When I was a child...

[Moosepoop]

95. WHY do people feel entitled to ask stupid questions???

On a lesser level, I had the same sort of thing happen. I'm white, and so are my kids. We're all fair-skinned, with one daughter and I having light hair & eyes, and the other daughter with brown hair and darker eyes. The brown-haired one had a medical condition that caused her to be extremely jaundiced until age 4, when the condition was successfully dealt with.

Strangers would come up to us, ooh and aah over my daughter, and then ask me what country I adopted her from. When I would reply that she was not adopted, she came from me, you could see their demeanor change ever-so-slightly as they then would ask, "So... her father... must be... Asian??"

The implication was that it was OK if she were of Asian descent and adopted, but not OK if she were the product of a mixed relationship. Or maybe they considered her "less than" either way, but were giving my also-white self props for taking in one of "them"??

What really pissed me off was that total strangers felt entitled to approach us and ask questions in the first place. Whether she was adopted or not, or what her ancestry might be, was none of their business. Period. Just as whether the adult with you was your parent, your caregiver, or the next door neighbor was nobody else's business to be asking about -- at all!!!

My child picked up on the questions and began asking "Is Daddy really my Daddy? Are you really my Mommy? Am I different? What are they talking about??" Those busybodies caused real confusion in a very young child. It did provide the basis to start teaching my kids about racial bias, though, so at least that came of it.