To the Editor:
Re “I Understand Why Michael Oher Is Angry,” by Elizabeth Spiers (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 28):
I commend this essay about the lawsuit filed by the former football player Michael Oher to end his legal relationship with the Tuohy family. As a white adoptive mother of two Black sons, I found Ms. Spiers’s piece to be the first analysis that got to the heart of what is so important about this situation.
In addition to noting the racist stereotypes in both the book and the film about Mr. Oher, “The Blind Side,” she describes the larger racist structures inherent in some private schools, college athletics and professional sports. She is absolutely correct that “white savior syndrome” is nothing more than white supremacy in softened guise.
In 1992, as my husband and I were in a six-week training program to be foster/adoptive parents, one of the presenters told us that the children in the system were and would always be marked by the tragedy of their biological parents’ inability to care for them. I was struck by that — and after a while I realized the most important thing about that statement was that, at first, it shocked me. This was insight into my own blindness.
In addition to the loss of their biological parents, being adopted by white parents deprived my sons of privacy. While young, every time they were seen in the company of their parents, everyone knew that they were adopted, and that their biological parents had been unable to care for them.
Michael Oher and ‘White Savior Syndrome’
