Loving Across the Color Line: A White Adoptive Mother Learns About Race - Hardcover

Rush, Sharon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0847699129 ISBN 13: 9780847699124

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000

Synopsis

What would a liberal, white, civil rights law professor have to learn about race? When Sharon Rush adopted an African American girl, she quickly discovered the need to throw out old assumptions and start learning over again.

This is the moving, heartfelt memoir of a mother and daughter's loving relationship that opened the author's eyes to the harsh realities of the American racial divide. Only by living with her daughter through the day-to-day encounters and life passages did Rush learn that racism is far more devastating to blacks than most whites can ever imagine.

Some of the stories are funny, others are sad, a few are almost unbelievable. But they all are poignant because they illustrate how insightful a little black girl of three can be about race and justice. Their stories also recount the author's struggle, as her daughter grew older, to come to grips with her own growing awareness of racism in America.

With love and spirituality, Rush and her daughter live a deeply joyous life, just as they both have become increasingly active in working publicly and privately against racism. Readers who journey across the color line with the author and her daughter will come away with a real-life encounter with racism and a deeper understanding of it.

About this title

About the Author

Sharon Rush is a civil rights lawyer and the Irving Cypen Professor of Law at the University of Florida. She has been studying race for over fifteen years and currently lives with her daughter in Gainesville.

Reviews

With her background as a civil rights lawyer and a professor of law at the University of Florida, Rush believed she had seen the ugliness of racism and understood the depth of the issue. However, it wasn't until she adopted an African-American girl that she fully recognized the pervasiveness of discrimination and racial injustice in America. Combining academic theory with poignant personal examples, Rush contends that, as far as we've journeyed toward understanding race relations, we have much further to go. She writes, "In my opinion, race relations in America are at an impasse because White society denies racism is a continuing problem, which causes Black society to question America's commitment to equality." Backing up her statement with specific examples, Rush describes how her daughter had to fight to get into gifted classes although her I.Q. should have secured her placement. In one particularly heart-wrenching story, her daughter is exiled to the back of the classroom during a special "Dinosaur Day" presentation, although there is room available in the front next to her white classmates. Although the incident seems minor at first, the author uses it to show the unrelentingly poor treatment of her daughter, and her own struggles to overcome disbelief and frustration over myriad occurrences of a similar nature. Eschewing bitterness and condemnation, Rush instead ends the book with a lengthy and articulate prescription for improving race relations, including the creation of safe places for children to talk about race and the encouragement of dialogue between whites and African-Americans. This multilayered memoir, written with honesty and passion, is a much-needed and powerful addition to the literature on race. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0847699129
• ISBN 13: 9780847699124
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208