Tag: Race Page 1 of 2

On Transracial Adoption

On January 16, 2023

In Adoption, Parenting, Race and Diversity, Re-Entry to America

There was a lot I didn’t know when I adopted my children.

Since then, I’ve wondered a hundred times if we did right by our children when we adopted them. Adoption heals a wound, but I underestimated the depth of the wound and overestimated the ease of healing it.

Several months ago, I was asked to do a webinar on my advice for raising adopted children overseas. I turned it down. I can’t give advice on this because I’m still raising my children. Ask me again in ten years, and I’ll see if I have advice. Maybe only once I’ve heard what my adult children have to say about it.

For the bulk of their childhoods, Haven of Peace Academy shielded my children from the pain. They were different by being raised by white parents, but lots of children at HOPAC were different for lots of other reasons. Most were born in one country and raised in another, many were biracial, almost all knew what it felt like to navigate various cultures. My children were stuck between worlds, but so were all their classmates.

I ripped my children from Tanzania and dropped them into America in the spring of 2020, when the world had shattered into uncertainty, and racial anger that had festered for decades was exploding to the surface. We lived like hobos that spring with no place to call home, and the night in June that we arrived at my in-law’s house, there was a curfew over all of greater Los Angeles because of George Floyd rioting.

I wondered what world I had brought my Black children into.

Imagine telling your children about the things that people who look like you have done to people who look like them in the country you brought them to live in.

Why Did It Take War to End Slavery, and Not Revival?

By Amy Medina

On January 18, 2021

In Race and Diversity

Why did it take a war to end slavery in America, and not revival?

Are you familiar with the two Great Awakenings? In the 18th and 19th centuries, hundreds of thousands of Americans were turning to Christ. It wasn’t just lip service; society was transformed by Christianity. The Industrial Revolution, the modern missions movement, and even our unique political system are all credited to these revivals.

Yet slavery carried on, unchallenged. Human beings, made in the image of God, were bought and sold because of the color of their skin. Children were torn away from their parents, strong men were forced to work themselves to death, young women were beaten at the slightest whim. Even while Christianity was sweeping the nation.

Since the Great Awakenings brought about such stirring influence in politics, business, and individual character, why wasn’t there nationwide repentance over slavery?

Sure, many slaves were part of these revivals. And some abolitionist movements were awakened. But it wasn’t enough. Because it didn’t take revival to end slavery in America, it took war.

Yet even the war didn’t change hearts. Not long after the Civil War, Christians all over America enacted laws and policies that kept black people dehumanized, brutalized, terrorized for another one hundred years. While millions of Americans sang hymns and pledged allegiance to the Christian flag and sent missionaries to foreign lands, black Americans were being lynched in front of immense cheering crowds of men, women, and their children.

This shakes me to my core.

My Problem Goes Much Deeper Than Racism

By Amy Medina

On October 16, 2020

In Race and Diversity

I’m white, educated, and American. Some say I therefore must be racist.

I say my problem is much worse.

I might give a good impression on the outside, but you can’t see the number of times I’ve truly believed that I am better than you. Sometimes that might be because you are a different race or ethnicity than me, and I think my race or culture is more effective than yours. Or maybe you’re white too, and I still think I’m better because you made a life choice that makes me feel more moral than you. Maybe I assume I have a better perspective than yours.

Christians, Diversity is Not a Bad Word

By Amy Medina

On October 12, 2020

In Race and Diversity

A favorite memory was the night I heard Victoria tell me her story of growing up in Soviet Ukraine.

Victoria was a wonderful co-worker at Haven of Peace Academy. So when she sat across from me at a staff dinner at an outdoor restaurant, in the dimming evening light, I asked her to tell me about her childhood under Communism.

What was it like growing up in the Soviet Union? I asked. And I sat spellbound as she talked about a carefree childhood where the children could roam freely, because there was very little crime. However, she said, there were also times when neighbors would disappear in the night, never to be seen or heard from again.

She talked about her Christian grandmother, who secretly told her about God and gave her a cross pendant to wear under her school uniform. One day a teacher found it, and forced the seven-year-old Victoria to stand in front of the entire school and stomp on that cross.

Parents Brought Their Children to John Hartfield’s Lynching

By Amy Medina

On December 15, 2018

In Other

One night we talked with our kids about the Roman Colosseum and the Christians who were ripped to shreds by wild animals in front of thousands of blood-thirsty fans.

“People still are entertained by violence,” we said. “Like with video games or Extreme Fighting.”

Thankfully, I thought, we’ve moved past that brutal time in ancient history when people were entertained by actual killing.

And then I read about John Hartfield.

On June 26, 1919, John Hartfield was lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi.

I’d known about lynchings, and was duly horrified by them, but I always just assumed that lynchings were done by small groups of wicked, racist white men.

And they were. But what I didn’t know was that lynchings often were public spectacles. John Hartfield was one of them.

John Hartfield had the unfortunate crime of falling in love with a white woman. It didn’t matter that it was mutual. And for that, the people of Ellisville, Mississippi decided he should die.

But this was no spontaneous outburst of violent anger. No, this lynching was planned in advance. This article from New York Times says, “The front page of The Jackson Daily News announced that Mr. Hartfield would be lynched at 5 p.m. ‘Governor Bilbo Says He Is Powerless to Prevent It,’ the headline read. ‘Thousands of People Are Flocking Into Ellisville to Attend the Event.'”

Only 1700 people lived in the town of Ellisville. However, there were at least ten thousand people who swarmed to Ellisville for the lynching. Men, women, and children. It was a party atmosphere. There were food vendors and photo postcards.

John was strung up and then shot until his body fell apart. Some people took body parts as souvenirs.

In horrified fascination, I did a little searching to see if this was an isolated event. But no, actually, it wasn’t. One source says, “Lynchings were popular and public events, attracting thousands of celebratory, grinning onlookers. White children even “played” lynching in a game called “Salisbury.”

“Parents brought their children like they were coming to a picnic,” said Korea Strowder, now 94.“It was a big to-do, all right.” “It was very much like a spectator sport,” Angela Sims said. “Children were even dismissed from school.”

And lynchings didn’t just happen in Mississippi and Alabama, but even as far north as Missouri and Kansas.

This is our country, Americans. This is our history, from only one hundred years ago. This was sanctioned behavior in our Christian nation, founded on Christian principles. The land of the free and the home of the brave. The nation founded on the premise that all men are created equal and entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I’m still very grateful to be an American, as I’ve seen and experienced first-hand the privilege that it is to be a part of my nation. But maybe this story will help you understand why I’m apprehensive about the possibility of relocating my dark-skinned children to the land of my birth. Maybe it will help all of us to listen a little more carefully to our black friends and acquaintances. And maybe it will help us all to consider a little more deeply the depravity that dwells in all of our hearts.