Amazon, is it too much to ask for a doll of color to be included in today's Gold Box promo of Barbies?

UPDATE: Amazon has heard us, and they have responded by adding FOUR black Barbies to the promotion. A lovely Amazon PR rep just called me to share the news, let me know they have passed our feedback through the right channels to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again, and ask me to tell y'all to stop emailing them. (Okay, she didn't say that last part, but I inferred it.) THANKS, Y'ALL!

~+~

Amazon, you know I love you. A quick glance at my order history or banking account makes that clear, and I'm sure our mail carrier has lost count of the number of smiling boxes he's delivered here this month alone.

Hi, I'm Shannon, and I'm addicted to Amazon. 

I've been on the lookout for black Barbie dolls for our newest daughters, Patience and Patricia, who are the oldest and youngest members of the sibling group of three we're adopting from Uganda. But, Amazon, you know that already; my wish lists on your site include several black dolls. When we travel (hopefully next month), I want to bring Barbies that look like them, especially since my current daughters already have lots of white Barbies and one Asian one.

Imagine my excitement when I saw this today.

Now imagine my disappointment when I realized "40% off select Barbie toys" meant "40% off select white Barbie toys."

Let's ignore the number of tabs I have open on this screenshot, shall we? What can I say? I'm a multi-tasker with a touch of ADD.

Sorry, Ammy, one brunette doll with a brown horse doesn't count as diverse.

I didn't expect all of the dolls to be black, but I expected at least one to be. After all, more than 1 in 20 Barbies are non-white* (*per my observations, not any documented research) so I would expect a sale including 20 Barbie items to include at least one of color. I would understand Amazon's stance if Barbie only made white dolls, because you can't influence a vendor to be more inclusive. But Barbie does, so it's Amazon that has made the choice to only include white dolls.

While one of my children is Asian, I didn't expect an Asian doll to be included, because Barbie only makes one or two of those, so in a sample of 20 items, it wouldn't be statistically likely for an Asian doll to be included. But, using that same reasoning, it would be expected - based on the Barbie product line - for a black Barbie to be included by Amazon in this promotion.

I truly don't think this was intentional. If I'm honest, I have to admit that I wouldn't have noticed the issue here two years ago when I was a white mama to two white children. Now, though, as the mother of soon-to-be six - one via special needs adoption from Taiwan last year and three siblings through waiting child adoption from Uganda this year - I am much more aware of how most commercial merchants target people of my skin color over those with more pigment. (I even blogged about white privilege and black dolls a couple months ago.)

As I told Asic and John, the two customer service reps I chatted with today, I am sure no one at Amazon meant any ill will or maliciously discriminated in the choice to only include white Barbies in today's promotion. I'm assuming it was an accident. Nonetheless, this is an issue for those of us who would love to see at least one doll of color represented.

If the Gold Box special was just one doll, I would expect the typical white, blond, blue-eyed Barbie - who, incidentally, looks a lot like my oldest daughter - to be the one chosen for the promotion. But for no dolls of color to be represented in a selection of 20 Barbie items? That didn't sit well with me, so I contacted Amazon's customer service.

 Asic spent some time checking into things, before replying with this:

Enter John.

I tried giving them an out by suggesting that they could lower the price of select black Barbies without officially including them in the promotion, but no dice. I'm encouraged that John says it won't happen again. But, as nice as he was via chat, I don't know John. I don't know if he can really ensure that this won't happen again.

But I do know the power of social media. 

So, friends, if this bothers you as it bothers me, share this post. Contact Amazon, through customer service HERE (choose "something else" and follow the prompts to contact them via your preference of phone, email, or chat) or by directly emailing their PR team at amazon-pr@amazon.com.

After all, their mission is "To be Earth's most customer-centric company where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online," and today's Gold Box deal doesn't feel very customer-centric to me.

And, finally, Amazon? We can still be friends, right? If you want to reach out to me to discuss this further, you have my email address. and phone number. and home address. and credit card number. and coffee flavor preferences... so don't be a stranger, mkay?

oh, my heart

Zoe's getting wheels!

Y'all.

That baby girl in Taiwan who wasn't expected to walk?

Today, she's being fitted for one of these.

{photo from the Rifton website ~ not our Zoe girl,

but I'll post pics of her in hers as soon as we have it!}

Zoe will be rocking the "mini" size, which is the smallest and which she is FINALLY tall enough to use. Given her strength and supported walking skills and desire for mobility, we're expecting Zoe to be in her wheels for a whole lot of her waking hours.

Church friends, you might want to watch your ankles. 

While I usually just call it a walker, it's technically a gait trainer. Gait trainers have more bells and whistles and support than walkers. Zoe is expected to graduate to a walker  (and maybe one way graduate to independent mobility sans wheels), and this gait trainer is the first step to getting to that. She'll have the chest support and hand loops, but she probably won't need any of the other accessories they offer. 

Feel both excited (and completely unprepared) for our girl to be MOBILE!

on disruptions in adoption and “re-homing" children post-adoption

If you don't live in adoption-land, you might not be familiar with the word "disruption." I didn't know it before we began researching adoption. It means stopping or reversing the adoption process. While it sounds terrible, I know cases in which disruption turned out to be in the best interests of all involved. I also know cases in which better pre-adoption screening or post-adoption support could have prevented disruptions. Even then, every story I know of disruptions have been hard all around, because no one goes into an adoption planning to disrupt. (See Shaun Groves' blog post here about the adoption of his son after a disruption.)

In other words, not all disruptions are terrible, but many could have been preventable.

Monday was the first time I heard of the idea of so-called "re-homing" a child in a more informal way. NBC and Reuters have an ongoing story (and now all 5 parts are up) about online chat groups in which desperate (and, I'll add, neglectful) adoptive parents offer their children informally into other parents' care, often using power of attorney paperwork rather than formal adoption legal proceedings.

This re-homing practice, as reported this week, is not okay.

Why? Home studies are done by licensed social workers to evaluate a prospective parent's emotional, physical, and financial ability to care for a child. When a second adoption occurs after a formal disruption, then a home study is required. Then courts evaluate the evidence, including that home study, and finalize (or don't finalize) re-adoptions following disruption.

This idea of re-homing without formal adoption means no one - no social worker or agency or judge or governmental entity - is providing independent oversight to ensure that the new home is a safe place in the child's best interests. (Don't ask me how on earth the mother in this story from NBC managed to eventually adopt Nora. A lot of safeguards failed, and the legal system did not work as it should have for her to be adopted by that family.)

Side note: The majority of adoptions don't end in re-homing or disruption, so please don't confuse news about exceptions with the norms experienced by most children who are adopted. With disruptions estimated to occur at a rate of 10-25% of all adoptions, though, this is a topic we must face directly rather than dismissing.

When we had our visa appointment in Taipei, one of the American officials presented us with a paper she called a special needs waiver. Here's what I wrote about it on Facebook then:

Re-homing isn't an ethical or compassionate response after adoption. In rare cases, disruption might be necessary, but it must be done legally and formally. The best solution in all cases is for adoptive parents to research, research, research before and during the adoption so that they are not naive, ignorant, or unprepared. Agencies and social workers can go a loooooooooooooong way in making that happen, through rigorous and thorough screening of potential adoptive parents, pre-adoption preparation for those who make it through the screening, and post-adoption support once a child/children are added to the family. Churches and pastors and ministries advocating for orphans can help by not romanticizing adoption and by being a true community by rallying around those who do adopt children from hard places.

(Side note: Friends from Providence and our broader faith community, you did this with excellence for us. You continue to do so. Thank you.)

I'm hoping to be able to share a document here soon that is a comprehensive tool for parents considering adoption. It's a lengthy questionnaire of  "what if"s, including "where would you turn for help if," for parents to fill out together. I can't share it yet, because it came from an agency and I'm waiting for their permission. Truly, this lengthy parenting plan is the most helpful piece of pre-adoption prep we've encountered, and I hope to be able to publish part or all of it here to help others.

I can't help but wonder if the families who opted to re-home their children would have made a different choice if they had been better prepared before their adoptions.

Finally, please join me in praying, God, our Redeemer and Restorer, bring beauty out of the extreme brokenness in the lives of these kids who were adopted out of one hard place and into another. Amen.

when the wifey is weary with the wait, the husband...

...makes sure the interwebs are available, because he knows she'd go cray cray without them.

Yes, that's a car battery. And our modem, whose power supply was fried in the storm last weekend when lightning hit a bit too close. The service tech wasn't going to be able to come out until Thursday {yesterday}, and my man knew this was not the week to cut me off from the outside world. (Yes, #firstworldproblems...)

I love my engineer. 

(And I love that we have a legit set-up now, after the tech fixed us up yesterday.)