By Alethia Stern
Decades ago, when I was a young girl of four or five, my mother won a free family portrait session from a local grocery store. One Saturday afternoon, she decided to cash in on her winnings. There was a whirlwind of activity around the house, and everyone was putting on their finest. Hair, makeup, and accessories were coordinated too. I was off to the sidelines in observation mode. Eventually, my mother made her way toward me. I sat motionless wondering how I would get the royal treatment.
She looked at me, looked at my hair, looked at me again, looked at my hair (which was referred to as the Brillo pad), and shook her head. She quickly left and returned with a pair of scissors and began cutting away at my Afro. I immediately started to resist, squirming in my seat. “Sit still damn it!” she shouted. I obeyed the order, but one by one the tears began trickling down my cheeks. I hated the fact my hair was different from everyone else’s. It was coarse, unmanageable, brittle, without beauty, and vilified. Still, it was my hair. And it was short and now being made even shorter. I wanted long hair like everyone else.
When I was growing up people often mistook me for a boy on account of my short hair; this completely annoyed me. I wanted to shout, “I’m a girl damn it!” Perhaps that’s why I get offended in this age of political correctness when someone asks me what pronouns I use or identify with; it triggers the memory. During the photo shoot, the photographer made two attempts to get me to smile for the camera; in retaliation for getting my haircut I refused. I was both flaming mad and simultaneously depressed. The family portrait no longer exists, it burned in a house fire.
People often take for granted genetic mirroring in birth families, but that’s not always the case. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of having someone at home whose physical features resemble your own, who understand your plight. It was certainly lonely for me being the one and only NPE (not parent expected). No, I didn’t need a consumer DNA test to enlighten me; I have known all my life just by looking in the mirror. I had an Afro and tan complexion, unlike anyone else in the home. I grew up in an isolated community deprived of my culture and identity.
Birth families and foster and adoptive parents are obligated to acknowledge the genetic differences, including race and ethnicity, of the infants or children they bring into their care. These differences should be celebrated and not ignored. Nor should families superimpose their own preferences with respect to hair textures and styles. I remember reading about Colin Kaepernick, when his adoptive mother reportedly told him his chosen hairstyle, cornrows, made him look like a thug. This insensitive comment reminded me of my Brillo pad days. In the television series This Is Us, Randall was the minority in the household. His experiences were different than those of his adoptive parent’s biological children. Had he been adopted with another Black infant or child, his issues with anxiety and self-perception may have been lessened.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just fodder for political discussions. It creates opportunities for employment, education, access to products, services, and resources. It helps create a more just society and empowers economic mobility. But diversity, equity, and inclusion truly begin at home. Parents—whether birth, foster or adoptive—need to confront their own implicit bias before beginning the challenges of rearing a child, especially a child of another race or ethnicity. Open mindedness begins at home. Exposure to people of varying abilities and backgrounds expands awareness and decreases the propensity to discriminate. As has been said, one is uncomfortable with the unfamiliar.
There was no family photo retake. Had there been one, I would have chosen my preferred hairstyle, smiled for the camera and said, “Cheese!”
Alethia Stern holds an allied health science degree. She is an NPE and the adult daughter of an adoptee. She enjoys reading memoirs and considers them a temporary distraction from the reality of her own story. She is an amateur film critic and self-professed trauma expert currently residing in the Midwest with several rescue cats and her twin daughters. Stern is also the author of Reflections: A Window Into My Soul, a chapbook of poetry.