Viewpoint

Justice: More than Skin Deep

by Michael Heatherly

As Barack Obama, the nation's first mixed-race president, took office, I was inspired to share a story from my childhood involving race and social conventions. The story is true, although I have changed the baby's name for reasons of privacy. On a lighter note, for any of you who might get nostalgic reading about 1960s Seattle, check out the Elvis Presley film "It Happened at the World's Fair," which offers a festival of vintage Seattle scenes.

It was late November, maybe early December, of 1962. The gift buzz from my fifth birthday party on November 12 was just fading when the Sears Christmas Wish Book arrived, promising another fix. Rising early, I settled onto the floor of our living room in southwest Seattle, prepared to work on my list for Santa. My mom was already seated in her red upholstered rocking chair. It appeared she had been weeping. I couldn't imagine why, and it gave me an awful feeling in my stomach.

It had been a memorable year for me, which I suppose isn't saying much, given that it is the first year about which I remember much of anything. That summer my grandma had visited from Idaho and we took her to the Seattle World's Fair (officially the Century 21 Exposition, but nobody actually called it that). We rode the Monorail and the Bubbleator, a whimsical Plexiglas contraption that bore visitors to exhibits in the Coliseum (now Key Arena), and was later transplanted to the Food Court. Of course, we went to the top of the Space Needle and saw our hometown from a vantage point we had never before imagined. A comfortable-sized, modern-enough city lay between a vast sparkling lake and a protected inlet of the seemingly infinite Pacific Ocean. Beyond on either side rose imposing mountain ranges that had insulated the region from the forces of nature as well as cultural forces inflaming other parts of the country and the world. As symbolized by the World's Fair, though, the isolation was beginning to break down.

Among the things going on elsewhere that year was the deployment of 5,000 troops by President Kennedy in October to quell rioting that had broken out when a young man named James Meredith became the first African-American to enroll at the University of Mississippi. Seattle historically had a small but vibrant African-American community that was largely separated from the rest of the population. While insidious racism existed, the city had been spared the overt, violent race wars that had erupted in the 1950s and early 1960s, particularly in the South.

In 1964, our family would relocate to Whiteman Air Force Base near Sedalia, Missouri, where my dad, an accountant for the Boeing aerospace division, was transferred to work on missile projects, a key part of the nation's Cold War defense system. We Northerners don't typically think of Missouri as part of the South. But by the 1960s, many African-Americans had migrated from the deeper South to states like Missouri, and racial tension followed. St. Louis and Kansas City had sizeable black populations and while outright racism was less intense than in the Deep South, racial segregation was obvious. I vividly remember riding through Kansas City in the family car and being astonished at how several city blocks would contain only blacks while the next several blocks would contain only whites. The courts and more progressive public officials had begun the push toward official desegregation. But racial separation remained a fact of everyday life. I had my first-ever swimming lessons at a private pool established by whites who fled the town's public pool after it became desegregated. On July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, officially outlawing racial discrimination nationwide. Although I didn't understand what was happening at the time, I remember black Sedalians honking horns and celebrating in the streets that summer.

But in Seattle, shortly before Christmas of 1962, why was my mom crying? Earlier that fall, our family had experienced something even more wonderful than the World's Fair or my fifth birthday. We welcomed a fourth member of the family into our home, a gorgeous baby girl named Samantha. Samantha, like me, was adopted at birth through an adoption agency. Her young, unwed biological mother simply couldn't afford to support her. I remember riding with my parents to pick up Samantha at the hospital. They brought her out swaddled in a blanket, lying in what looked like an Easter basket. I was overjoyed to have a baby sister. A one-child Catholic family during the baby boom was almost unheard of, and I was painfully envious of my young friends with siblings. My parents had spent months converting a spare room of our house into a nursery. I found the baby-care rituals fascinating: the feeding, the burping, even the diaper-changing, in which I participated at arm's length for as long as I could suppress my gag reflex.

My biological parents were Spanish and I inherited characteristic Mediterranean features.  Although my hair today has a "distinguished" salt-and-pepper appearance and I scrupulously protect my skin from the tan-inducing but carcinogenic rays of the sun, as a child I had black hair and dark olive skin. This was in stark contrast to my heavily freckled, red-headed adoptive dad. Although my adoptive mom is half-Italian, with dark hair and skin that would tan in the summer, it was still obvious that I was not their biological child. This was uncomfortable for me at times, particularly as a typically sensitive teenager. However, to their great credit, it seemed to mean nothing whatsoever to my parents, even though both grew up in small towns with virtually no racial diversity. Even at a time when mixed-race or mixed-nationality families were rare, they never seemed to care about or even notice that their son's skin was several shades darker than theirs. Aside from the physical differences, I don't think anyone would have imagined I was adopted.

Setting aside my Santa list, I asked my mom why she was crying. She said we had to give up Samantha. She was so distraught that I felt even worse for her than I did for myself. I don't recall whether she even attempted an explanation at the time. It wouldn't have made any sense to me then anyway. Years later, she gave me the full story. As Samantha grew, her skin slowly turned darker, starting at the tips of her tiny fingers. Several weeks after we brought her home, the adoption agency sent a worker to the house for a routine inspection to ensure she was getting proper care and affection, which she certainly was. However, the worker reported back to the agency about Samantha's darkening skin. Although we never learned all the details, or whether the determination was even accurate, the adoption agency concluded that Samantha's biological father was black. Apparently, the agency's policy at the time prohibited the placement of African-American (or half-African-American, evidently) babies with white parents. The rationale was that such children would face not only racial discrimination but derision from their peers because their physical appearance made it obvious they were adopted. To me today, that seems ridiculously illogical. After all, the adoption agency had placed me, a Hispanic, with a non-Hispanic couple. Why should a half-black baby be treated differently from a brown one? Meanwhile, I am living proof that adoptive parents provide just as loving a home as biological ones, an idea one would think an adoption agency would seek to promote at every opportunity. I can't think of a more telling example of the absurdity of racism than the notion that an innocent months-old baby could be removed from her loving adoptive family simply because her skin began changing color.

Whatever the justification, the agency insisted on taking Samantha back, presumably to adopt her out to a black or mixed-race couple. This might have been complicated by the reality that mixed-race couples also were still frowned upon by many at the time. In fact, it wasn't until five years later that anti-miscegenation laws were overturned nationwide by the U.S. Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, at which time 16 states still had them on the books. Washington Territory had a statute prohibiting whites from marrying African-Americans or Native Americans, but it was repealed before Washington achieved statehood.

For their part, my parents had no more qualms about raising a half-African-American baby than they did about raising a Spanish one. They consulted with an attorney about challenging the adoption agency's decision. However, they ultimately realized litigation would be too costly, financially and emotionally. Our parish priest came to our home to take Samantha back to the adoption agency. I have no idea what his personal feelings about the matter were, but I remember afterward having nightmares in which his image appeared and I was overcome with rage. I doubt he is still alive, and I harbor no ill will toward him or toward the Catholic Church now, even though it was a Catholic adoption agency involved. I realize their attitude about race simply reflected that of much of society at the time.

In some ways, our family never recovered from the loss of Samantha. Over the following years, my parents' marriage slowly deteriorated, although not just because of the failed adoption. By the time I was in high school, they had separated, and when I was in college, they divorced. I remained an "only child," and while I didn't consciously think about Samantha much, I often felt a vague sense of loss and remained envious of friends who had brothers and sisters with whom they could share family joy in good times and grief in bad.

My parents were not civil-rights crusaders. They never viewed the loss of Samantha as an issue of legal rights or racial discrimination. To them, the tragedy was simply that they had to give up a baby they had grown to love. But that aspect of human nature is what fuels the fight against racism and other forms of unfair discrimination. Without question, we owe a debt of gratitude to the civil rights leaders, progressive lawmakers, courageous judges, and dedicated lawyers who eventually rendered racial discrimination illegal. But if racism is ever to be eradicated outright, it will be because ordinary people continue to make friends, fall in love, get married, bear and adopt children, all based on a yearning for human connection that is stronger than the impulse to differentiate people based on superficial features like skin color.

To me, this is the significance of Barack Obama's election as president. Enough ordinary people of diverse backgrounds decided that the strengths Obama offered as a leader were more important than whatever prejudices they might have had against him because of his skin color. Whether he lives up to the high expectations he faces remains to be seen. But now that Obama has broken down a 220-year-old racial barrier by being elected, we can hope that his successes and failures as president will be attributed to his skills rather than his skin color. Although race undoubtedly will remain a factor in politics, perhaps race alone will no longer be enough to decide an election, just as the color of a baby's skin no longer justifies removing her from her home. 

Michael Heatherly is the Bar News editor and can be reached at 360-312-5156 or barnewseditor@wsba.org.