I’m a White Republican Raising a Black Child: Deal With It

April 26, 2012 By Nancy French

My husband and I – and consequently, my children – live a little bit in the public eye.  As a writer and memoirist, I’ve chronicled funny and poignant stories from our family’s lives in two books, and as a conservative activist I’ve taken my children to various political events across the Southeast.  In 2006 at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Memphis, a reporter for Newsweek interviewed my son and discovered he was skipping kindergarten for the conference.  “Mitt Romney, however, is pro-education,” I made sure to note. In 2008, my kids heard speeches by all of the GOP Presidential candidates – they were so young then, I had to distract them when the candidates talked about hot button cultural issues like abortion and gay rights.  (We hadn’t had those talks yet.)   Now, four years later, they’re far more aware of the issues and are frequently the only school aged children at these conferences.

(It’s not that I necessarily want my kids to live and breathe politics, rather I simply would prefer to have them with me than with a babysitter.)

The first photo we have of our daughter (taken in her African orphanage) and a photo taken at church on Sunday (she buttons her sweaters herself!)

The first photo we have of our daughter (taken in her orphanage)

This Presidential campaign cycle is very different for our family than the one in 2008.  This time around, we have a four-year-old daughter we adopted from Ethiopia two years ago.  Now that she’s a part of our family, she too has been to political gatherings with a big bag of crayons and coloring books to get her through the speeches.  For example here is her CSPAN debut when my husband won the Ronald Reagan Award at CPAC, here she got to meet Gov. Romney, and she’s attended book signings with the Palins.

Because we’ve had the audacity to appear in public with our family, we’ve been getting hate mail from liberals who are deeply offended that a white family would raise a black child (the Huffington Post posted a video of Naomi and me at CPAC and it generated more than 1,000 comments, many of them utterly vile). Usually, I laugh at baseless criticism and it inspires me to work even harder at artfully annoying my critics.  But when I get accused of actually harming my daughter by daring to raise her, it infuriates me.  See, for example, an excerpt from tonight’s Facebook message:

“I feel so sorry for your little girl! She has a hard complex life ahead of her! She should not be raised by people who vote against her best interests.”

(It was longer and much more offensive.)

What is that, dear reader?  You don’t understand how my family traveling to a poverty stricken African tribal area to take a starving, abandoned girl into our American family and loving her as fiercely and deeply as we love our biological children could be considered a bad thing?  Well, see, you don’t realize that my family is….  how can I put this politely….  Republican.  We are white conservatives, and the little girl we got from Africa is black.  While most won’t come out and say they wish we’d left her in Africa to starve rather than be exposed to conservatism, I’m not sure what other conclusion to draw.

She now has two parents, a brother, and even a sister!

As Christians, we believe we should take care of orphans, to give fathers to the fatherless.  We didn’t adopt to save the world, or to politically clone ourselves, or to annoy Democrats.  We did it because children need loving parents, a warm bed, and good food (and, yes, a Happy Meal counts).  We did it because as a two-year-old she weighed only 14 pounds.  (Of course, as is frequently the case with adoption, we got her thinking we were preserving her life, we soon discovered that we’re the ones who are blessed by her presence.)

Are my husband and I Republicans?  Yes.  And we also love our little black child.  I’m learning, for example, how to braid hair with colorful beads, I’m learning which colors look good against her chocolate colored skin tone, and I’ll teach her about her country of origin right after she learns her ABCs.

But to all of you liberals who are concerned I’m going to indoctrinate our children with conservative ideas?  Rest assured I’m doing everything within my power to make sure all three of our kids grow up in the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.

You can’t limit or dictate her political options or her cultural values just because of her skin color, and your constant criticism shows that you are less concerned about the truly poor and more concerned about propagating your narrow and destructive  identity politics.

So, yes, I’m a white Christian conservative Republican raising a black child whom I love with my whole heart.

Deal with it.

UPDATE:  David’s been reading my article, the comments, and the other online discussions it’s spawned and has weighed in with his own thoughts.  Check out Race, Politics, and Adoption — Following Up.

Read more on the Faith and Family Channel

A Poignant Moment for Me

The Joy of Pretty Things

What It Was Like to Co-Write Bristol Palin’s Memoir

A Military Wife’s Letter to her Local Church

 

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Ann Romney Reflecting on Motherhood

April 9, 2012 By Nancy French

Every mother is told at the grocery store by a well-meaning older woman, “Enjoy these years.  They are fleeting.” Usually the younger mom has to scrape the gum off her face, stuff the toddler back into the grocery cart, and dodge the grapes that the youngest might be flailing from an unknown location, to muster out a “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

But now that my kids are thirteen, eleven, and four, I think I’m beginning to really understand what they’re talking about.  At dinner, every time I set out five plates, it warms my heart.  (Okay, not every time.  But close to it.)

That’s why I was intrigued to hear Ann Romney talk about a similar sensation, with her five boys.  (Make that six?)

 

You might also enjoy:

Jon Stewart Discusses Rick Santorum’s Future

How does Tim Tebow Do Easter?

What is up with this Easter sign?

Love, Marriage, Baby Carriage, Cancer?

If You’re an Evangelical, You Should be Outraged at MSNBC

Conservative Christian Parents Finally Say No to “The Bachelor”


 

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Sex, Gender, and Gravity

September 2, 2011 By Nancy French

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One afternoon in Ithaca, N.Y., my kids were playing on the swing sets in the park when a little tike wearing a football jersey ran into my daughter’s path. I lunged for the swing — I jerked the chain so abruptly that I feared whiplash — and shared a “wow, that was close” exchange with the kid’s mom.

“How old is he?” I asked. The lady looked at me with no trace of irony as she placed her kid on the swing and said, “His name is Jill, and she’s three.”

As I tried to match the pronouns and antecedents, she explained that she belonged to a group of parents who rebelled against gender stereotypes, allowing their children to decide their genders after they’d been exposed to both options. I’d learned of this in a philosophy class at NYU. My professor argued that children are born with “sex” but taught “gender.” They claimed children unwittingly learn certain gender signifiers that dictate their behavior. Little boys, they claim, don’t naturally want to play with trucks, and little girls aren’t naturally drawn to dolls, if unsullied by eager parents who try to indoctrinate their children with heterosexist ideas about “gender.” According to my professor, gender roles cause people to live according to the very limited ideas of others. The ultimate goal, of course, is androgyny, where no differences between males and females exist.

“I’m going to raise her as gender-neutrally as possible and let him decide which gender she prefers at the age of eight.”  (Oh, eight . . . that’s when my son dug up our yard one square foot at a time, because he was convinced he’d find buried treasure.)

Read the rest here, if you can stomach it.

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The President’s Strategy: “Kill” Romney

August 9, 2011 By Nancy French

I almost didn’t use the word “kill” in the headline, but it’s right here in this Politico article:

Barack Obama’s aides and advisers are preparing to center the president’s reelection campaign on a ferocious personal assault on Mitt Romney’s character and business background, a strategy grounded in the early-stage expectation that the former Massachusetts governor is the likely GOP nominee.

The dramatic and unabashedly negative turn is the product of political reality. Obama remains personally popular, but pluralities in recent polling disapprove of his handling of his job, and Americans fear the country is on the wrong track. His aides are increasingly resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation. And so the candidate who ran on “hope” in 2008 has little choice four years later but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.

Of course, this is not a terrible surprise.  I mean, we know that the President’s mishandling of the economy is driving many of his former supporters right into the arms of the candidate who has demonstrated his fiscal responsibility time and time again.  Before he ran for Governor, he helped  launch the very successful Bain Capital — which helped launch such successful franchises as Staples and the Sports Authority — and then led a turnaround at Bain Consulting. He also saved the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City which, prior to his leadership, were mired in debt and corruption but subsequently became one of the most successfully-run Games in memory.  And then, he turned around debt ridden Massachusetts!

Obama plans to paint an ugly picture of his most likely opponent.

So, I get why the President is worried:

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.

While the strategy is understandable, it’s sad that they’re going to try to make Gov. Romney — a successful businessman, leader, husband, and father — appear “weird,” and “out of touch” and…  wait for it…  wait for it…  a flip flopper.  However, be ready for the onslaught.  And instead of giving credence to the White House’s accusations, just take it as a compliment.

They are horrified and scared.  And with an unemployment rate at 9.2%, they should be.

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Why the Michele Bachmann Hit Piece Was Wrong

July 19, 2011 By David French

I started my day today writing perhaps the most strident blog post I’ve ever written. I called it “The Betrayal of Michele Bachmann” and posted it in the Corner.  I was responding to the Daily Caller’s anonymously-sourced allegations that Michele Bachmann is “incapacitated” by migraines she attempts to control though “heavy pill use” and pulled out (by my standards) all the rhetorical stops.  I said the sources  – former aides — were “cowardly,” called their betrayal “disgusting,” and even threw in a few exclamation points.

Why get upset?  It’s politics, after all, what should I expect?  As one commenter succinctly stated, “Heat. Kitchen.”  I can also understand Ramesh Ponnuru’s argument — if the story is true, then inquiry is legitimate.  Yet we’re so far from legitimate inquiry that we can’t see it with the Hubble telescope.  And the reasons are simple: cowardice and evidence.

I don’t use the word cowardice lightly.  Here we have former aides who say they’re “terrified” by her condition.  They even deliberately chose to say that she’s “incapacitated” for days at a time and made vague accusations about pill use.  Yet they can’t even muster up the courage to identify themselves?  If the stakes really are so high, surely their patriotism would compel them to come forward so that we can ask some questions, weigh their credibility, and discern whether they had enough access to the candidate to know what she’s endured.  By remaining anonymous we can’t cross-examine them (so to speak) and discover the truth.

Then there’s the evidence.  Or lack thereof.  Anonymous aides expressed terror at her condition, yet if you read the entire article you’ll find that she allegedly missed a grand total of one planned campaign event . . . in 2010.  A second lurid tale concerns a migraine so bad that she merely “managed to attend several events in California, including an appearance before a California chapter of the Eagle Forum and a fundraiser in Palm Springs.”  Oh, but she was “in pain throughout.”  Nice to know.

Look, I’m not naive.  I know that politics is a messy business and that reporters often live or die by anonymous sources.  But we don’t have to play by those rules.  We don’t have to stand by while honorable people are smeared by individuals who don’t have the courage to be named or the evidence to support their allegations.

Michele Bachmann has a personal story that Hollywood would love if she were liberal.  A mother of five took in foster child after foster child, grew alarmed at the poor quality of their mandatory public education, and then launched herself into the political process to improve their lives.  They’d pitch Julia Roberts for the part if Bachmann had only been crusading against a power plant or land development.  As it is, she has to settle for the Palin treatment — from the Left and the Right.

Whether it’s Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, human beings deserve better treatment, but they’ll never receive it if we acquiesce to the politics of the gutter.

One final note: Before I get too carried away by exclamation points, I need to remember this cautionary tale:

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