Welcome to Week 7!
“The extreme overrepresentation of people of color, the disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, the targeted prosecution of drug crimes in poor communities, the criminalization of new immigrants and undocumented people, the collateral consequences of voter disenfranchisement, and the barriers to re-entry can only be fully understood through the lens of our racial history.” -Bryan Stevenson via Just Mercy
“We find ourselves in this dangerous place not because something radically different has occurred in our nation’s politics, but because so much has remained the same.” -Michelle Alexander via The New Jim Crow
“The personal is political is a concept that relies on consciousness-raising, on recognizing the connection between one’s personal misery and the related political practices.” (Sommers-Flannagan via Counseling and Psychotherapy Theories, 2012)
From this perspective as a clinical community, our goal is transformation – transformation in the child (and their family) as well as restoration in the actual structure and function of policies (and power dynamics) within that child’s environment.
In a post inspired by Adoptee Bridge, I shared, “Pushing back against hatred and ignorance… I shared a few weeks ago about how a child asked me in a public lobby, “Do you have the virus?” I could feel the bystanders in the room stop whatever it was they were doing and watch to see what I would say. It felt incredibly uncomfortable and I wanted to disappear. I got tingly and my body started to sweat. For me, and this is not the protocol, but for me, I was asking how I might serve this little kid and the ones who were watching. I chose to kneel down next to the child and their parent, and we had a gentle conversation together. Viruses typically don’t do that.”
This week’s material is incredibly polarizing. Our aim together is, in meeting here at this milestone, to embrace the occasion as a space to practice empathy, patience, humility… from our genuine hunger to serve one another from a place of hope. Let’s go for it!
-Cam
First, as always, take a peek at the resources linked below.
Second, use this Week 7 Discussion Guide to help you prepare a message for your family members. These weekly guides exist as prompts for self reflection, and they are different each week. They’re also private; for you only. You decide what to share with others or keep private.
Lastly, use the Connected Conversation template (Invitation or Response), depending on where you are in the process) to connect with your family member(s). You might use some of your ideas from the discussion guide to formulate your message.
- Learn about Redlining (and another angle on Redlining from The Root)
- Watch Bryan Stevenson’s famous message “We Need to Talk about an Injustice.”
- Watch Alice Goffman’s message on the school-to-prison pipeline.
- Please watch 13th on Netflix if possible; it’s an hour and 40 minutes, it’s eye opening, it disturbs that part of us who would gladly walk past our fellow travelers on the ground, who’ve been hurting for 400 years and beyond.
- Watch this 2-minute clip about race-based fees in adoption.
- And then read about why Black Babies Cost Less to Adopt.
- Consider adoptees like Adam Crapser and others like him who are being deported by the U.S. due to citizenship laws and policies.
- Review Chinese Exclusion Act and Executive Order 9066 to learn about policies (and residual attitudes) that have and continue to impact people, namely your fellow Asian Americans.
- Learn about the rights adoptees continue to be denied.
- Find at least two points from NABSW’s position statement that are relevant to the moment we’re facing today as a nation.
- Review NABSW’s six recommendations for preserving families of African ancestry.
It feels daunting, I know. Participate in these resources at your own pace, please. And do press on, as you lead your family into new territories of awareness, heightened capacities for love and service to neighbor, and toward that better country we’ve been inspired to build together. Thank you for all your work this week, I’m confident there will be fruit for ages to come! ❤
Cam Lee Small, MS, LPCC 