their mothers had died during childbirth and the father couldn’t take care of the child alone.

    abhi, i definitely agree with you about feeling conflicted. this film has me thinking.

    i was talking to my brother online about it and he mentioned something to me… while i was on some level repulsed by some of the things that the girls were saying initially [i.e. ‘i think they’ll all be naked.’ or ‘i felt safe on the bus’ or whatever] it occurred to me that their views as first time visitors are not that far off from second generation Indian Americans. i have friends that either NEVER go to India or go to India but are basically taken kicking and screaming for the entire trip–they basically hate it.

    anyways, i have a lot of thoughts on this.. and abhi thank you so much for sharing it with us…

    i’ll have to sit down and really process my thoughts and write a more substantive comment later.

  7. i actually got really angry when the tour guide told the girls that the mothers who drop off the kids “breed like animals” and are akin to “cats and dogs on the street.”

    That was pretty outrageous!

    I think the best part of the documentary was where the helper at the orphanage started telling the girls stories about their childhood like she could actually remember them. Desi BS at its very best 🙂

  8. Really beautiful film – the most moving thing for me was how they said that they always felt slightly strange and out of place in America, they felt out of place when they went to India, but when they got together these three adopted Indian girls who lived close to each other – they finally felt like they had found some kind of home where they didnt feel strange to be with one another. God bless them.

  9. fantastic stuff. i found the girls very sympathetic; the somewhat callow things they say aren’t really that big a deal. indeed as all mixed up pointed out, the most odious statements we hear in the film are from the woman who makes the cats and dogs comparison.

    in the end, they come out with a concrete sense of what their “difference” represents. they know they are different from the start, but now they have something real, experiential, that they can connect it too — instead of conjecture, denial, or other people’s prejudices. like when she moves from “hey, they know about soccer here!” to “now when people say indians don’t play soccer, i can tell them that it’s in my culture.” that’s a trivial little example but at the same time it’s very, very deep.

    abhi, thanks so much for bringing this to our attention.

    peace

  10. The other thing was – right at the end in the shopping mall they go to get their noses pierced – which they want to do together – and one of them says they wanted to do it as a symbol of ‘my culture’.

  11. It was an interesting documentary. I was intially stunned at their reactions to India, but had to keep reminding myself that they were from Minnesota and probably had no exposure to Indians and Indian culture until this trip. At least they found eachother. What really irked me was the social worker in Delhi who compared the women who leave their babies to animals. This seemed like a highly insensitive and uninformed comment. Overall though, I really enjoyed it.

  13. i neglected to mention that it is my goal not to actually have kids but rather adopt a bevy of indian kids from Mumbai.

    my mother’s response: “i don’t know if i could love an adopted grandchild the same way as a biological grandchild.”

    my response: “that’s okay, if you can’t treat my kids the same as Nishant’s [my brother], you don’t really need to talk to them.”

    and…

    i totally prefer girls–incidently at the orphanage i worked at there were only 3 boys out of nearly 100 children. why? well definitely parents were more likely to give up girls, but also the boys that were put up for adoption were snapped up by Indian families very very quickly.

    the Indian government changed adoption laws following the 80s to favor [in descending order]: Indian Citizens, NRIs, then foreign couples. following this system… by the time foreign families have a chance at adopting Indian children–the odds are VERY VERY VERY high that they’ll be getting a girl. additionally, most adoption agencies [and i think the Indian govt] forbid the pre-selection of children. all you get to know is that they’re healthy and what age they are.

  14. okay one more thing…

    if anyone is interested Frontline apparently does a story on South Asia approximately every month. if you click—> here you can get access to their other stories.

    i just watched Seeds of Suicide, which was very thought provoking

  15. Yes, it was an interesting little documentary. I think the website says that the parents, quite reasonably, didn’t allow the film-maker to film during more sensitive moments.

    There’s this hour-long public radio doc (more bleak, than this one) I heard some time ago about the history of american families adopting kids from other countries (no Indian kids there) — starting with Korean adoptions after the Korean war. You can hear it here : http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/adoption/. They talk about the range of decisions made by the families about the level of contact that the kids have with their native culture. In it this Minnesotan family makes the decision to keep their adopted son in touch with his Guatemalan family. Lots of food for thought there.

    Maybe Minnesotans do infact adopt “internationally” more than ppl from other states [ace]. Maybe it’s related to their accepting displaced ppl from other countries also (Hmong and Somalis for eg.) ?

  17. Wow this was an eye opener. I thought the craziest part was when they were saying “look, our hands are brown on the back and white on the palms with brown lines on them.” That’s how absolutely isolated they were from anything remotely Indian (or non-white for that matter).

  25. I don’t know what to say? For years I have travelled and had close association with many second generation Indians, probably just find out what my country India or mera Bharat means. Many force mutilateral meaning in India too but its like few blind man with an elephant. So began the intial shocks, constant question, the gritty determination to find the answer. Sometimes these were issues many of us, in different times of our life questione too and then inately grow over it. I appreciate the Khokha’s effort, gives me a hope, this bridge she is has put a brick on would go on to unearth unimaginable amount of history and stories of human interest. If not anything it would still move few hearts in this planet to something very basic and human. To under our roots in this planet. Thanks Sasha for you gave me meaning today.

  27. wow.

    i agree with everyone, that woman’s comments about the mothers being like animals in the street was unreal — i wonder what it takes for a woman (who may herself be a mother) to think that of another mother. i often find that upper-class indians affect this sort of attitude towards poorer people, beggars, etc., is it to make it seem less like a responsiblity and more like their own fault? we do it in america, e.g. “if they had less children…”, “if they worked harder…”

    what was also interesting was the interview with the filmmaker, who had no positive things to say about the package tour the girls were a part of; it also seemed to me in viewing the film that the girls were unfortunately given little chances to interact in a way that didn’t make them either feel a) guilty or b) disgusted — i think their trip could have been handled better.

    also — the interaction with the possible care home worker, could have been BS, in fact probably was, but what a positive experience for the girls…

  28. Abhi thanks for pointing these out. Country boys looks promising…

    Seeds Of suicide and that Kyrgystan bride kidnapping documentaries feel like a punch in the stomach. It totally overpowers whatever else I wanted to comment about Calcutta Calling. Most Indians would be aware about farmer suicides for sometimes…..yet watching it as a documentary sort of puts us directly into the frame. It really makes you cry. And that Kyrgystan story leaves with such a terrible conflicting emotions. On one hand there is this horrible practice of kidnapping girls and OTOH the documentary ends on a positive note wherein it shows some of the girls there have sort of tuned themselves and even happily accepted (not resigned) it in their life. Somewhat similar to girls getting used to dowry in India.

    Like AMU’s moniker, right now I am all mixed up..Just don’t know what to say.

  30. One wonders if the girls aren’t very confused now, more than before they went to India. Having seen Indians and having felt that “it could have been us”, they could easily fall into the trap of attributing every little fault and difference that they find in themselves to their different roots. I also feel sorry for the parents, who may feel a need to explain things a bit more now than before but may not be able to since the girls are almost adults.

  31. it also seemed to me in viewing the film that the girls were unfortunately given little chances to interact in a way that didn’t make them either feel a) guilty or b) disgusted — i think their trip could have been handled better.

    Very well put.

  32. Thanks for posting this. I watched it last night coincidentally right after I watched Salaam Bombay again just for fun.

    There were a few things I thought were really interesting:

    1) The tour guide calling women who give up their babies “animals.” I wasn’t surprised that somebody would have this feeling, but I was a little surprised that somebody who seemed to work closely with the adoption/return home program wouldn’t have enough of a perspective to understand that often giving up children isn’t done selfishly. Others have already discussed this. Is this a common feeling among Indians in India? Teresa I agree we do this in America too, but we have a more established infrastructure here to provide care for needy children (although does that reflect a greater perspective of ‘you have your back against a wall’ etc?)

    2) The 2nd girl (Anisha) said she was a typical American except ‘I’m brown’ while the 3rd girl said she thought she was less materialistic ‘than the Americans.’ These girls are much closer to that wonderful teenage crisis of identity than I am but the feeling of how mutually exclusive ‘brown/Indian heritage’ and American are to these girls was really unsettling. I stupidly thought that because they had basically no flesh and blood roots to India in America (and an all-white all-American family to boot) they would have an easier time adjusting to the idea of being American (personal identity conflict re: being adopted etc aside).

    3) I actually thought they were extremely graceful on their trip back to India. It can be kind of cathartic your first time when you’re old enough to understand reality, but they seemed to take it in stride, immature comments aside.

    (And I’m sorry if that was all rambly and stupid, I’m a little sleep-deprived today. I’m sure you’re all like, thank you for those DEEPLY INSIGHTFUL comments Rupa you are truly MASTER OF THE OBVIOUS.)

  33. Wonderfully mature for teenagers. The “immature” comments are probably less so than so many adult Americans who visit India.

    Part of me still cringes at yet another make-yourself-feel-good-to-be-American documentary focusing on how poor and backward India is, but I do realize that this is from the perspective of the three girls, so I think it’s a great job on the whole.

  34. The tour guide calling women who give up their babies “animals.” I wasn’t surprised that somebody would have this feeling, but I was a little surprised that somebody who seemed to work closely with the adoption/return home program wouldn’t have enough of a perspective to understand that often giving up children isn’t done selfishly.

    Or else she’s seen entirely too much of it, does see the same girls returning again and again, and is bitter and jaded at the whole thing. Kind of like the special ed teacher I aided for in 2001 who realized that a lot of the “problems” in her class lie with the unfit parents of those kids, and just stops trying to make things better because she knows her work will be undone at 3:30 when the kids go home. The comment was horrid, but I don’t blame her for her humanity…

    I’d be interested in asking her how to achieve “god” status; since she mentioned that we do have a choice and that is one of them :))

  35. The 2nd girl (Anisha) said she was a typical American except ‘I’m brown’ while the 3rd girl said she thought she was less materialistic ‘than the Americans.’ These girls are much closer to that wonderful teenage crisis of identity than I am but the feeling of how mutually exclusive ‘brown/Indian heritage’ and American are to these girls was really unsettling. I stupidly thought that because they had basically no flesh and blood roots to India in America (and an all-white all-American family to boot) they would have an easier time adjusting to the idea of being American (personal identity conflict re: being adopted etc aside).

    it’s funny… when i was younger i used to describe my white friends as my ‘American friends,’ but my black friends as my black friends. it wasn’t until someone pointed out that i was American that i began to correct myself and just call my white friends my white friends. i realized i was equating Americaness exclusively with white America…

    just something i remembered.

  36. Oh gosh I just caught up with this thread. That just made me so nostalgic and bombarded my senses and made me sad all at once. Maybe because I grew up in India but when I see the craziness of the street culture I just get so wrapped up in it and long for it.

    It was such a touching film. I just cried when I heard the mom get nervous when she couldn’t see the daughter in a crowd because she just blend in. It really bothered me that those women were putting on such a farce of having known those girls when they were little and telling stories. But when you see the look on the face of the girls it perhaps was a little worth it. But smart girls, they caught on to it.

    It was really sweet that they bonded and found eachother. Amazing. I used to think I had identity issues. I apparently have none.

  37. That documentary just opened my eyes to things I’d never thought about before. I tried to imagine myself in the shoes of one of them – being born to an all-white family, growing up around white people, identifying with white culture and being locked out, in a sense, of Indian culture. It blows my mind that the borders separating countries are borders of geography alone and culture alone…that nowadays, more than ever, you cannot describe a person’s place of origin and ethnicity and get a reasonably accurate picture of their lives.

    It was also interesting to see Anisha’s story – growing up with four white brothers, who share with her the fact that they were also adopted. The dynamics in that family seem fascinating.

  38. Anisha was really cool. I loved her comments and her reactions to things. She’s going to be gorgeous in a few years.

    A couple of thoughts that struck me. First of all, since these girls were adopted from a Calcutta orphanage, it might be reasonable to assume (though possibly incorrect) that their biologic mothers were poor, illiterate, so-called “lower-caste”, and either Bengali or Bihari background. But look at the results when their daughters were given loving environments, good food, good care, education, and allowed to have a proper childhood, and removed from the horrible social degradation they would have experienced in India…delightful, confident, charming, bright young women. This is a major lesson for India. If all those masses of poor, hand-to-mouth, wretchedly exploited people in India (the bottom 70% of the country) could just be allowed to improve their lot, given opportunities, education, economic security, nutrition/health care and most importantly dignity, the results would be staggering.

    The other thing that touched me was the American parents. How much they loved and nurtured those girls. Their quiet support and encouragement, even so far as pushing their reluctant daughters to make this trip that must have scared the daylights out of them. In the movie, although their role was subdued, they were always there in the background, lending moral support, no matter how bewildered they must have been at times.

    As to the girls themselves…we can not even imagine what it must have been like to have been an adopted Indian kid in small-town Minnesota. Looking different from EVERYONE around you INCLUDING your own family. The kinds of questions and stares they must have gotten, even as little kids. Maybe teasing and mean comments from other school kids. Who knows. In any case, it was WAY better than the life they would have had in India. I think it’s wrong of the Indian Gov’t. to restrict foreign adoptions for non-Indian parents. I think that’s depriving countless kids the chance to have a happy, productive life (even if they do get cut off from their culture). Instead, as long as screening mechanisms are in place to make sure the potential parents are on the level and the potential kids are healthy, normal, etc. then they should open the floodgates and let as many kids as possible be adopted abroad.

  39. On second thought, if they had no restrictions on Indian kids being adopted abroad, I guess (knowing India) it would lead to all kinds of rackets including kidnapping, selling babies, etc. just to supply the demand. So maybe it’s not a good idea after all. I just hate to think there are so many genuine potential parents out there and so many genuine orphans/abandoned babies who would be a perfect match for each other, but who are not getting the chance for that to happen.

  40. After college I took a job in the Twin Cities, whereupon I encountered numerous white families bringing their daughters to a kathak teacher with whom I was taking lessons. From these mothers I learned that Minnesota has the highest international adoption rate in the country (this was about eight years ago, so I’m not sure if it’s still true).

    From what I could discern, the Scandinavian tendency towards openness to foreigners (hope I’m not making too gross a generalization here) still prevails among their descendants in the upper midwest. I for one was astounded at how interested Minnesotans seemd to be in people who were not like them, and how unusually concerned they were for the well being of new immigrants (mostly Hmong, Somali and from the former Soviet States). I remember there even being something called The Rice Project, an effort to collect more ethnically appropriate food for these immigrants in lieu of the Wonder Bread and peanut butter that they were being offered at local soup kitchens.

    At least several times a week I personally experienced the Minnesotan goodwill and was regularly surprised by their interest in and understanding of the world beyond America. But even among those who weren’t well read or well travelled, I encountered an openness that I have not experienced anywhere else in the U.S. Once I even had a woman come up to me in a grocery store; “Your hair is so black and your eyes are so brown!” she declared in what was clearly a tone of admiration, “Where are you from?” What was most astounding to me about this incident was that I was in the sticks, hours from the Twin Cities. An uber suburban parochial whitebread childhood had prepared me for racism based on my physiognomy, but not for such genuine, even innocent inquiry…

    After my time there I came away even more determined to adopt children thanks to the attitudes and experiences of the numerous Minnesotan adoptive families that I met. And based on my time there, I think that international adoptees who end up in Minnesota are probably much better off than their peers in other largely white environments. But I know that this is anecdotal, so take it for what it’s worth.

    For those who enjoyed this film and haven’t seen “Daughter from Danang”, I’d highly recommend it. DfD documents the experiences of a half Vietnamese woman who was adopted by a woman in Tennessee then returns to Vietnam about two decades later. The epiphanic and tension fraught confrontation at the end of the film is unlike anything I’ve ever seen on screen. You’d be hard pressed to write that kind of thing and make it as compelling and believable. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and was nominated for a Best Documentary Oscar, in case that’s any incentive to check it out. And best of all, it’s available on Netflix. Not to get all Amazon.com on you, but if you like “Daughter from Danang”, “Mai’s America” is the very well done inverse of it (Super spunky Vietnamese girl with vaunted visions of America comes to U.S. on high school exchange program and ends up living in Alabama, where certain images are shattered and a motley crew of other outcasts are befriended). It’s more difficult to find but also well worth the effort of tracking it down.

  41. mallumollu,

    i saw daughter from danang as well. thanks for bringing it up — i was too lazy to look up its name… that was a hard movie to watch, at times. i join you in recommending it.

    re: minnesota, my understanding, from people of various third world origins who have connections there, is that the lutheran church is a contributing factor. it’s one of the main denominations in the scandinavian-american (and german-american for that matter) communities, and appears to place high value on adoption, refugee/immigrant services, equitable development. i have a friend who works for one of those fair-trade coffee companies and she’s always flying out to minnestota because the lutheran church is one of their big customers. you’d typically associate this with urban crunchies or unitarians but these are just solid decent people out there in america, including in the countryside, which speaks to your observation.

    peace

  42. Abhi, thanks for sharing this link!! I was finally able to watch it last night and found it to be both touching and discussion provoking. Something that grabbed me, right off the bat, was one of the mothers saying “I don’t see [my daughter] as Indian, she’s just my daughter…” That sounds really great when you’re on Oprah, but the reality of it is that growing up in an all-white house, with nearly-all-white community and schools, the fact remains that nearly everyone else this young lady encounters will see her as Indian. To deny that, to shove it under the rug is a great disservice to her becoming the fullest, most self-confident woman she can be. I was overjoyed that the girls had the opportunity to go back to India and reflect on where life has taken them, to find gratitude for the lives they lead today, and more importantly to find others who can relate first-hand to what all that can mean or bring to question.

    I was very moved, when the three girls were hanging out on the hotel room bed and one said something to the effect of how she knows she doesn’t fit in back at home, yet while she feels visually similar in India she still didn’t feel like culturally she was in place. I found the girls’ insights to be extremely mature, and this trip will probably go a long way in helping their development of self and the reconciliation of “where I come from”, “where I was raised” and “what does that make me today?”

    I enjoyed this link very much, Abhi, and I plan on forwarding it to a LOT of people.

  43. DesiDancer, you said:

    “Something that grabbed me, right off the bat, was one of the mothers saying “I don’t see [my daughter] as Indian, she’s just my daughter…” That sounds really great when you’re on Oprah, but the reality of it is that growing up in an all-white house, with nearly-all-white community and schools, the fact remains that nearly everyone else this young lady encounters will see her as Indian. To deny that, to shove it under the rug is a great disservice to her becoming the fullest, most self-confident woman she can be.”

    I’m surprised you would criticize that mother. That girl (the Indian adoptee) would be NOWHERE if it wasn’t for that mother. She gave that girl her (the girl’s) life. The only reason that particular child had a chance to become a “full, self-confident woman” is because of that mom.

  44. It is a fact of life that everybody is going to see the girls and say Indian. I may speak with a regular American accent and say I am from a little town of PA, but everybody only sees “desi”. They should now delve into their own cultures and be prepared for those questions. “Where are you from? I cannot believe you can speak such good English.” Hey even I get it and I am from an uber almost all-white suburban area of NY state :-)Atleast I get to India often enough to realize that I am “phoren” in both places :-)) 😉

  45. Amitabh- don’t jump my shit, I’m not hating on the mom, but I do feel that denying the fact that her child is brown, adopted, and not visually a fit-in is short-sighted. She has probably given her daughter many many opportunities that she could never have dreamed of, had she not been adopted by this loving family. But the fact of the matter is that ignoring it won’t make it any less of a problem, much in line with Tom Cruise’s banal comments on how he doesn’t see his adopted kids by their skin color– unfortunately the rest of the world does, and despite it being every parent’s dream to protect their child 24-7, all the world around, there are times when the child will be away from their parents’ protection and guidance and have to learn to fend for themselves. Denying that the world is often prejudicial is naive.

    I’m mixed-race-desi, but I still get asked if my parents spoke English at home, or if we played with snakes, ate monkey brains, or rode elephants. Despite the fact that we played with Legos, ate Cottage Inn Pizza and rode a Toyota or a Huffy. Ignorance is everywhere and eventually children must leave their utopic homes. It is a parent’s duty to arm them effectively to protect themselves. Further, there are ways to do it without negating the adoptive family in the least. Undoubtedly these young women are proud of their adoptive families, and their roles in them. Being “you” shouldn’t come at the expense of any of the parts that comprise you. From what I got out of the film, the girls were not the least bit ungrateful for the opportunities they had been given in life, with 100% credit to their adoptive families. BUT. They still said that they felt a void or a gap, or just that they didn’t fit in, and that they felt somehow impelled to discover “their culture” whether it be through culinary outlets or ordering a sari online. If a parent shrugs or ignores this desire in their child, a desire to know who they are and where they come from, it’s just sad.

    I’m not hating on the mother, I hope that after this trip she sees what impact it had on her daughter and encourages her to define herself however she chooses.

  46. “If a parent shrugs or ignores this desire in their child, a desire to know who they are and where they come from, it’s just sad.”

    DesiDancer,

    You are right on. In fact, a year ago NYT had a huge article on it. I know someone who has adopted a Korean son. They have a huge support group of similar East Asian adopted kids, they plan go to Korea regularly so that the son feels ownership, sense of belonging.

    Often on flight to India, I see adopted girls by white parents on the flight. They seem happy, sometimes reading Indian story books.

  47. Thanks, Kush. 🙂

    Further, the fact that one of the young women had helped a little girl color in a picture (shown above in post) with blond hair and white skin unknowingly, leads me to believe that in her upbringing (privileged or not is So Not the point) she didn’t have any dolls or toys or books that reflected her phenotype. Growing up in a mostly-caucasian area, in a caucasian family, to not see representation on TV or in films, in the MSM, in your toy chest or picture books that looks “like me” can be long-term detrimental to children, especially girls. There are some great companies, these days, that offer toys and dolls of Color, so that adopted children, mixed-race, and minority children can have representative playthings and in turn feel more comfortable with themselves, as opposed to an aryan busty-goddess Barbie doll or some similarly disparaging thing.

  49. DesiDancer,

    Do you feel some ‘extra’ confusion as you are not only an ABCD but an ABC 1/2D 🙂

    Seriously did you feel extra pressure because of being mixed in addition to being an ABCD. I am going to have mixed race children soon and I am worried about what kind of additional shit they will be exposed to for being of a mix race. I have been reading up on issues faced by mixed race kids in the US. I actually plan on moving to a big city once my kids are of a school going age so that they can live in a more diverse neighborhood.

  50. Great short documentary. Interesting on alot of levels!

    Aside:

    She’s going to be gorgeous in a few years.

    What is it about this comment that makes it creepy and voyeuristic?….. hmmm… because it IS unless you’re 16 yourself!