David French Finally Realizes Black Daughter Is Black

By golly!

Anti-Trump conservative writer David French generated some collective eye-rolling last week when he confessed on the Fifth Column podcast that his views have changed on the “lingering severity” of racism. Of course, he’s a conservative so this revelation didn’t come from actually listening to Black people but from his adopted Black daughter’s firsthand personal exposure to racism.

“I’ve changed my perception of the lingering severity of race problems in this country,” French said. “I’ve absolutely changed on that, and a lot of that is due to a very, very distinct and personal experience. We adopted a child from Ethiopia. This might sound super naive, but when we adopted our youngest daughter, I did not have in my mind that she was going to come to my community and have a substantially different experience than our two older (white) kids. But by golly, did she have a substantially different experience. There was not a school that she went to where she wasn’t called the n-word.” (Watch below.)

---

---

Some Historically Black College History For Historically Ignorant Megyn Kelly

French claims he was “super naive,” but that suggests innocence, a lack of experience and wisdom. French’s insistence that his dark-complexioned daughter from Ethiopia would have the same experience in a far-right conservative Tennessee community as his very white daughters is willful ignorance, and his daughter paid the price for his adult education courses in remedial racism.

French’s daughter’s experiences are terrible but nothing novel for the average Black person in America. Anonymous thugs driving by in a truck and shouting the “n-word” at you is first day Racism 101. It’s not even exclusive to the South. It’s happened to me as an adult in Seattle.

David French is 57, and he was over 40 when he adopted his daughter in 2010. There’s no reason he wouldn’t know about the “lingering severity of race problems” in America. He just refused to believe and instead embraced the cherished conservative myth that racism ended after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech about his dreams. French wasn’t merely “naive” about race. He deliberately chose to ignore the work of prominent Black academics, journalists, stand-up comics, and hip-hop artists who documented ongoing racial issues, even after white people graciously let Barack Obama play with the presidency for a while.

French was snotty about it, as well: In 2015, Ta-Nehisi Coates published Between the World and Me, a collection of essays written as letters to his teenage son. French dismissed the work as “full of rage and even hate.” He responded in the National Review with “my own letter, written to my seven-year-old African-American daughter.” He recalls visiting New York with his daughter, who quickly noticed that cabs wouldn’t always stop for Black people.

You asked why the cab wouldn’t stop, and we told you that some cab drivers won’t stop for black people. Your response touched my heart. “Why won’t they stop for black people? I’m black!” It wasn’t the words, it was the look on your face — incredulous that someone wouldn’t want you in their cab. After all, you live in a world of love and warmth and kindness. In your deep-South home, the kids yell out your name when you walk down the hall at school. Your tutors greet you with undisguised delight each time they see you. Your day at home begins and ends with love. You are a delight, and the vast majority of people can’t help but smile when they see you.

French tells his daughter, with all the unwarranted confidence of a privileged white man, that she shouldn’t “give in” to racial anger, like Coates apparently has.

That self-serving treacle in the National Review pushed the standard conservative narratives about racism in America, as something that was definitively overcome and that exists squarely in the past. Sure, there are occasional glitches in the racial matrix but certainly nothing systemic, and anyone who argues otherwise, who draws a line from the institutional racism of the distant past to “minor” issues today are racial agitators.

Like far too many white people who adopt children of color, French promotes what I call the “Superman adoption theory.” Clark Kent from Smallville, Kansas, is morally superior to who “Kal-El” might have been on Krypton. The comics (and the most recent movie) hammer the point that Superman is the man and hero he his entirely because of his human upbringing. In the TV series Smallville, Jonathan Kent is openly bigoted toward Kryptonians, who he considers innately destructive. He insists what sets Clark apart is that “human beings with strong values” raised him.

Superman’s Parents Are A Product Of Their Time Who You Shouldn’t Judge By Today’s Standards

Similarly, French doesn’t think his daughter has anything truly to gain from her “non-white” heritage. He always describes her race in superficial, cosmetic terms — her “beautiful brown skin” — that hold no deeper meaning. He rejects the notion that she’s part of a larger Black community or culture. “Good” people will ignore or see past her skin color. Of course, French’s daughter can’t wear “hypno-glasses” and fool people into thinking she’s white. She’s Black for every moment of her life.

French told NPR in 2018 that he and his wife loved the idea of adopting a child from a different country, of a different race … and then apparently raising her as if neither of those facts about her identity mattered. (Unlike Krypton, Ethiopia still exists and the nation’s excellent cuisine is readily available.) After publicly boasting about her daughter’s adoption, French chafed at the criticism he received.

FRENCH: The one that I think hit us a little harder was this sort of notion that you cannot be a good parent to an African-American child.

MARTIN: Because you’re white.

FRENCH: Exactly. And particularly if you’re politically conservative. You just cannot be a good parent. And we know and understand there are difficult identity issues in this country, but we reject utterly the notion that we cannot be good parents to our child because of those issues.

French denounced the “thoroughly unbiblical identity group-based world view that is in its own way as vile and race-based as its skinhead alternative — only it gets a respectful hearing in the academy and other leftist bastions.”

I do think the unsolicited messages French and his wife received from disapproving liberals went too far. No one should feel entitled to criticize a stranger’s family — even if they are relatively public figures. However, what’s interesting is that the Frenches obviously had never previously encountered any gentle push back from friends — most likely because they don’t have close liberal or Black friends. They live in an exclusive world of whiteness and privilege, which led to a restrictive “identity group-based world view.”

It’s not as if French and his wife don’t genuinely want what was best for their adopted daughter, but they were so attached to their own political and religious dogma, that they refused to consider that her identity might factor into what was best for her. Tennessee has a significant Black population, but it’s likely that there are very few Black people in French’s wealthy conservative community. There’s also a difference between, say, Vermont, where few Black people live, and a former Confederate state with a history of mandated racial segregation. You are setting up a child to feel constantly “othered,” and without the respite of a thriving Black community where she’d feel welcome. (French was a member of theocratic white nationalist George Grant’s church for years, which I don’t think is great for a Black child’s personal development.)

French is also a hypocrite on this issue. He thinks it’s racist to oppose transracial adoption, but he’s supported Christian adoption agencies rejecting gay couples. Apparently, that “identity-based world view” is biblical. He claims that gay couples suffer no real harm as they can adopt from a secular agency. Obviously, the Frenches could have adopted a white child who would have seamlessly fit into their lives. (I can’t imagine where the poor girl has her hair cut.)

I experienced racism growing up in the rural South, but I knew my parents understood and had been through much worse. I’m sure French feels terrible for his daughter but he can’t empathize. There is likely no one in his intimate circle who can. That’s different from a gay or lesbian couple raising children of an opposite sex. If a gay couple’s daughter was sexually harassed on the street, there’s a reasonable chance someone in her life is a woman who can personally identify with what she endured.

I don’t question David French’s love for his daughter, but he might want to consider listening to some of those “angry” Black voices rather than lecturing them. He should try to see his daughter — not simply as an unfair world might — but as she truly is.