Might is Right: Bullying Adoptees in the Name of Justice
Consider:
1. An injustice has occurred at one point in time to somebody
2. Someone who may or may not self-identify as part of this greater injured group attacks someone else who may or may not self-identify as part of this greater oppressive group
3. The validity and severity of this secondary attack is justified by the severity and validity of the injustice in the first occurrence
Example 1)
Historically, black people were held in slavery in the United States. Therefore, I, a white girl, am justified in bullying you, an adopted Chinese girl, because slavery is wrong.
Example 2)
There is a wage gap in the U.S. between how much women and men are paid. Therefore, I, a white man, am justified in bullying you, another white man, for being part of this privileged class.
Example 3)
Native Americans have been forcefully removed from their native lands in several parts of the world. Therefore, I, a white girl, am justified in bullying you, another white girl, because you are white.
These are real life examples of this pattern playing out.
Many people don't immediately pick up on the absurdity of this ideology when it fits preconceived notions of "justice."
For instance:
A black person is bullying a perfect stranger who is a white person. This is so called "justified" because the KKK is still in existence.
For some people, this makes "sense" but it really doesn't.
I ask you this, is it okay to yell at a five year old or publicly shame them ever?
No.
What if that five year old is white?
Still no.
What if that five year old lives in a big house?
Still no!
What if that five year old dresses as Princess Jasmine for Halloween, even though she isn't Indian?
Still no!!
But this girl is white! And slavery happened!
Still no no no no no!!!
But what about the Trail of Tears? Huh? Wasn't that pretty horrible? What if that five year old was German? Weren't the Nazis horrible?
The logic trap people fall into is thinking that the horribleness of a crime somewhere justifies additional bullying anywhere else in the world. It is hard for people to see past the horrors of the first incident and so they do not realize how disconnected the first incident (slavery) is from the second incident (bullying adoptees).
Not only does this underlying ideology not make any sense whatsoever, but people who actual practice this, who attack little kids, who bully in the name of social inequality, don't even examine the intellectual pillars that support these inane arguments.
And honestly, many of them don't even care about the ideology at all. Bullying others gives them a little spark of moral superiority. They get off on it. They have no self-esteem and so they hurt others to have a false sense of worth. It's called "pseudo self-esteem" or unearned self-esteem.
People have had debates that last all day on the heinousness of the Trail of Tears or the contemporary role of racism and race today. These are distractions. The problem isn't truly social inequality, homelessness, or racism. People who attack others for no practical reason aren't actually doing anything to help the poor, to fix social inequality, or stop racism. Does screaming at a five year old white girl in a Moana outfit solve racial inequality? Hmm, let me think about that.
Nothing practical is being done about the real issues. In reality, practitioners benefit from real trauma and pain because inequality in the world elsewhere for them is like a giant debit account they can withdraw from whenever they want to attack someone. That is so insulting to people who actually have gone through something!
My friends have experienced actual racism. It sucks. They feel awful. It has far reaching ramifications for social equality and financial equity. So it is so insulting and disgusting to see grown white men screaming at me for being adopted by my white adoptive parents...in the name of social justice? Because white people suck? Because somehow when this white man screams at me and insults my family he is somehow helping my black friend deal with his problems or is somehow creating more justice in the world? Or when he screams at me he is somehow not white anymore and is immune to being criticized for being white?
After examining the backwards intellectual arguments that would justify such idiocy, you begin to understand that it has nothing to do with being good people or improving the world. It has everything to do with bullying. That plain, old, boring, problem of bullying. Bullying is pervasive the world over. I was bullied consistently throughout my childhood. People who have not been bullied before sometimes claim it isn't really happening, but that isn't true. Bullying is extremely common. Now, they are bullying under the guise of "social justice." Like hiding a wolf in sheep's skin. It is a laughable camouflage because there's a tell-tale feeling of "hey, I'm being bullied right now!" and no matter what excuses these people come up with, it doesn't change the fact that it is still bullying.
Bullying is never right.
Hurting others is never right.
Might for Right never worked in TH White's the Once and Future King, which is the self-proclaimed philosophy of such a movement. Might for right. Bullying for justice.
However, this entire practice is more akin to Might is Right, the original dark age doctrine in the Once and Future King, because it isn't about intellect. It isn't about justice. It isn't about anything really. Pull in all the fancy names, dates, and leaders of the past that you want. Pull up all the atrocities of the world that you want, but in the end, the game is all about brute force. Gang mentality. Brute force. Might is Right. You need no justification to hurt others. To have one, to hurt people in the name of such a cause, is a mannerism that has no function but to confuse newcomers as to the true motivation of such a practice.
It isn't that complicated. This is bullying, plain and simple.
Yes, I've thought about this long and hard, searching for self-consistency and logic in the pain that has been unleashed on others. The truth is, there is no consistency and there is no truth. Whether something is a valiant effort to highlight a cause or a heinous and discriminatory act of racism depends entirely on the time of day. Whole groups of people flip-flop depending on whether another person is added to the group. There is no benefit to the homeless or to the under-served when people hurt each other.
Maybe you do this yourself. Because it gets you off, because you're scared and it's a dog eat dog world. Maybe you do it because everyone else is doing it and you've never taken the time to examine why on earth it is okay to pass judgement and yell at anything that so much as breathes. It is tempting to fight fire with fire. When white people scream at me because I was adopted by white people and therefore I have privilege (and somehow, illogically, more privilege than they have seeing as they think they can bully me on my whiteness when they themselves are white), it is easy to flip around the game and start screaming right back they they are the ones who are truly white and shouldn't they just be ashamed of themselves for daring to insult me? No, even better, shouldn't they just be ashamed of themselves for living?
When any person, no matter what race, attacks me for being adopted because I'm part of the problem, because my white parents "bought" me because they wanted to have a "designer Asian" baby, it is very easy to turn the tables and scream at them that I grew up in an orphanage and don't they think I know what it is like to struggle to survive? And have they ever grown up in an orphanage? Huh? I didn't think so. I could spin stories about my rotting teeth or bacterial infections that I had coming home from China. I could even lie and start spewing nonsense about human trafficking, even though I know I wasn't from Hunan where human trafficking was documented.* I could literally say anything I want! I could say that a flamingo is pink and the sky is blue and therefore dodo birds are alive and therefore they shouldn't attack me because they're the real cause of mass starvation! It is about force, brute force. Say anything with enough volume and conviction, have enough of a reputation, and you can do anything.
But I would caution you away from this. I mentioned it here because it is true, as an example of the absurdity of these practices. I do not, however, advocate for their use. Sure, a smack down sounds fun. They come after you? You turn the tables and show them who's boss! But the end result is still suffering. Nothing is being done. Nothing makes sense. You're validating their arguments and their right to attack you by using these arguments as if any of them make any sense. Perpetrating exactly what you despise is a serious problem. I don't honor it as valid. It is illogical. I refuse to use their words as a basis for my argument. What is winning worth anyway against schoolyard bullies? On the internet or in school?
My mom is upset because everyone is running around campus screaming their heads off about "safe spaces" but adoptees, an especially vulnerable population, is "free game." Transracial and international adoption are brought up and criticized so often as case-studies of globalization and inequality. Several adoptees have experienced what I have experienced at other schools, in high school and college. I don't want kids screaming in my face about my life. Who are they to judge my life? And the value of it? Oh, because they took a smarty-pants class on bioethics and now they think they run the world?
Everyone has a safe space of zero-tolerance policies, but not adoptees. People can come up to me, perfect strangers, and criticize my entire family because somehow this is progress! I have never ever dealt with this level of hatred and evil before in my life, and college is ironically the one place that proclaims to be a haven from such evils, and is instead a cesspool of gang rule. My mom had an idea: Get adoptees safe spaces! Why don't they have any? They deserve them!
And my response was that I do not negotiate with terrorists. If you live in a perfectly nice town and a small gang of thugs rolled up one day and declared that they were the new rulers of your town despite them having absolutely no authority to make such a proclamation, then my first reaction would be to dismiss them as anything important. I can declare I am the Queen of France! It doesn't make it true. My mom's suggestion was the equivalent of honoring and validating this ridiculous claim and begging mercy of the gang to spare our family only. This would imply that adoptees absolutely sanction the bullying and the spreading of hatred to others...just as long as we're safe, protected by the very people who hurt everyone the most. Who gave these gangs of bullies any power? Why should I kneel at their feet because they proclaim their greatness? I do not acknowledge their gang rule as a valid rule and I do not acknowledge their law as having any power over me. If they said my life had no value, would I accept this as fact and plead with their leader to "oh please give me back my life's value?" No! So why do we think this makes any sense in other aspects?
I'm Chinese and I'm adopted by my white parents. If I ask person A if this is "okay" as in "am I allowed to exist without feeling ashamed of being alive and part of the problem" they might say "No!" and rattle off a bunch of irrelevant facts about international adoption that don't have to do with me at all. Should I then feel ashamed and decide suicide is the best answer? Should I do as they suggest and sign up for an existence of self-immolation? Or shall I crawl on my belly and ask them to repeal their claim? "Oh, holy one, please, but my family is one of the good ones!" and wait for one of the gang to agree, "Yes, her family loves each other. They are a real family. A beautiful family." Should the value of my life and existence now sky-rocket?
No! Absolutely not! Who in the world are these nutjobs to tell me what I am or to hold my worth in their hands to smash or nurture? They're just students, adults, trolls on the internet. They are no more worthy, and indeed much less worthy, to declare the value of my life than I am! So while my mom's idea seemed fine at first, and indeed, on some campuses adoptees have rallied for their own clubs with "protected" status as "minorities," this is actually not a solution or anything to be proud of. Adoptees' acceptance by these bullies as a "protected group" should not make or break the "allowedness" of our existence. I bow to no one.
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