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Conversations with Grace: Diversity in Media

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On October 2, 2026

In Race and Diversity

Diversity representation in the media is a hot topic right now. When movies, shows, or books intentionally introduce people of color (POC), is it respectful and necessary? Dangerously rewriting history? In line with a biblical perspective? I sat down with my Black 20-year-old daughter Grace to discuss this. Grace is currently a junior-year history major at Biola University. 

Mom: When do you first remember being impacted by racial diversity in media? 

Grace: The 2014 version of Annie. [Grace was about 8 years old.] I grew up watching the other one; I loved it, and that was all I knew. So when they came out with the new version, it helped me to know that there was another way this story could go. There are children of all colors in foster care and orphanages all over the world. I thought, “Hey, I’m not alone in this, and it’s not just children from Africa or China who are orphans.”  

It was also significant that William Stacks (like Daddy Warbucks) showed a person of color who was affluent and successful and that was cool too. I realized I loved seeing movies with people who looked like me, and not just as a background character. 

Mom: What do you mean by “background character?”

Grace: There’s a joke among Disney fans [of the popular “tween” sitcoms] where there’s always a “token Black friend” (or person of color) who is funny, has snappy remarks, and can either dance or sing. Like “Willow” in Liv and Maddie. 

Zendaya was on “Shake It Up,” but left because there wasn’t adequate representation of people of color; then Disney came up with “Casey Undercover,” which has all POC as main characters. The best friend is white. Now there are shows with kids of all different sizes and colors on the Disney Channel. 

Mom: Why is this significant?

Grace: Media affects so much of people’s worldview and how they look at the world and other people. And even history. For people who look like me to be represented but then also portrayed as protagonists and as people who matter, that communicates that we are valuable. That our contributions to the world are worth caring about. 

Me: What does it subtly communicate when there aren’t any POC characters? Like Hannah Montana? 

Grace: It communicates that there can be a “perfect world” without anyone like me in it. Like, we’re not needed. Like, we exist, but there’s no need to make mention of it. 

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Navigating the Emotions of Adoption: Conversations with Grace

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On August 1, 2025

In Adoption, Parenting

Grace came home to us from an orphanage when she was ten months old, and is now nineteen. She agreed to have this discussion about adoption and has read what I am posting. I’m so grateful for her vulnerability in sharing these things publicly! 

The day she came home

As I look back on how Grace processed adoption, I think she instinctively knew something was wrong in her life even when she was a toddler. 

At eighteen months old, she became obsessed with a book where Dora the Explorer helps a baby bird find his mommy. She wanted to read it again and again, becoming agitated or even crying each time the bird was lost and rejoicing when the mama bird was found. 

At first, I thought it was cute and nothing more, but then it became a pattern in Grace’s life. I discovered that many toddler books have the theme of a child losing his mother, and Grace became increasingly upset by these books. As she got older, she wanted nothing to do with them. This was before she was old enough to understand adoption at all.

Me: Do you remember any of this? 

Grace: As a little kid, I remember reading the monkey book [a board book called Hug]. I remember crying every single time. Bobo [the monkey] lost his mama, and I did too. 

Me: You eventually hated that book and would run away if I brought it out to read to your siblings. But also, you named your stuffed monkey Bobo. What are your earliest memories of understanding adoption? 

Grace: I knew the word because we talked about it all the time. You never hid from us that we were adopted (not that you could!). 

I think I first began to understand on the first day of kindergarten, because people came in with their parents, and all their parents looked like them, and my parents didn’t look like me. That’s when I realized that I wasn’t in a normal situation, that this didn’t happen to everybody. 

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Conversations with Grace: Black History Month

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On February 26, 2025

In Race and Diversity

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Grace (who is currently 19 and a freshman in college). Like the last time she and I did this, remember that her perspectives are her own and don’t represent all others like her (or even her siblings). But I know you will find her thoughts informative and interesting!

When you were a Tanzanian kid growing up in Tanzania with American parents, what did you know about American Black History? Did you feel any connection with it?

We read books as a family about the black struggle in America, like Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and The Watsons Go to Birmingham. But I didn’t feel a connection to them. I remember thinking that Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas were really cool, but I was not African-American so they weren’t my people. 

I knew about the East African slave trade because we visited museums in Zanzibar and Bagamoyo, which were places that were a part of the slave trade. It was flabbergasting to see that it really happened to people, because even now, as a history major, it’s amazing that we as a human race treated other humans like that. But East African slaves did not go to America. [They primarily went to the Middle East or were enslaved within Africa for exports of ivory or other goods.]

Related post: What Your Grandmother’s Piano Had To Do With Slavery in Zanzibar

How did that change when you moved here?

[We moved to the United States in the spring of 2020, shortly before the George Floyd riots that summer.] When we first moved here, I was in Target walking around without Mom, and this guy who was an older white man in a motorized wheelchair, stopped me. He said, “I just want you to know that Black Lives Matter and I believe that.”

I said, “Thank you.” But I wanted to say, “But I’m African.” Because I didn’t feel a connection with the movement at the time. 

People assume that I am African-American. I don’t have an African accent; I sound like my parents. My love for other accents may have gotten me into trouble because I do use African-American vernacular all the time. So I can sound as if I’ve been raised in an African-American home. But I don’t always have the heart to explain the entire story, so I let them go ahead and believe that. 

When Kisa joined my school sophomore year, that changed a lot for me. [Kisa was an international exchange student from Tanzania.] She helped me to embrace that part of myself and be proud of my identity as a Tanzanian. 

How do you see the distinction between African-American and African?

If you have an ancestry of your family coming here due to slavery, then that’s what I count as African-American. African-Americans have their own culture of music and food. There’s also the impact of GI Bills and other forms of racism that have affected them. Things like gang life have been a part of African-American culture but not African immigrants. 

African immigrants (like me) have a different culture. They stay much more African. 

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American Sprinkled with African: Conversations with Grace

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On September 3, 2024

In Third Culture Kids

My Grace is now 18, has started college, and is studying to become a middle-school history teacher. I think she’s pretty fascinating, and want more people to get to know her. So she agreed to let me interview her for my blog. Just remember that she represents only herself, not all adopted kids, or even her siblings. And as she continues to process her childhood, her answers to these questions will continue to evolve. But she gives a great snapshot of her unique life, and I know you’ll enjoy it!

What was it like to grow up Tanzanian in Tanzania by American parents?

I’m sure that when I was younger, it didn’t feel as weird as it does looking back on it now. I knew other kids that were being raised like that, so I was like, “That’s normal.” Uh, no. No, it’s not! 

As I grew up, like the last few years we were in Tanzania, I started realizing that I was treated differently by my Tanzanian classmates because I was from Tanzania, but that was the only thing that we had in common. I wasn’t fluent in Swahili; I had an accent from 10,000 miles away; I knew a lot about American culture and not Tanzanian culture. Sometimes I was subject to minor bullying. It wasn’t like I felt attacked; it was more like insults….. but that’s also because middle schoolers are awful. [And yet she wants to teach middle school!]

But also, being at Haven of Peace Academy really helped. Just because, even if they weren’t adopted, there were so many other kids like me there. There were kids who were from a different culture coming to live in Tanzania, which is kind of like my experience since I grew up in a culturally American home. Of course, I had great Tanzanian food and we listened to Tanzanian music but other than that, it was very American. So having missionary and international kids at the school made me feel that there were way many other people like me around me. 

In moving to the U.S. I realized, Whoa, there are more Black people here than I realized. So many ethnicities are counted as “Black” but there are so many different experiences represented. A Nigerian who moved to America as a college student will be living a crazy life of cultural shock. But other kids who are Nigerian and grew up here are completely different. It helped me to realize that there are so many different Black experiences in the U.S. Yes, my story is weird but that’s true of so many people in America. 

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To My Sunshine

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On May 24, 2024

In Adoption, Parenting

My dear Grace,

Raising you has been one of the greatest privileges of my life.

From the first day I laid eyes on you and you gave me your radiant smile, you have been sunshine in my life. Happy and fearless—that’s the way I would describe you from the time you were a baby. You sang “Amazing Grace” to an entire school full of kids when you were just two years old. Dad taught you to do backflips into the pool when you were three. You are always ready to jump into the next adventure with both feet.

But one of the most special things about you is your love for people. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone more people-oriented than you. When you were a toddler, I remember showing you the HOPAC school yearbook and being flabbergasted by how many names you knew of students and staff. As you grew up, whenever you met a new friend, you would always run into the kitchen and grandly announce, “I love [this person!] and I love her mom too!” I don’t know if you’ve ever met a person you didn’t like. God gave you the gift of loving others enthusiastically. 😊

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