Wednesday, June 25, 2008

It Gets Worse... Mike Seate's response to complaints about his article.

Since some of you left comments telling me you'd written to Mike Seate (and thank you for that, BTW!!!), the writer of the article about Asian kids being nothing more than fashion statements (Sunday's post), I thought I'd let you know that he has a blog. Here it is: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/blogs/hotseate/

He's getting letters from offended APs (and posting snippets from them on his blog), but is he apologetic for the horribly mean and ignorant things he said about APs and their Asian kids? Nope. Is he intelligent enough or humble enough to consider there may be another slant to this topic besides his own? Not even close. He's sticking to his crazya** comments, and even expounding upon them, much to my disgust. His most recent post is on a new subject, so he may be trying move on, but his last 3 posts before it are all on the fallout from his stupid article.

Here's a craptastic sample of what you'll find there:
"Most claim that their choice of Asian kids -- which require tens of thousands in bribes to be paid to Chinese officials unlike orphaned black kids right here and plentiful in every American state -- had nothing to do with racism. But I had to laugh at how many of the letters... claim that most or all black children suffer from drug and alcohol issues or at least their parents did. People -- where's the love?"

WHERE'S THE LOVE? Are you flippin' kidding me?


I'm searching for words...

Here's a few- Magnificent Moron. Obnoxious Lunkhead. Incompetent Dolt. Obtuse Swine. Inconsiderate Jerk. Rude Dumba**. Uh-oh... God help me.

I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water, and say that he doesn't have any valid points, because he does. As it was pointed out in my comments the other day, there is a certain trendiness involved in adoption as far as celebrities and Hollywood are concerned. I think most of us recognize that, and I for one have to vomit in my mouth every time I hear some famous idiot talking about their desire to adopt someday because they want to "give back" (usually after they have their own kids first). And I'm always thinking, "Geez! I'd be happy if you'd just give back the ten bucks I wasted on your stupid movie!"

But... the average Joe Blow AP is not a celebrity and doesn't give a diddly flip about being trendy when it comes to something as important as adopting a child, and unfortunately Mr. Seate's remarks are not limited to Hollywood- he's talking about us.

I'm also not so naive that I can't recognize the existence of racism in adoption. I hope you guys realize that, from other things I've posted recently on that topic. Of course it's true there are people who would not even consider adopting a black child. But Seate is trying to take the extremely complicated and personal decision of choosing the country one will adopt from and boil it down to one issue: RACE. Any AP reading this knows it's nowhere near that simple. Some of us struggle, no- agonize, over what country to choose for a myriad of reasons, then if something goes awry like it has with Vietnam, we struggle and agonize again trying to find our Plan B. There are also those of us who don't struggle at all- our hearts are immediately drawn to a certain place and we just Know that's where our child is. It's insulting and ridiculous to suggest that all the thought and planning, and personal reasons that go into these decisions are due to one thing, and one thing only: We are all racists, just trying to avoid the plethora of available black kids right here at home.

Someone I know has mentioned a time or two that I take things way too personally and allow things to affect me way too deeply. I really need to work on that, because reading this guy's opinions is about to make me have a coronary. I guess if the idiotic Mr. Seate is trying to move on, I should let him and I need to move on, too. But, boy oh boy, he sure ticked me off.

There is a Far Side cartoon that goes perfectly with this. I would have posted it, but I don't think I'm allowed to do that (copyright crap, and whatnot). It shows God standing in his kitchen, wearing a chef's hat. In front of him is a big mixing bowl with Earth inside. On the shelf and counter are all kinds of ingredients- insects, reptiles, trees... You see jars that are labeled "Medium Skinned People," "Light Skinned People", and "Dark Skinned People." God's thought bubble reads, "And just to make it interesting..." as He sprinkles onto the earth from a jar labeled "Jerks." Of course it would be funnier if you were actually looking at it, but anyway... I'd like to thank Mike Seate for being the ingredient that has made this past week more interesting!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just love it when people boil it all down to race as if we all have some secret stash of hoods made out of bedsheets. Grrrrr. If they'd look into adoption for half a second themselves they might realize that the system in our country is so convoluted and flawed (I'm talking about the public system, of course) that many of us would rather deal with intercountry crap than US crap (speaking personally here). But it's easier to yell racism than it is to actually examine the problem and intelligently think about why so many kids in our own country are not being adopted.

Rebecca said...

AMEN AND AMEN!!!!! You are so right and he is SO wrong! Adopting a black child is NOT at all easy! We have had MANY AA foster children in our home and the agency ALWAYS had a reason why we could not adopt them(most of the time it was they need to be with their own race--well the church we go to is 1/2 AA and 1/2 cauc. we would have given them all that we could!)! The man needs a real clue!!