As you all know from my first “Where Are They Now” articles, I was a fan of what I like to call “VH1′s Golden Age of Reality Television.”  Not only did I watch (and own) all the seasons of Flavor of Love, I Love New York, For the Love of Ray J and I Love Money, I was also a fan of Rock of Love.  But one of the things that always struck me as odd were the high number of strippers on the show; however, when confronted, they would say,  “I’m a dancer.”  Unlike my confusion of what an exotic dancer was when I was younger, I couldn’t understand why the women would insist on the word “dancer,” and get offended if someone called them a stripper.  I mean, if you take your clothes off for money then you’re a stripper, right?

It wasn’t until a little while ago when my ex-husband called while he was around his family and I heard someone yell,  “Who you talking to,”  and he responded with “My baby mama.” I was so insulted!  He came back to the phone, we finished the conversation (with some definite ice on my end) and then hung up.  With the same look that Regina King had on Poetic Justice after Joe Torry punched her (mouth agape and slowly shaking her head from side to side), I grabbed my phone to call one of my best friends to tell her what happened.  In the middle of hitting my speed dial, I stopped.  I mean, what did he really do that was wrong?  He didn’t openly disrespect me.  He didn’t call me the slang version of a female dog.  He just called me his “baby mama.”  But why was I so offended by it?

I started thinking about how politically correct our society has gotten.  In a restaurant, you’re not supposed to call the person who takes your order a waiter anymore, they’re your server.  The people who help you to your seat on an airplane and tell you what to do in an emergency are no longer stewardesses, they’re flight attendants.  When you call an office, the person who answers the phone and take messages are no longer secretaries, they’re administrative assistants.  Why the change?  Because the former titles had a slightly negative connotation to them.  You see this happen all the time in society.

I started realizing that the reason why I was so taken aback is because the term “Baby Mama” (besides the fact that it is grammatically incorrect – it should be baby’s mama, but whatever) has such a negative connotation to me.  My mind immediately went to those girls who have their baby on their hip, parking lot pimping at the local gas station during the day and collecting a child support check or a “crazy check”/disability check in lieu of working.  Their babies are crying because they want to be home and the hair is sticking up on the toddlers’ heads while their mother continues to talk (with her luxurious new weave) to her girlfriends and check out the dudes who were also parking lot pimping in the middle of the day.

That phrase just seemed to remove all of the positive things I’ve done in my life.  It doesn’t address the fact that we were actually married at one time, and I’m a working college graduate.  Though descriptive in its basic form (yes, I am the mother to his child), it’s still offensive to me.  Not wanting to create a fuss by telling him not to call me that anymore (because then that’ll be “Baby Mama Drama”), I just left it alone.  But I will say this: instead of wondering, “what’s the big deal,” if someone is insistent on being called a title, I’ll abide now.  Dancers, servers, administrative assistants, I feel you now. I really do.

You can call Kendra Koger a bunch of things, just do it on her twitter @kkoger.

When I first became pregnant I asked my mother how could I ensure that my child wasn’t going to be a terror.  I knew that you can’t have perfect children, and I definitely wasn’t a perfect child, but I honestly like the child that I was and the adult that I’ve become.  Even though I messed up and rebelled at times, ultimately I was very respectful to authority figures, didn’t engage in backtalk and sought ways to improve myself.  But, I like the way my sister Kelli turned out more, so I asked my mother did she do anything special with her. (J/K)  But when I would ask my mother she would always quote the Bible:  ”Raise up a child in the way that they are supposed to go and they shall not depart from it.”

But my mind couldn’t help going back to some children who had parents that were strict, or their parents were clergy members and their children knew religious doctrine like they knew their own names and still ended up wilding out.  But you tell yourself that the parent tried, and that you’ll try your best to keep your child on the best path until they’re able to make their own decisions.  It doesn’t squelch your fears of the future, but it does pacify them.

It wasn’t until I ignored my right mind and went to Worldstarhiphop one day that new parenting fears surfaced.  On one particularly disturbing video in the comment section someone wrote:  ”And to just think, these girls all started off as innocent babies.”  That realization scares you and you begin to wonder what went wrong? You know that there are people who try their best to teach their children the right way to go, but there are also parents who encourage their children to go the wrong way as well.

There are children I’d came in contact with in the past who could point out what a cigarillo was and how to break it down to make it a blunt, but didn’t know their ABCs.  There were adults who told me that when they were children their parents/caretakers would allow them to sip as much alcohol that they could from a straw, and encouraged them to smoke weed with them when they were only 14.  Youtube is full of videos of parents who encouraged their children to fight, and who fought right along with their children.

Even though I’m not too well versed in football terminology I do know that there are two sides to each team.  The defensive and the offensive.  If I’m correct (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), the offensive side is the one that has the ball and has the responsibility to score.  The defensive side is the side whose responsibility is to stop the offensive side from scoring.   With each day that my daughter is getting older and I’m anticipating on handing her the ball of acceptable behavior, it makes me wonder, has the game changed?  Is it no longer enough to teach your child the right way to go?

It’s like driving.  When I was being taught how to drive I was being encouraged to be “an defensive driver.”  It wasn’t enough that I knew what I had to do behind the wheel, but I had to be prepared to deal with people who didn’t know what they were doing.  The person who was on the phone and who took their eyes off the road and started to swerve.  The driver who thinks they can beat the light while I’m going through it, or the drunk driver who didn’t realize how tipsy he was until he got behind the wheel.  Being a defensive driver is about being alert at all costs to avoid a catastrophe.

Is this what parenting is coming to now?  No longer allowing our children to be blissfully ignorant and teaching them as they get older of the dangers that can happen between them and their peers?  But letting them know that with their first steps there might be someone willing to hurt you, fight you or kill you for just being you?  Not just teaching your children what to do, but having to teach them the contingency plans on how to interact with other children whose parents are encouraging them to do the wrong things in life;  and the poor children who are just trying to gain their parents’ approval by blindly following because they don’t know any better.

During the game of life, you want your child to win; but I realize that I need to reveal to her the possibilities of people trying to intercept her from going the right path.  I know that not all children are bad apples, but for the ones who are, I pray that I what I teach my daughter is enough for her to learn how to avoid a fumble in life.

Kendra Koger is not sure if she used any of these football terms right.  Let her know on her twitter @kkoger.

More on Madame Noire!

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• The Duality of the Emcee or Why I Don’t Like Wale Anymore
• When Famous Stars Play Famous People: Who Killed It On-Screen And Who Was A Mess?
• Brown Girls In The Nude: Neutral Lipstick Shades for Us
• When Did “Candy Rain” Become Old School??? How I Realized I Was Getting Too Old For The Club
• Komon Ou Ye? 9 Of Our Favorite Celebs of Haitian Descent (And A Few Surprises Of Course!)
• Cute Kid Alert: The Bosh Family Do It Big In Italy, Anthony Hamilton’s Newborn, and Much More!

By Rachel Garlinghouse

I’m an adoptive parent.  I’m white.  My two daughters, ages three and one, are both black.   It’s glaringly obvious that my kids and I don’t “match” and that they are adopted.

We have been asked a slew of questions.   “Are you girls REAL sisters?”   “Did you hear that Katherine Heigl adopted another baby?”  “Are your kids full or mixed?”  “Why didn’t their birth parents keep them?”   “Why couldn’t you have your own kids?”
One question that I found incredibly interesting, and one that the media is asking more than ever is, “Why didn’t you adopt one of your own kind?”   (Yes, this is exactly how the question was asked.)   It has been implied that there are plenty of white babies who need good homes, so why would we, as whites, pluck a black child out of the mix of available kids?  (This is actually not true.  Many adoption agencies have a tremendous need for families to be open to adopting black children, including sibling groups and kids with special needs, as many white parents only want to adopt healthy white infants.)

The media and the public are asking these questions of transracial adoptive parents:  Are you trying to capitalize on some sort of trend?    Why are you stealing a black baby away from her racial culture?  Are you trying to make your child white?   How in the world can a white family raise a black child properly?

The increase in media attention on celebrity adoptive parents, particularly transracial adoptive celebrity families like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Charlize Theron, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, and Katherine Heigl, has brought transracial adoption to the forefront of pop culture.    I have read, much to my dismay, article after article that begins by prompting the public to question the integrity and intent of such parents.

I have to admit, I don’t necessarily blame people for their assumptions and skepticism regarding transracial adoption, particularly white parents who are raising black kids.   Whites have a long history of treating blacks and other races in degrading, dehumanizing manners.   There is a seemingly natural and underlying distrust between whites and all other races.  Despite people claiming to be “colorblind” and spouting that “the world is a melting pot” which is magically full of harmony and unity, I know otherwise.

You might question if parents are adopting minority children because it’s the trendy thing to do.   Here are some truths, from my experience, regarding transracial adoption:

1.  Transracial adoptive families are double-minorities, facing endless discrimination.

Until we adopted our first daughter, I was, unknowingly, enjoying white Privilege.  No one ever looked twice at me in a shopping mall or restaurant, no one questioned my motives, no one asked how authentic my family was, if we were a “real” family or not.
But when my husband and I brought our first daughter home, we were quickly inducted into the life of a minority.   We have been asked by an airline to provide our youngest child’s birth certificate to prove that she is actually our daughter prior to us boarding a plane. When we went to obtain a social security card for her, the attendant gave us several glares, making it clear she didn’t approve of our transracial adoption.  She then asked, quite judgmentally, a question that had nothing to do with the application for the social security card:   “Do they [our daughters] have the same parents?” I’ve been asked about the girls’ “real” mom, as if I am the fake mom.    A cashier at a local store asked why the hell my girls’ birth parents would “give them away” because after all, the girls were “so pretty.”    My family deals with, on a daily basis, discrimination related to adoption and race.

2.  Transracial adoption is a path to parenthood.

Individuals and couples adopt because they want to be parents.  Maybe they couldn’t have biological kids, couldn’t have more biological kids, had always wanted to adopt, didn’t want to wait for a partner to have children, or chose to adopt to avoid passing a genetic condition on to any biological children.  The reasons are many.

When I was twenty-four years old, I was diagnosed with an incurable disease:  type I diabetes.   I am dependent on insulin for life; without it, I will die.    Type I diabetes can be accompanied by a slew of dangerous side effects, all of which can impact the life of the diabetic’s unborn baby.    My husband and I chose not to have biological children because we felt the risks outweighed the benefits.     So we filled out paperwork to adopt, marked “open to a child of any race,” and waited.  We were chosen, twice, to adopt black children.    Without adoption, we wouldn’t be parents.   We wanted to be parents.  So we adopted.  It’s really that simple.

The funny thing about stereotypes is that there’s a little truth in every ‘I’m just kidding.’ Meaning, we laugh at stereotypes because at the root of them there’s normally a little more truth than we like to admit. For instance, the stereotype that black people love chicken makes us laugh because deep down we know chicken is one of the first things to disappear at the family BBQ. But then there are some stereotypes that are a little overused and while true for some, these stereotypes don’t represent the majority in any way.

Here are a few that I just can’t wrap my head around:

Hello Beautiful writer, Lauren Minogue was attending a basketball game a few weeks ago when a scene straight out of a romantic comedy started to play out in front of her eyes.

A man was proposing to his girlfriend.

Minogue immediately put herself in the woman’s shoes, realizing she would have to say yes at that time, whether she meant it or not, to save both she and her boyfriend from humiliation. She shared her thoughts with her friend and this was her response: “It’s no big deal, you can always just get divorced in a few years if you need to.”

Oh! Okay…

Read the rest of Minogue’s thoughts on marriage, divorce and how our attitudes toward lifelong commitment have changed at Hello Beautiful.

It seems like every week there is a new study about black women ranking number one in something perceived negatively—abortions, births out of wedlock, multiple baby fathers. And, among the popular defenses is that black women are not alone in these statistics. “White women do it, too” is one of the most common excuses.

Black, white, yellow, brown—we are all one in the same in that we come from the same species; but, it would be silly not to acknowledge that we do come from varying creeds. We are culturally and genetically bred differently; and, society has been conditioned to see black and white women in conflicting regards. Thus, we are impacted differently by similar actions.

Here are common things white women do, too, that we just can’t get away with:

(Fresh Xpress) — Last week, the NAACP joined the boycott against Arizona. Why? Because, apparently, black people must jump onto every “civil rights” bandwagon that goes by. What does AZ SB-1070 – a crackdown on illegal immigration – have to do with African-Americans? And why do our premiere organizations and “black leaders” feel the need to stand on the frontlines fighting against it? At the risk of sounding uncharacteristically callous, I have to wonder why we’re out spending resources, doing TV appearances, boycotting cities and overall fighting battles that are wholly unrelated to the progress of African-Americans when our own war hasn’t been won. This Arizona boycott is only a good example of what we do all the time. Whether we’re talking about Proposition 8 or illegal immigration, why are we – as Black people – dragged into every fight?

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(Fresh Xpress) — Last week, the NAACP joined the boycott against Arizona. Why? Because, apparently, black people must jump onto every “civil rights” bandwagon that goes by. What does AZ SB-1070 – a crackdown on illegal immigration – have to do with African-Americans? And why do our premiere organizations and “black leaders” feel the need to stand on the frontlines fighting against it? At the risk of sounding uncharacteristically callous, I have to wonder why we’re out spending resources, doing TV appearances, boycotting cities and overall fighting battles that are wholly unrelated to the progress of African-Americans when our own war hasn’t been won. This Arizona boycott is only a good example of what we do all the time. Whether we’re talking about Proposition 8 or illegal immigration, why are we – as Black people – dragged into every fight?

Read More…

(New York Times) –This is the third post in my trilogy on the creation of a nation’s wealth. In the first I explored what is meant by wealth. The second looked at companies as creators of wealth, with a digression on the social and economic purpose of business corporations. In this concluding post in the trilogy, I explore who are society’s main creators of wealth. In so doing, I shall draw heavily on a lecture entitled “What Is the Wealth of a Nation?” that I delivered in 2002, at the end of a freshman economics course. Earlier posts in the trilogy drew on that lecture as well.

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