Sumeia Williams writes about being viewed as a bridge in her New York Times essay:
Adoptees are often referred to as “bridges.” Personally, I think its use is misleading, dehumanizing and unfairly imposes a role upon adoptees. The word itself implies a kind of passivity or helplessness I find insulting.
She wrote previously about this on her blog:
Now I can’t help but laugh whenever I see people referring to transracial/national adoptees as “bridges”. It’s not that I scoff at the ideal of cultural exchange. I still believe that the world can benefit from awareness of and respect for other cultures. However, I feel that to describe me as a bridge both dehumanizes and relegates me to a passive role in society. Since finding my voice, I have become anything but passive. Besides that, I don’t fancy picturing myself lying down while people walk over my back. That’s just not good for my self-esteem.
The perception that “other” groups will provide a bridge for the majority seems well-entrenched in the majority mindset. Multiracial people will become the bridge between black and white. People of color (but only those gentle, thoughtful, careful-of-white-people’s-feelings types) will become the bridge between whites and non-whites. Adoptees will become the bridge between their (mostly) white parents and their home culture, or the bridge between whites and people of color.
It’s linked to the same kind of deep-seated belief that racism is the problem of people of color. Among white transracial adoptive parents, the belief that the children should serve as the bridge is one that denies the adults’ own responsibility. You often hear white adoptive parents say how their children may return to their home country to make change. How their children will be “ambassadors” for adoption, race relations and transnational understanding. How they will serve as the bridge. But why do parents put this onus on their children when they don’t take it up themselves?
Because it is the majority view that the “other” should serve them, whether or not it’s at their own cost.
In The Bridge Called My Back, Donna Kate Rushin writes the following:
Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hipI will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your humannessI’m sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too longI’m sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf of your better selves
If making connections to “other” groups is so important, then everybody ought to be involved. If having a bridge is so important, then perhaps people in the majority ought to volunteer to serve.
What is a bridge? It is something that other people walk over.
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November 23, 2007 at 5:25 pm
A
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Even when white people step out of their comfort zones, some of them don’t realize that they are only building a one-way bridge. That is, they cross the bridge; get what they want and leave. I know some white people who go to Asia to live/work and claim to be “the bridge”. But in fact, some are over there waving their white privileges, demanding special treatment or taking advantage of poorer nations. Think what kind of bridge you are building if you are the ones who benefit most..
November 23, 2007 at 7:16 pm
christine
i never wanted to be a bridge. It was just expected. Somehow, when it was convenient, i became White enough to safely approach and question about Black people, and Black enough for anything i said to be credible and knowledgeable on the “subject of blacks”.
i hated that. i would tell people that i didn’t know all Black people so i couldn’t speak for them.
Another thing that was annoying is that i was/am pretty dorky, but somehow i was the “cool” link. Hanging with me was supposed to bring the cool to whomever was around. i went to an almost all-White catholic school on a scholarship. My exotic- racially and economically- was their bridge to the world down the hill, the “grit” and danger and REAL.
Think about how bridges are built. Never by the people who need to cross the divide or design the bridge; they simply design it, put money on it and expect it to be built. Then low wage workers build it.
November 23, 2007 at 8:57 pm
sinoangle
Christine said:
“Think about how bridges are built. Never by the people who need to cross the divide or design the bridge; they simply design it, put money on it and expect it to be built. Then low wage workers build it.”
Some of the greatest bridges ever built sacrificed lives to get them erected.
November 24, 2007 at 12:18 am
christine
True, there is sacrifice. i’m just wondering why it is the same type of people sacrificing all the time. When will there be sacrifice and compromise by all involved? Is it too wishful to think we should all pitch in? Build to each other instead of just one way?
November 27, 2007 at 4:07 am
sinoangle
Sorry – I expressed myself badly. I meant that low wage workers built the bridges and died for it. Sacrifice doesn’t necessarily have to really be for the greater good.