Atlanta; March 17 2021

Why can’t I find anything online about helping the suffering families, or the Asian community in Atlanta?

Following the shooting that targeted Asian-American women in the States, I’ve been keeping an eye out for literally anything that might link me to a fund or a petition or something. Any small way I can weigh in against the horrors I fear will one day impact my daughter. Google has given me nothing.

So, I’m going to do the only thing I know how to do. I’m going to write out my thoughts. I will preface them by saying, obviously, that I am a white person in Canada. Everything I say and think is through the lens of white privilege.

I will also request, right here, that if you found something I didn’t in terms of offering aid to the victims in Atlanta, please drop a link in the comments.

So, here’s where I’m at.

My daughter is half Korean. She was born under unusual circumstances; my ex-partner and I, when we decided we wanted to have a child, got to essentially design our baby. I was going to carry and birth our kid, and my ex provided her egg. We needed a sperm donor, and we were extremely selective about who we went with. In terms of the donor in question, we wanted someone who wouldn’t try to contact us or meet our kid – we thought that would be too complicated – and once we eliminated all of those people, there were still hundreds of candidates.

My ex and I had a lot of long talks about race, because that was one of the things specified in their profile. Would we be able to provide everything a biracial child needs, in terms of offering them a connection to their culture? Were we even okay with the idea of only seeking out white donors?

The answer to the latter was a resounding no.

What we wound up deciding was that their health history was the most important factor. When we considered who hadn’t needed glasses or braces growing up, whose parents were still alive or had lived a long life, whose risk of illnesses didn’t overlap… that took us down to two donors. At the time we lived in a very Korean area of the GTA, which meant we had accesses to resources. We chose the Korean donor.

That choice wasn’t without backlash. We were (subtly) accused of fetishizing Asian people by going with a Korean donor. I’ve had white people and Asian people express their displeasure in how I’m raising her, and I’m given recommendations or information that conflict all the time. I never know if I’m appropriating Korean culture when I want to celebrate her Baek-il or if I’m doing something that will be an important experience for her to have when she grows up.

I’m no longer living in a predominantly Korean area, and I worry constantly that my daughter won’t grow up around people who look like her. That she’s going to be singled out. I don’t know how to explain that some people are going to hate her or fetishize her through my own lens of white privilege. It’s not something we’re going to have in common. I’m not going to be surprised if she resents me for that.

I am personally invested in this, but my fellow white people? You shouldn’t need a reason to care about discrimination. Violence was done, and will continue to be done, against other people with no good reason. There’s never a good reason.

Please join me in trying to do better.