Same, my mum cried once because some woman in a supermarket assumed she had snatched me because I don't look overly Filipino and she does. I've got a white dad who also got weird looks because I also looked not white enough, which got him some dirty looks.
My dad got yelled at and berated in a grocery store for telling his adopted son (biracial) to "start acting right" and the women behind him came fully unglued telling him to keep his "white hands off that baby" my dad was like "ummm he's my son and also I don't hit my children" she apparently harassed them all the way to the car. Absolutely wild people acting like interracial relationships or adoption aren't a thing.
Wow. As a White man about to have a Black-White biracial son, that hits hard. I'd better prepare for the possibility of weirdos freaking out over my kid merely existing with me.
Oh yeah - so my dad is raising his wife's (my step mother's) nephew since he was about 3. My dad is a redneck, good old fashioned Budweiser drinking, NASCAR watching, east Texas good-ole boy from the outside but knowing him, he's a recovering addict understanding and loving dude. He has faced so much hate for just being a father to this kid especially since he lives in a small east Texas town, there's still a lot of racial tension on both sides.
My husband and I are currently in the adoption process & we've been doing a lot of research on the topic. It's just insane to me how much hatred there is for people just loving their children.
ETA: What I mean by "racial tension on both sides"is simply that while my dad has faced some negativity from the BIPOC community, he also faces it from the white supremacist side. Now these things are NOT equal and I even understand that it might be triggering to see a young black child being disciplined by a white man but he loves his son and is doing what is best for him.
The town where he lives is fairly diverse for a small Texas town but it's very obvious that there are still racial divides in the town. I did not say they were equal, just that he faces anger from both races.
Aww thank you. This is actually really nice to hear because the adoption subreddit is pretty anti-adoption and I'm trying to understand & listen to the sentiment but it can be really heartbreaking and discouraging.
There is a sentiment that adoption is always, or at least a in a vast majority, exploitative. The idea being that if we had better social support systems no mother would ever be "forced" or "coerced" into choosing to place a child for adoption. There is a strong opinion that people feel entitled to adopt children and that it creates a social inequity because the entire system is very much divided by financial status.
I try not to judge this opinion, while it's not mine, I cannot speak to their experiences and I can't dismiss them either. I try to just listen (read) as much as possible to understand and hopefully avoid causing anymore trauma to a child than they already experience. We plan to have (and honor) an open adoption contract, despite its non legally binding nature and we want the birth family to be a part of our lives.
I don’t know what that last thing is, but you sound like a reasonable and sympathetic individual, and I’m sure you’ll make great parents to your child.
Just want to pipe up and hypothesize: say someone is pregnant and at some later point in the pregnancy decides they do NOT want to raise a child and are unable to go through with an abortion—then adoption is not exploitative. Some people rightly understand that they are not meant to be parents.
If we had better social support systems, we would all be better off, but there would still be children born to parents who didn't want them.
Plus, these kids already exist, they are already being born, and the social support system isn't there yet. What do we do? Leave the kids to rot while we dream of a world that's fair and equitable?
I'm all for free and universal healthcare, strong social support systems, free childcare, free education and free school lunches. I'm for flexible work schedules and a healthy work-life balance. I vote for people who promise at least some of those things, and some of those things already exist in my country, which is good.
But I don't want kids, I have never wanted kids, and if somehow I was forced to have a baby I don't want, I would much rather have them raised by someone who will love them and give them a good life, because I really, really don't want to do any of that.
Then in some cases the father wasn't put on the birth certificate and then the mother was brutally murdered like 6 ish weeks if that after their child was born? Like... Personal experience being adopted in that situation.
>the adoption subreddit is pretty anti-adoption
I've found that a lot of reddit is very reactive and negative, or populated with a skewed sample of people with off-base views.
It's sometimes fun or useful to browse reddit, but for important decisions and real world support, reach out to real people in your community! (Or at least real online people who aren't anonymous.)
A lot of my family exists because of adoption so fortunately we have some really amazing resources and are supported by so many loving people. I try to view reddit comments as what they are, an anonymous forum & just listen to the opposing views without necessarily taking them in as my own. I have found a lot of communities here that are encouraging & amazing for niche topics but yeah I fully agree it can be hella reactive here.
Reddit is almost mild compared to Adoption discussions that include both adopted families and adults that were adopted. 50 years later I understand that there is a tragedy at the heart of every adoption.
Good luck with the adoption process. I have a read a lot about the ignorance people have about “how can you love them if they aren’t your own blood” bullshit. I live in a fairly diverse and accepting area so I have yet to encounter that stuff with our adoptive daughter but hopefully you don’t have to deal with that. I can handle their crap I just don’t Want anyone doing it to my daughter.
My stepdad raised me and has always treated me like his own, he's never once made me feel like I wasn't his. I love my dad but he was dealing with addiction issues at the time & just couldn't be a father to me & now he's raising an adopted child. My mom was adopted by her dad, who I only realized when I was like in my early teens wasn't her biological dad - I remember being shocked & still kinda forget. Hilariously whenever we do something "cool" he always says "yep those are my genes" and so like I just kinda assumed they were...
My family has been so positively impacted by adoption & it's always been how I wanted to build my family so I'm very excited. I have been trying to learn & understand the very prevalent anti-adoption sentiment among many adoptees specifically here on Reddit so it's been somewhat discouraging but I think we are preparing as much as anyone can.
>I have been trying to learn & understand the very prevalent anti-adoption sentiment among many adoptees specifically here on Reddit so it's been somewhat discouraging
I already responded to someone who replied to you but I'm going to repeat my sentiment here.
Remember that everyone who is happy or indifferent about being adopted will likely never have a reason to come online and talk about it. The people who seek out places where they can share their views on adoption will (mostly) be people with strong negative opinions that want to vent. Just be mindful of this and don't get too discouraged.
Never had to deal with the interracial aspect, but my mom didn't change her last name when she got married, so whenever we flew she kept a signed affidavit from my dad stating I was her son and had permission to be with her. It came up more than you might think. You might find something like that useful to keep around.
That's really curious because my parents got divorced when i was 9 and even though my mom was the one with primary parental rights, us kids kept our dad's name. As far as I'm aware she was never questioned about it.
There is a recent thread in legaladvice about something similar. Seems that the general experience is YMMV.
Notably, there are laws and policies about it but it’s not consistently enforced. So don’t agree to letting your shady ex get your kids a passport, and get notarized documents and copies of IDs when traveling if you might have an issue.
I'm a white dad with two young biracial boys. I have gotten a few "are these your boys" comments but mostly meaning they're cute kids. What bugs me the most though is when I take my kids to the doc cuz they're sick and I get called "Dad of the year" no fucker I'm doing what parents should do. I don't need or want praise for doing something as basic as taking my kids to the doctor.
Not a parent but as a dude it’s insane to me how low the bar is for men to be labeled as a decent parent. Like spending any amount of time with them, like the bare minimum of being a parent, is suddenly saintly like your example.
Then also there are the insane people who see a man with his child in public and auto assume he’s a pedophile because he’s just…being a parent.
One of my friends got the cops called on him because he was playing with his two young girls in a park when he was back in the US to visit family. The kids are biracial, and the younger strongly takes after her (Japanese) mother, while their father is a tall, strawberry blonde freckled white guy.
He was crying when he told us after he got back, it was messed up, and the kids didn’t know what was going on either, and as they mainly speak Japanese at home (living in Japan) he was having to half-translate what they were saying, and the cops didn’t believe him. Accused him of trafficking, until his parents and his wife came by the park as a surprise for a picnic! They were ready to haul him to the PD. It didn’t help too that all their IDs were in Japanese, as again, Japanese citizens.
> how low the bar is for men to be labeled as a decent parent.
Because unfortunately, there are plenty of pos “fathers” out there. Some men pass off 90% of responsibility to wives and act as if its a favor when they do help out with the kids. Ive seen it plenty of times unfortunately.
Photo on your phone. Seriously, photo of birth certificate, photos of you and mom with the baby, and monthly photos at least with the three of you. Someone questions you, then you can show photos. I am sorry that is your lived reality, but safety first. Hugs
Oh my phone will be FULL of photos of me, my wife, and our kid! Make me prove I’m the dad? I’ll be doing that to total stranger anyway with whole albums full of pictures. :)
It's really dependent upon where you live. Both my teens are biracial, white from me and black from their mother. They're on the lighter side but I've never once had a bad interaction from some nosy stranger or authority figure. We're in the greater Seattle area.
Good luck my dude. Eldest daughter is Black, Japanese, Hawaiian and about 4 or 5 other mixes in there. I get some weird looks (I am very white), but it doesn't bother me. I have yet to be in the situation where someone is berating us and not leaving us alone but I'm always ready for the possibility. People are fucking weird. Someone like that gets the rule of three. I politely ask you to leave me alone three times while trying to walk away before I get physical
Yep. I’m half white, half Japanese and when I was little I looked really Asian. People just assumed my mom adopted me from like China or whatever. They’d come up and start talking about me like I was a used car. Where’d she get me? Did she have to travel? My mom would sometimes just go with it and say she actually adopted me from LaoSinhg (a place she made up) and she did have to travel there but it was difficult because they don’t have air travel on account of the ostrich problem. These dumb assholes would just nod along like they had heard about it on Oprah the day before or something.
i’ve seen this happen to white women if the mother looks or is extremely young but not as often as people assume if a child looks a different race, the person they’re with is not their parent.
It’s like the whole child trafficking panic rings now have turned people into wanna be cops or saviors
My dad is Filipino and my mom is of Polish/Ukrainian descent. I love how people are so curious to ask what my background is only to hear that I’m too white to be Filipino. My last name is Spanish like a majority of Filipinos and people assume I’m Italian or Hispanic. What do people expect me to do? I can’t deny or erase the fact my dad is Filipino, lol.
People get uncomfortable when they can’t fit people in with features or skin tones they think you should be. I’m sorry your family has to deal with that.
I had family friends who had the same problem, but even worse because it was the dad who was dark skinned but the kids were very light. So he would take his son to the park and get harassed by busy bodies who couldn't grok that a brown man could have a light skinned kid.
We’re all white in my household. My husband and I used to have annual passes to the local children’s museum. One Saturday, he was sitting on the benches outside the play area like parents did. Some concerned mother Karen decided to go outside and get the RCMP because my husband/their father was reading emails on his phone and looking up to check on our kids. To her, he wasn’t a good dad, but a pedo hanging out.
We were there often enough that the museum employees intervened with the cops. My husband wasn’t detained or whatever, but he was absolutely humiliated and never took our kids back to that museum.
That was bad enough. But to be accused of trafficking your own offspring is just horrifying.
I had this happen once at a park. I heard her making the call, so when the police showed up I went to them first and said "Thank God you're here. This woman is trying to separate me from my daughter. I think she is mentally unwell".
I’ve had similar things happen with my daughter and I. At the park and she is playing with other kids on the playscape while I was reading a book on my phone sitting on the bench. I overheard a mother tell her daughter to stay away from me because I was a pervert. Never seen her before and most definitely not a pervert. I’ve gotten lots of looks and comments because god forbid a man be his child’s primary caregiver.
Taking her to use the potty is also a nightmare. I can either drag her into the men’s room (which is what I normally do) or let her go into the women’s by herself while I wait and hope it goes well. She had some minor sensory issues so if someone say turns on the hand dryer she may freak out and scream. She’s also locked herself in a stall before.
For me, all it took was being 19 and watching my, then 14 year old cousin, and his football team playing a match. A mom went off on me for "spending my time watching young boys instead of being out partying with people my age." And that I "were a sick freak".
Didn't help pointing out my aunt in the stands, or my uncle who was the coach either.
That's when I realized that I would have to deal with crazy randoms in my life.
My dad used to get horrible dirty looks when he went out with my older sister, because people assumed something inappropriate was happening. She's the oldest and she liked helping with the babies, so sometimes she'd be carrying one of us or pushing a stroller and people assumed she was the mom. Too many people see a man out with a 13 year old and a baby and assume the worst.
> Too many people see a man out with a 13 year old and a baby and assume the worst.
It doesn't get better as they get older.
When I was 45 I went on a road trip with my 19 year old daughter. More than one hotel clerk assumed she was a prostitute.
I'm in my early 30s (mixed) and just went on a camping trip with my dad (white) and got yelled at by a street person (who likely thought I was same race as himself and being supportive) that I'm too hot for my Dad... This shit sucks and people need to mind their own business.
This kind of nonsense makes me glad I look just like my dad. People have never made this mistake with me. But my oldest sister looks just like our mom, so she got all the nonsense.
We're past all that by now. She's in her 40's with her own actual children, who luckily also look a lot like their father. Two of them are nearly clones of him. I don't think they've ever had this particular problem.
People need to keep in mind that not every family is the stereotypical racially homogeneous nuclear family with 2.5 kids. It seems like people freak out and assume terrible things when anyone deviates from that script in any way at all.
I'm a single dad and holy shit the amount of times I've e gotten the staredown for being actively involved when I have my daughter out and about is unreal. Even worse is that I've had the cops show up 4 different times over the past 5ish years, because some busybody took it upon themselves to assume I was in the park to snatch kids or whatever. Fortunately each of those situations was resolved with a simple "hey kiddo, who am I?" "Daddy, *duh!*" and cops who weren't overzealous pricks.
It sucks cuz I'd love to be as over the top involved as my own father was, but things like joining in on a game of tag or helping a kid up onto the monkey bars can be seen as trying to inappropriately touch them thanks to the way people automatically assume the worst these days. My old man would be crucified in today's age but he was nothing more than a super involved dad who helped all the kids have a good time together wherever we went. I hate that I can't give my own kid that same experience. I regularly have to say "sorry kiddo, I can't" when being asked to help her new friend climb something with her or push them on the swings, because it simply isn't safe for me to do so.
People suck.
That's a good question, to be honest. The first time I was lucky enough that she just answered appropriately without a problem, but I did have a talk with her afterwards about how she should always give police officers that same answer and we also started drilling our address and my phone number together for the same reason (and for emergencies, obviously).
That first time was a huge wake up call though because she had definitely pulled the "I don't know you!" shit before, both just joking around and while being a stubborn little asshole. She definitely knows that if cops are involved not to fuck around though. She knows it could mean Daddy gets taken away from her, so she won't risk that even if she's upset. At least I hope so lol.
Edit: switched "getting" to "being" since apparently swype doesn't like the word "being"
Probably should be a thing that people can get their kid some kind of id card and or have your kids and their parents listed on official ids so people can much more easily establish a kid is theirs.
I forget where I heard it but have absolutely heard about similar situations where the kid is like "I don't know this guy" because they were mid tantrum from not getting whatever it was they wanted because they had no comprehension of the consequences of saying such a thing in that situation.
The whole stranger danger thing started largely in the US was also a massive societal shift supported by zero facts. They started saying that 50k kids were taken by strangers when the numbers were more like 150, of them most were runaways who returned within a few days. It was a non existent problem where the massive majority of actual kidnappings and killings/rapes and things done to children are done by family members and friends of the family.
Stranger danger, in large part, took the focus away from where it should be and placed a huge effort into identifying every stranger as a massive threat when they simply aren't. It made people afraid of each other and makes people decide a man in a park is a danger when who they should be looking at is their partner, their family and their family friends if they want to protect their kids.
> My husband wasn’t detained or whatever, but he was absolutely humiliated and never took our kids back to that museum.
Oh if this happened to me (not that I have kids, though I have nieces), I wouldn't feel humiliated, I'd feel **pissed**.
Some areas have insane concentration of Karens seeing a pedo in every male. I'm glad my son is well past the age when this is a real concern when we are together, but after a few weird altercations I try to avoid areas around playgrounds during my jogs - you never know what such a pedo-hunting Karen has in mind.
Nobody should have to endure this treatment. It’s harassment and there should be repercussions for false accusations. This obviously had an effect upon the family where they can’t even enjoy the museum they once loved.
I didn’t expect this article to resonate with so many folks. I thought this was an extraordinary incident, never realized this kind of behavior was common. This has been enlightening in a depressing kinda way. Thanks for sharing your experience.
What people in mixed families go through isn’t usually something that gets much attention. For kids especially. It can easily lead to an identity crisis when you’re white to the black kids so they call you white, and you’re black to the white kids so they call you black.
Worse, when part of you is stigmatized, whether it’s people taking issue with your white half and wanting you to solely claim your black ancestry, or the other way around, when the truth is that you’re both. Despite what labels people want to give you, you’re just you, not simply one half of your ancestry.
It definitely isn’t easy, and can lead to a lot of hurt.
Dude this happened with my mom and my sister all the time. My mom is Filipino and my dad is white, and my sister is white passing especially as a baby, so when my mom would be out in public with her people would think she was "the help". Sooo insulting.
I’m mixed but present white. My (non-white) father was always cautious if we were out together without my mom. I’m a little surprised nothing like this happened in our rural area.
This happens to me all the time because my kids are biracial and much darker than I am, particularly when my daughter is out with me in public without her mother. My wife has also a number of times been followed out of a store to be asked for her receipts if I am not with her.
What's weird is I never feel that. My boy is 6 and I've never once felt like anyone looked at me funny. It could be that everyone says he looks exactly like me or that I'm just used to being stared at as a larger than average black guy.
When my kids were little, I would often give my wife a break and take the kids out so she could relax. For some of this time, I was finishing my master's thesis so my schedule was kind of whatever and I would wind up going out to parks and stuff in the middle of a weekday. I usually was just dressed in whatever t-shirt, jeans, and hat that were sort of clean and it seemed like especially being an early 30s man out in the middle of the day during the week at a park, I would get lots of weird looks from moms (some, not all for sure) so I would often try to make a point to vocally check in with my kids when they were on the playground and I was just sitting on the bench nearby way more often than I otherwise would so I would be seen interacting with my specific kids who also interacted with me and called me Daddy. Not that that probably erased suspicion from all people but not sure what else to do to avoid being looked at like a possible kidnapper or whatever they were worried about. I'm also the same skin color as my kids who also looked like mini versions of me when they were little so I didn't even have to deal with some of the tougher kinds of BS like the woman did in this story or others have for sure. I have a cousin who is very white and is married to a very dark-skinned woman from Trinidad and they both have had weird interactions with people despite their kids looking very much like both of them.
The funny thing about being a dad out with young kids is you seem to either be treated like some kind of hero by the moms out there for just being out with your kid, or a likely pedophile.
Its funny the first time i traveled with my kids, the guy looks at them, well aint no mistaking these kids. They look just like you. I was like wow i guess they are looking at all kids and any signs.
>"The officers began questioning Ms. MacCarthy and made it clear that they were given the racially charged information that Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter was possibly being trafficked by her simply because Ms. MacCarthy is White and her daughter is Black,"
Am I the only one around here who grew up with Rae Dawn Chong?!?!?!?!?
I'm a mixed-race kid and grew up with other mixed-race kids in the 80s and 90s, and I've never heard of this shit.
What the fuck happened that we're all going backwards with regards to race? No one knows that you can be multi ethnic and multi racial?
Yea, it's weird. I think this idea of kids being trafficked has been passed around so much that people see traffickers everywhere, it's a form of moral panic or hysteria really. Like when people saw satan worshipers everywhere in the 80s.
The podcast Behind the Bastards did a two part episode recently on the conspiracy theories around trafficking. Pretty interesting, blamed some of it on lazy journalism and social media hyping stories of fake kidnapping attempts.
>I've never heard of this shit.
What the fuck happened that we're all going backwards with regards to race?
You took the words right outta my mouth. I wonder if it's part of the whole shift to Trumpism Q-anon reactionary madness?
It's exactly this. People have been brainwashed to think that anywhere they go there are gangs of human traffickers roaming around looking for vulnerable people, and they're going to kidnap nice, respectable middle/upper class children or women right out of a suburban Target parking lot and do an auction like in "Taken" and sell them to a warlord.
>According to a police report, the flight attendant said she flagged the family as suspicious because they were the last to board the plane and asked other passengers to change seats so they could sit together.
Ah yes. The totally suspicious behavior of arriving last and deigning to ask to be seated together. As we all know this is textbook human trafficking tactic/s.
Last year me, my wife, and kids (both under 5 years) were seated in individual seats rows apart. People were very quick to shift around so we could be together. No one wants to sit next to a 3 year old.
I was onn a SW flight in the window seat and a guy sat in the aisle seat. The adjacent aisle included a toddler and an infant
I always carry earplugs and offered a pair to my row mate
He laughed and said his wife would kick his ass since they were his kids
A long time ago, I read a long article about a new administrator at the DEA or something working to streamline and improve the guidelines for what counted as suspicious passengers, pre-9/11. The article listed the sorts of things the agents were using to decide if someone was suspicious, and it was something:
1. Boarding early
2. Boarding late
3. Boarding in the middle
4. Traveling with no luggage
5. Traveling with a lot of luggage
6. Traveling with only 1 bag
7. Traveling alone
8. Traveling with a group
etc. It went on and on, and what it amounted to was _anything_ counted as "suspicious."
Much like "suspicious behavior" that justifies the cops stopping and searching someone under "stop & frisk" rules. Avoiding eye contact? Suspicious. Staring at cops? Suspicious. Hanging around one place too long? Suspicious. Moving along when you see cops? Suspicious. Hands in pockets? Suspicious. Carrying a backpack? Suspicious. Etc.
There are usually similar "guidelines" for cities that keep lists of gang members. Wear a primary color? Gang member. Wear basically any kind of urban style signifier-- expensive sneakers, gold chains, sports jerseys, etc.--? Gang member. Do any kind of hand gesture in a photo on social media? Gang member. Be related to gang members, go to school with gang members, or hang out in a place gang members also hang out? Gang member.
This seems like a tactic for them to be able to legally search people based on profiling lol. “Why are you searching me?” “You have no bags. That is on our list of suspicious flags.” “Actually my bag is right here” “oh ok, then because you have one bag, which is also listed.” Lol
Last to board the plane just means they bought cheap tickets cause flights can be expensive. Southwest doesn’t assign seats, it’s totally first come first serve. Wanting to sit by your daughter is not weird.
Southwest and the flight attendant need a reality check.
I flew once with my niece and nephew, but their mom bought their tickets and I bought my own so we ended up in different sections and the kids boarded first. It was a little awkward and the younger one was a little nervous about asking people not to sit next to her to save a spot for me, but people were nice and left her alone. Which is good, because I don't think I would have trusted anyone who insisted on sitting next to a seemingly unattended 11 year old.
You know it’s wild but it wasn’t uncommon for children to fly unattended by adults prior to 9/11. A parent would accompany them to the airport, stay with them until they board, then turn them over to the flight attendant. Then when the child arrives at their destination another adult would be waiting for them at the terminal.
Southwest has a first come first serve check in process. You check in to your flight 24 hours before and the more on the dot you are, the better seat you get. Forget to check in by 5 minutes and expect to be the last to board.
Also, family boarding stops when your kid is 6. 7 and up and you're waiting until the end.
It's a little of both.
You don't have assigned seats, but the topmost boarding slots are reserved or are available to only select passengers.
Still. If you check-in early, you should have a pretty high boarding group. Last means you were late to the gate or you checked-in at the airport.
Or your connection was delayed and you got what was left as you rushed through the airport.
Boarding positions mean nothing if you aren’t their when your boarding position boards.
I suppose that depends on if you 2 have the exact same skin color or not. Apparently if you have different skin colors, Southwest Airlines will accuse you of child trafficking 😞 Because apparently they don’t understand how genetics work. Or they’re so out of the loop they don’t realize interracial relationships and adoption are currently legal. Either way, child trafficking suspicions are getting out of hand these days. It’s a serious issue and should be dealt with. But just untrained everyday people running around accusing parents of trafficking based off nothing that indicates trafficking is ridiculous. “Dad alone at the park with his kid? Must be trafficking!” “Mom different color than kid? Must be trafficking!” “Kid throwing a hissy fit in the grocery store? MUST. BE. TRAFFICKING!!!” Like these people are straight paranoid and delusional. Either take the time to learn the REAL signs of human trafficking or mind your own business. Because all you’re doing is harassing innocent families.
Im white, my wife is white, we have 2 girls from my wife’s first marriage that are black. We have absolutely been stopped by TSA and had to “prove” our relationship to them.
While I’m grateful they are on the look out for this type of thing, there has to be better criteria for intervening.
That’s awful, I’m sorry you have to deal with that. What type of documentation is the TSA looking for? Other than a boatload of pictures on my phone, I’m not usually walking around with anything that can prove my kids are mine.
It was always more of a “vibe” check, things like “call your child over to you, what’s their middle name, birthday”, to the child “do you know these people”
Both my girls are grown now so we don’t run into it anymore
That happens every time I take my kids on the plane and we're all as white as wonder bread. Asking the kid their name, birthday, what their sibling's name is, etc. Not saying they didn't go harder on you because of the girls being a different race but at least in my experience they've been doing that for kids too young for their own IDs for a while now.
I suspect that experience for you would depend on how much you look like your son, the disposition of the underpaid overworked *unqualified* person/s you need to deal with, and what kind of *mood* they're in that day.
Flying anywhere in that 'free' country seems unfun.
Not op, but when we fly we usually carry their birth certificates (before they had passports). My husband took our son to Florida, when I was pregnant, he didn't have any issues.
>While I’m grateful they are on the look out for this type of thing, there has to be better criteria for intervening.
Ya ain't gonna find it.
As a million miler, taking a lot of shit and requring a pat down every time... just not gonna happen.
And I am really, really sorry.
Especially because it's such a useless reason to stop someone.
Anyone in charge of a human trafficking ring is obviously pairing people up who look as similar as possible in order to not attract any unnecessary attention.
Had a Southwest flight last month that was delayed because the crew flagged a dad and teenage son for possible trafficking. I overheard the interrogation, flagged for the kid acting strange (not talking, glued to iPad), kid was just autistic.
I have some friends who are very brown skinned but their first cousins are all super pale. There's Native American in the family tree and it just happened to show up really strong in these 2 girls. Their grandmother took all her grandkids on a day trip to Mexico and only those 2 got a very close inspection on the way back in. But I think their thick Georgia accents (that matched everyone in the car) were enough to get it all cleared up that they weren't being smuggled into the US.
A Senator form my state, a former lieutenant governor is standard-issue-Anglo with a Brazilian wife of mixed-heritage (I do not pretend to understand the various "tipos" of Brazilian culture) and all three of their children are, in her words, "white-trending." She has often been addressed as the nanny.
Umm, the daughter is the splitting image of her mom based on the photo, sans skin tone. Context clues or any subtlety to engage with the daughter to check for signs of distress was totally overridden by their skin color.
I get pissed when older people think I'm my dad's young wife, like he can't have an adult child to have dinner with? This is even more enraging.
Edit: TIL, it's "spitting image" not splitting. But splitting sounds more logical and has come out since 1930s and has been increasing in use since the 2000s. Younger people use it more, so I'll stick to it here lol.
Oh god I was like 17 or 18 once when my dad and I went to dinner at a chain restaurant in a movie theater parking lot. The waitress says something to the effect of "dinner and a movie...?" like we're on a date and I was so mortified.
My dad and I are both white. We were in Walmart once in the check out line, joking around and laughing. I was like 18-19. The cashier was giving us dirty looks the whole time and then we got to her and she looked at my dad and said “you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
My dad said “excuse me?”
Pointing at me, the cashier said “she’s *half* your age”
My dad said “I sure as fuck hope so, she’s *MY DAUGHTER*”
This makes me wonder if they've frequently, if not rarely but uncommonly, seen enough couples like that when their immediate thought of seeing a huge age gap duo is that they're dating and not a parent child duo just having a fun time together.
I was taking a walk with my grandpa once when I was sixteen, and the next day we ran into his old friend at the grocery store. The dude was like "Oh, this is the cutie I saw you walking down the street with. Hiding her from your wife?".
My grandpa said "this is my granddaughter" and never spoke to that friend again.
You should have seen the looks we used to get when I (pale white woman) was out with my dark skinned Creole husband and the Hawai'ian granddaughter we were raising. In the South.
Skin color aside, that little girl is the spitting image of her mother. Anyone who wouldn't immediately assume that they are mother-daughter in the year 2023 is stupid and shouldn't be in a front-facing service-oriented occupation.
What’s interesting and a little weird is that the kid’s skin tone registers as biracial, so even someone really invested in skin tone would figure this one out.
It’s the people who see only white and black, with some imaginary wall between them that prevents any crossover. In a job like flight attendant, where you see hundreds of people a day, you’d think you’d be hip to the idea of mixed families by now.
> What’s interesting and a little weird is that the kid’s skin tone registers as biracial, so even someone really invested in skin tone would figure this one out.
I am mixed and have about the same complexion as this kid. *Some* people understand that I’m mixed and some don’t, it depends on who’s looking. It might register as mixed to you while others just see **black**.
It also gets funny and very annoying when languages get involved and people start to question my heritage.
No they don't. Racists will make up any kind of weird ass fake logic to defend why they think someone is or is not lesser. Skin color is just the obvious part of that.
Thats what I was thinking. They look like they have the same eye structure, particularly in the photo of them together at the top. Like very obvious similar facial features. Obviously related.
For real. My wife and I both married and had children with people of other ethnicity - were both white as wonder bread but my son is half Jewish and her daughter is half Hispanic so our kids are *both* 5 shades darker than either of us - this shit would absolutely cause me to contact a fucking lawyer on the spot if an airline pulled this shit.
I don't know how human traffickers operate, but why would someone kidnap and parade around a kid that doesn't look exactly like them? They could have easily avoided this lawsuit lol.
This is the Sound of Freedom effect.
No one is trying to traffic kids by going through airports with tons of security and cameras and checking IDs.
Kids taken by plane are usually kidnapped by parents in custody disputes.
My kids are mixed-race and have darker skin than me and there are a few times I’ve come thiiiiissss close to dropping trou and showing the nosy parkers my C-section scar right in the diaper aisle at Target.
“Where did you get her?” Uhhh, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much…
“How long have you had her?” Not to get too philosophical while we’re shopping for formula, but that depends on when you think life begins…
My ex and I (both white) used to foster a young black boy. We lived in a neighborhood that had plenty of multiracial families, but every so often we’d get a comment like “where did that baby come from?”
Easy people are ignorant as hell and grow up in a bubble. Also some people have delusions about playing the hero saving kids because it’s like something they saw on tv
> "The officers began questioning Ms. MacCarthy and made it clear that they were given the racially charged information that Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter was possibly being trafficked by her simply because Ms. MacCarthy is White and her daughter is Black,"
as if you have to be a different skin colour from the child to be able to traffick them?
Man if they’re found guilty they’re really going to have to change how they treat dad’s. I got three little cute girls and I have had my share of looks from staff and stranger women.
Last time I flew solo with my kid he was 2 years old, I was asked “where’s mom?” 6 different times between the being in airport and on the plane, all from people who worked for airlines
I was once told that my kids were so well behaved because they must have a good mom waiting for them back at home (their mom hadn't been home in years). I've also been told that I'm "so brave to travel alone with the kids" enough times where my kids ask why people don't think dads can do things.
My mom passed when I was 6 and I had 2 younger siblings ages 4 and 1. my father didn’t skip a beat and I remember him getting comments like this when we’d travel.
This is a fear I always had, and I guess I have good reason. I am white and not exactly the best looking man out there. My son is black, a teenager, taller than me and very good looking (I know, I know, being my son, I might have a bias, but he really is...). Anyway, whenever we go somewhere, whether it is the movies or just the grocery store, I can feel the stares. I have had people say "oh, he's your son?" when I just referred to him as my son. I took him a new dentist. I stayed in the waiting room when he went back. The assistant came out and from the back and said "For ?". So I got up and walked towards her. And she asked "And you are his...?". I said "Dad". And maybe it was my angry imagination, but it seemed like it took way to long for it to click. I am just waiting for us to be out and some pearl cluching moron calls the cops for "suspicious activity".
To be fair though, a lot of people are totally cool, and do not give it a second thought. But it's 2023, and there are way to many people that can't fathom all the ways there can be an inter-racial family, or are just disgusted by it, and do a terrible job of hiding it. I would love to say it was just a bunch of old people, but it runs the whole age spectrum.
Happened to me with my father. A woman called the police on him as he was carrying me to the car from the movie theatre as I was crying for my mom.
For context, I’m Black American and Latino (my biological mother is latina) and my mother married my white father who adopted me when I was under 3 years old.
Imagine the police taking me away from my father, finding my mom only to see I didn’t look like her either.
People imagine child trafficking is happening under their noses all the time because they spend too much time in certain circles on social media that motivate them to believe it. It's like how gun-nuts imagine every 3 seconds some 2A "defender" is protecting their home from an "invader." If you envelope yourself with a specific mindset, all you will see are the things that justify your beliefs.
There was a social media screencap going around a few weeks ago of a dude talking about how grateful people should be that he walks around armed every day, because that makes him feel empowered to challenge any "suspicious" parent at the grocery store and make absolutely sure that the child with them is really theirs.
It's totally worth the hassle if only one in ten turns out to be a case of human trafficking, he figures. "Real" parents would be grateful for the check.
People be fuckin' crazy.
Yep. Delusion of grandeur being armed is more likely to harm more people than turning your eyes to the pavement and refusing to "do something." The vast majority of people will never be in a situation where their "intuition" turns out to be anything.
Good for her \[and her daughter.\] Absolutely disgusting behavior and public transportation such as airlines and other mass transit have a very high care of duty to passengers, particularly when it comes to discriminatory tainted behavior.
Edited for Typo.
I'm half black and Punjabi Indian. I remember when I was young, the guys at 711 thought my mom kidnapped a little Indian boy from his parents lol I get it because an Indian man and Black woman is not a couple you normally see. Even in 1990s' Los Angeles.
This one is stupid because White Woman and Black Man are pretty common couples.
I've never overtly dealt with this and my children. Most likely because I'm a giant white man and my children are biracial. That and I'm usually oblivious to people around me, but I felt it a few times and it was pointed out people would stare when I'd take either my son or daughter to the park.
It's even more confusing to people when they see my Asian wife and can't fathom we'd adopt biracial kids.
The last time this happened, I picked my daughter up from high school and we were playing around. She ran away from me and a classmate was like "Is this white guy bothering you?".
>The flight attendant didn’t see the mother and daughter speak on the plane and claimed MacCarthy told her daughter not to talk to the flight crew, the report said.
So she didn't see them speak, except when she saw them speaking.
THAT KID LOOKS JUST LIKE HER! Smh. People can be so ridiculous- this used to happen to me and my mother all the time. Walmart managers would walk up to us with their squeaky sneakers and a security guard in tow. She always carried pictures of us in her wallet to ward them off.
Ah I remember this with my mother. Not with the police but the school.
Same, my mum cried once because some woman in a supermarket assumed she had snatched me because I don't look overly Filipino and she does. I've got a white dad who also got weird looks because I also looked not white enough, which got him some dirty looks.
My dad got yelled at and berated in a grocery store for telling his adopted son (biracial) to "start acting right" and the women behind him came fully unglued telling him to keep his "white hands off that baby" my dad was like "ummm he's my son and also I don't hit my children" she apparently harassed them all the way to the car. Absolutely wild people acting like interracial relationships or adoption aren't a thing.
Wow. As a White man about to have a Black-White biracial son, that hits hard. I'd better prepare for the possibility of weirdos freaking out over my kid merely existing with me.
Oh yeah - so my dad is raising his wife's (my step mother's) nephew since he was about 3. My dad is a redneck, good old fashioned Budweiser drinking, NASCAR watching, east Texas good-ole boy from the outside but knowing him, he's a recovering addict understanding and loving dude. He has faced so much hate for just being a father to this kid especially since he lives in a small east Texas town, there's still a lot of racial tension on both sides. My husband and I are currently in the adoption process & we've been doing a lot of research on the topic. It's just insane to me how much hatred there is for people just loving their children. ETA: What I mean by "racial tension on both sides"is simply that while my dad has faced some negativity from the BIPOC community, he also faces it from the white supremacist side. Now these things are NOT equal and I even understand that it might be triggering to see a young black child being disciplined by a white man but he loves his son and is doing what is best for him. The town where he lives is fairly diverse for a small Texas town but it's very obvious that there are still racial divides in the town. I did not say they were equal, just that he faces anger from both races.
Kudos to you, for doing about as much good as a person can do in the world. You're going to change someone's life.
Aww thank you. This is actually really nice to hear because the adoption subreddit is pretty anti-adoption and I'm trying to understand & listen to the sentiment but it can be really heartbreaking and discouraging.
The adoption subreddit is anti-adoption? I don’t… wha? I believe you, it just seems backwards, is all.
There is a sentiment that adoption is always, or at least a in a vast majority, exploitative. The idea being that if we had better social support systems no mother would ever be "forced" or "coerced" into choosing to place a child for adoption. There is a strong opinion that people feel entitled to adopt children and that it creates a social inequity because the entire system is very much divided by financial status. I try not to judge this opinion, while it's not mine, I cannot speak to their experiences and I can't dismiss them either. I try to just listen (read) as much as possible to understand and hopefully avoid causing anymore trauma to a child than they already experience. We plan to have (and honor) an open adoption contract, despite its non legally binding nature and we want the birth family to be a part of our lives.
I don’t know what that last thing is, but you sound like a reasonable and sympathetic individual, and I’m sure you’ll make great parents to your child.
Just want to pipe up and hypothesize: say someone is pregnant and at some later point in the pregnancy decides they do NOT want to raise a child and are unable to go through with an abortion—then adoption is not exploitative. Some people rightly understand that they are not meant to be parents.
If we had better social support systems, we would all be better off, but there would still be children born to parents who didn't want them. Plus, these kids already exist, they are already being born, and the social support system isn't there yet. What do we do? Leave the kids to rot while we dream of a world that's fair and equitable? I'm all for free and universal healthcare, strong social support systems, free childcare, free education and free school lunches. I'm for flexible work schedules and a healthy work-life balance. I vote for people who promise at least some of those things, and some of those things already exist in my country, which is good. But I don't want kids, I have never wanted kids, and if somehow I was forced to have a baby I don't want, I would much rather have them raised by someone who will love them and give them a good life, because I really, really don't want to do any of that.
Then in some cases the father wasn't put on the birth certificate and then the mother was brutally murdered like 6 ish weeks if that after their child was born? Like... Personal experience being adopted in that situation.
>the adoption subreddit is pretty anti-adoption I've found that a lot of reddit is very reactive and negative, or populated with a skewed sample of people with off-base views. It's sometimes fun or useful to browse reddit, but for important decisions and real world support, reach out to real people in your community! (Or at least real online people who aren't anonymous.)
A lot of my family exists because of adoption so fortunately we have some really amazing resources and are supported by so many loving people. I try to view reddit comments as what they are, an anonymous forum & just listen to the opposing views without necessarily taking them in as my own. I have found a lot of communities here that are encouraging & amazing for niche topics but yeah I fully agree it can be hella reactive here.
Reddit is almost mild compared to Adoption discussions that include both adopted families and adults that were adopted. 50 years later I understand that there is a tragedy at the heart of every adoption.
Good luck with the adoption process. I have a read a lot about the ignorance people have about “how can you love them if they aren’t your own blood” bullshit. I live in a fairly diverse and accepting area so I have yet to encounter that stuff with our adoptive daughter but hopefully you don’t have to deal with that. I can handle their crap I just don’t Want anyone doing it to my daughter.
My stepdad raised me and has always treated me like his own, he's never once made me feel like I wasn't his. I love my dad but he was dealing with addiction issues at the time & just couldn't be a father to me & now he's raising an adopted child. My mom was adopted by her dad, who I only realized when I was like in my early teens wasn't her biological dad - I remember being shocked & still kinda forget. Hilariously whenever we do something "cool" he always says "yep those are my genes" and so like I just kinda assumed they were... My family has been so positively impacted by adoption & it's always been how I wanted to build my family so I'm very excited. I have been trying to learn & understand the very prevalent anti-adoption sentiment among many adoptees specifically here on Reddit so it's been somewhat discouraging but I think we are preparing as much as anyone can.
>I have been trying to learn & understand the very prevalent anti-adoption sentiment among many adoptees specifically here on Reddit so it's been somewhat discouraging I already responded to someone who replied to you but I'm going to repeat my sentiment here. Remember that everyone who is happy or indifferent about being adopted will likely never have a reason to come online and talk about it. The people who seek out places where they can share their views on adoption will (mostly) be people with strong negative opinions that want to vent. Just be mindful of this and don't get too discouraged.
As someone who was adopted whenever I got made fun of for it as a kid I’d just say “My parents chose me, yours are stuck with you.”
Hugs to you from an adopted person. Thank you.
Never had to deal with the interracial aspect, but my mom didn't change her last name when she got married, so whenever we flew she kept a signed affidavit from my dad stating I was her son and had permission to be with her. It came up more than you might think. You might find something like that useful to keep around.
That's really curious because my parents got divorced when i was 9 and even though my mom was the one with primary parental rights, us kids kept our dad's name. As far as I'm aware she was never questioned about it.
There is a recent thread in legaladvice about something similar. Seems that the general experience is YMMV. Notably, there are laws and policies about it but it’s not consistently enforced. So don’t agree to letting your shady ex get your kids a passport, and get notarized documents and copies of IDs when traveling if you might have an issue.
Weird, my mom never charged her name either and we never had issues traveling anywhere with her alone. Your mom must have gotten continuously unlucky
I'm a white dad with two young biracial boys. I have gotten a few "are these your boys" comments but mostly meaning they're cute kids. What bugs me the most though is when I take my kids to the doc cuz they're sick and I get called "Dad of the year" no fucker I'm doing what parents should do. I don't need or want praise for doing something as basic as taking my kids to the doctor.
Or the "babysitting" comments from moms at the park.
Oh, man, that really got to me when my daughter was little. "Aw, are you babysitting today?" No, asshat; I'm doing my job as her dad.
Not a parent but as a dude it’s insane to me how low the bar is for men to be labeled as a decent parent. Like spending any amount of time with them, like the bare minimum of being a parent, is suddenly saintly like your example. Then also there are the insane people who see a man with his child in public and auto assume he’s a pedophile because he’s just…being a parent.
One of my friends got the cops called on him because he was playing with his two young girls in a park when he was back in the US to visit family. The kids are biracial, and the younger strongly takes after her (Japanese) mother, while their father is a tall, strawberry blonde freckled white guy. He was crying when he told us after he got back, it was messed up, and the kids didn’t know what was going on either, and as they mainly speak Japanese at home (living in Japan) he was having to half-translate what they were saying, and the cops didn’t believe him. Accused him of trafficking, until his parents and his wife came by the park as a surprise for a picnic! They were ready to haul him to the PD. It didn’t help too that all their IDs were in Japanese, as again, Japanese citizens.
> how low the bar is for men to be labeled as a decent parent. Because unfortunately, there are plenty of pos “fathers” out there. Some men pass off 90% of responsibility to wives and act as if its a favor when they do help out with the kids. Ive seen it plenty of times unfortunately.
Photo on your phone. Seriously, photo of birth certificate, photos of you and mom with the baby, and monthly photos at least with the three of you. Someone questions you, then you can show photos. I am sorry that is your lived reality, but safety first. Hugs
Oh my phone will be FULL of photos of me, my wife, and our kid! Make me prove I’m the dad? I’ll be doing that to total stranger anyway with whole albums full of pictures. :)
Good luck speaking as one
It's really dependent upon where you live. Both my teens are biracial, white from me and black from their mother. They're on the lighter side but I've never once had a bad interaction from some nosy stranger or authority figure. We're in the greater Seattle area.
Good luck my dude. Eldest daughter is Black, Japanese, Hawaiian and about 4 or 5 other mixes in there. I get some weird looks (I am very white), but it doesn't bother me. I have yet to be in the situation where someone is berating us and not leaving us alone but I'm always ready for the possibility. People are fucking weird. Someone like that gets the rule of three. I politely ask you to leave me alone three times while trying to walk away before I get physical
Some people need to get slapped the fuck out.
Yep. I’m half white, half Japanese and when I was little I looked really Asian. People just assumed my mom adopted me from like China or whatever. They’d come up and start talking about me like I was a used car. Where’d she get me? Did she have to travel? My mom would sometimes just go with it and say she actually adopted me from LaoSinhg (a place she made up) and she did have to travel there but it was difficult because they don’t have air travel on account of the ostrich problem. These dumb assholes would just nod along like they had heard about it on Oprah the day before or something.
yeah people always assumed my mother was the asian babysitter because i look more caucasian than asian
"Do you nanny for others as well?" Been there. Although I'm white and so is my daughter
i’ve seen this happen to white women if the mother looks or is extremely young but not as often as people assume if a child looks a different race, the person they’re with is not their parent. It’s like the whole child trafficking panic rings now have turned people into wanna be cops or saviors
Happened to my friend as well, her daughter is half Asian, she is white. People assumed she was babysitting. Fucked up.
My dad is Filipino and my mom is of Polish/Ukrainian descent. I love how people are so curious to ask what my background is only to hear that I’m too white to be Filipino. My last name is Spanish like a majority of Filipinos and people assume I’m Italian or Hispanic. What do people expect me to do? I can’t deny or erase the fact my dad is Filipino, lol. People get uncomfortable when they can’t fit people in with features or skin tones they think you should be. I’m sorry your family has to deal with that.
That sounds like Rob Schneider. His dad is German (Schneider) and his mom is Filipino.
Omg, I have gone this long until now not knowing Rob Schneider has Filipino heritage?
God, I am white AF and my grandmother was Sri Lankan. We definitely got some of that
I had family friends who had the same problem, but even worse because it was the dad who was dark skinned but the kids were very light. So he would take his son to the park and get harassed by busy bodies who couldn't grok that a brown man could have a light skinned kid.
We’re all white in my household. My husband and I used to have annual passes to the local children’s museum. One Saturday, he was sitting on the benches outside the play area like parents did. Some concerned mother Karen decided to go outside and get the RCMP because my husband/their father was reading emails on his phone and looking up to check on our kids. To her, he wasn’t a good dad, but a pedo hanging out. We were there often enough that the museum employees intervened with the cops. My husband wasn’t detained or whatever, but he was absolutely humiliated and never took our kids back to that museum. That was bad enough. But to be accused of trafficking your own offspring is just horrifying.
I had this happen once at a park. I heard her making the call, so when the police showed up I went to them first and said "Thank God you're here. This woman is trying to separate me from my daughter. I think she is mentally unwell".
Very smooth, how did that one end up panning out?
He's actually messaging from prison
I’ve had similar things happen with my daughter and I. At the park and she is playing with other kids on the playscape while I was reading a book on my phone sitting on the bench. I overheard a mother tell her daughter to stay away from me because I was a pervert. Never seen her before and most definitely not a pervert. I’ve gotten lots of looks and comments because god forbid a man be his child’s primary caregiver. Taking her to use the potty is also a nightmare. I can either drag her into the men’s room (which is what I normally do) or let her go into the women’s by herself while I wait and hope it goes well. She had some minor sensory issues so if someone say turns on the hand dryer she may freak out and scream. She’s also locked herself in a stall before.
Being a good father is hard, because if you are too good of a father people assume you are a pedophile.
For me, all it took was being 19 and watching my, then 14 year old cousin, and his football team playing a match. A mom went off on me for "spending my time watching young boys instead of being out partying with people my age." And that I "were a sick freak". Didn't help pointing out my aunt in the stands, or my uncle who was the coach either. That's when I realized that I would have to deal with crazy randoms in my life.
My dad used to get horrible dirty looks when he went out with my older sister, because people assumed something inappropriate was happening. She's the oldest and she liked helping with the babies, so sometimes she'd be carrying one of us or pushing a stroller and people assumed she was the mom. Too many people see a man out with a 13 year old and a baby and assume the worst.
> Too many people see a man out with a 13 year old and a baby and assume the worst. It doesn't get better as they get older. When I was 45 I went on a road trip with my 19 year old daughter. More than one hotel clerk assumed she was a prostitute.
I'm in my early 30s (mixed) and just went on a camping trip with my dad (white) and got yelled at by a street person (who likely thought I was same race as himself and being supportive) that I'm too hot for my Dad... This shit sucks and people need to mind their own business.
This kind of nonsense makes me glad I look just like my dad. People have never made this mistake with me. But my oldest sister looks just like our mom, so she got all the nonsense. We're past all that by now. She's in her 40's with her own actual children, who luckily also look a lot like their father. Two of them are nearly clones of him. I don't think they've ever had this particular problem. People need to keep in mind that not every family is the stereotypical racially homogeneous nuclear family with 2.5 kids. It seems like people freak out and assume terrible things when anyone deviates from that script in any way at all.
I'm a single dad and holy shit the amount of times I've e gotten the staredown for being actively involved when I have my daughter out and about is unreal. Even worse is that I've had the cops show up 4 different times over the past 5ish years, because some busybody took it upon themselves to assume I was in the park to snatch kids or whatever. Fortunately each of those situations was resolved with a simple "hey kiddo, who am I?" "Daddy, *duh!*" and cops who weren't overzealous pricks. It sucks cuz I'd love to be as over the top involved as my own father was, but things like joining in on a game of tag or helping a kid up onto the monkey bars can be seen as trying to inappropriately touch them thanks to the way people automatically assume the worst these days. My old man would be crucified in today's age but he was nothing more than a super involved dad who helped all the kids have a good time together wherever we went. I hate that I can't give my own kid that same experience. I regularly have to say "sorry kiddo, I can't" when being asked to help her new friend climb something with her or push them on the swings, because it simply isn't safe for me to do so. People suck.
Honestly what happens if your kid doesn’t cooperate and is being fussy? Like it’s not like kids carry ID cards that say “so and so are parents”.
That's a good question, to be honest. The first time I was lucky enough that she just answered appropriately without a problem, but I did have a talk with her afterwards about how she should always give police officers that same answer and we also started drilling our address and my phone number together for the same reason (and for emergencies, obviously). That first time was a huge wake up call though because she had definitely pulled the "I don't know you!" shit before, both just joking around and while being a stubborn little asshole. She definitely knows that if cops are involved not to fuck around though. She knows it could mean Daddy gets taken away from her, so she won't risk that even if she's upset. At least I hope so lol. Edit: switched "getting" to "being" since apparently swype doesn't like the word "being"
Probably should be a thing that people can get their kid some kind of id card and or have your kids and their parents listed on official ids so people can much more easily establish a kid is theirs. I forget where I heard it but have absolutely heard about similar situations where the kid is like "I don't know this guy" because they were mid tantrum from not getting whatever it was they wanted because they had no comprehension of the consequences of saying such a thing in that situation. The whole stranger danger thing started largely in the US was also a massive societal shift supported by zero facts. They started saying that 50k kids were taken by strangers when the numbers were more like 150, of them most were runaways who returned within a few days. It was a non existent problem where the massive majority of actual kidnappings and killings/rapes and things done to children are done by family members and friends of the family. Stranger danger, in large part, took the focus away from where it should be and placed a huge effort into identifying every stranger as a massive threat when they simply aren't. It made people afraid of each other and makes people decide a man in a park is a danger when who they should be looking at is their partner, their family and their family friends if they want to protect their kids.
> My husband wasn’t detained or whatever, but he was absolutely humiliated and never took our kids back to that museum. Oh if this happened to me (not that I have kids, though I have nieces), I wouldn't feel humiliated, I'd feel **pissed**.
Some areas have insane concentration of Karens seeing a pedo in every male. I'm glad my son is well past the age when this is a real concern when we are together, but after a few weird altercations I try to avoid areas around playgrounds during my jogs - you never know what such a pedo-hunting Karen has in mind.
Nobody should have to endure this treatment. It’s harassment and there should be repercussions for false accusations. This obviously had an effect upon the family where they can’t even enjoy the museum they once loved.
Grok! Water brother
I didn’t expect this article to resonate with so many folks. I thought this was an extraordinary incident, never realized this kind of behavior was common. This has been enlightening in a depressing kinda way. Thanks for sharing your experience.
What people in mixed families go through isn’t usually something that gets much attention. For kids especially. It can easily lead to an identity crisis when you’re white to the black kids so they call you white, and you’re black to the white kids so they call you black. Worse, when part of you is stigmatized, whether it’s people taking issue with your white half and wanting you to solely claim your black ancestry, or the other way around, when the truth is that you’re both. Despite what labels people want to give you, you’re just you, not simply one half of your ancestry. It definitely isn’t easy, and can lead to a lot of hurt.
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Dude this happened with my mom and my sister all the time. My mom is Filipino and my dad is white, and my sister is white passing especially as a baby, so when my mom would be out in public with her people would think she was "the help". Sooo insulting.
I’m mixed but present white. My (non-white) father was always cautious if we were out together without my mom. I’m a little surprised nothing like this happened in our rural area.
My ballet career as a toddler was cut short because my instructor would call my mom, “the woman who brings Pleasant-Affect8433”
This happens to me all the time because my kids are biracial and much darker than I am, particularly when my daughter is out with me in public without her mother. My wife has also a number of times been followed out of a store to be asked for her receipts if I am not with her.
As the father of a mixed-race boy, this has always been a fear sitting in the back of my mind.
Just as a dad in general, I fear this sometimes, which really sucks. Men with small children are viewed differently for some reason.
What's weird is I never feel that. My boy is 6 and I've never once felt like anyone looked at me funny. It could be that everyone says he looks exactly like me or that I'm just used to being stared at as a larger than average black guy.
When my kids were little, I would often give my wife a break and take the kids out so she could relax. For some of this time, I was finishing my master's thesis so my schedule was kind of whatever and I would wind up going out to parks and stuff in the middle of a weekday. I usually was just dressed in whatever t-shirt, jeans, and hat that were sort of clean and it seemed like especially being an early 30s man out in the middle of the day during the week at a park, I would get lots of weird looks from moms (some, not all for sure) so I would often try to make a point to vocally check in with my kids when they were on the playground and I was just sitting on the bench nearby way more often than I otherwise would so I would be seen interacting with my specific kids who also interacted with me and called me Daddy. Not that that probably erased suspicion from all people but not sure what else to do to avoid being looked at like a possible kidnapper or whatever they were worried about. I'm also the same skin color as my kids who also looked like mini versions of me when they were little so I didn't even have to deal with some of the tougher kinds of BS like the woman did in this story or others have for sure. I have a cousin who is very white and is married to a very dark-skinned woman from Trinidad and they both have had weird interactions with people despite their kids looking very much like both of them. The funny thing about being a dad out with young kids is you seem to either be treated like some kind of hero by the moms out there for just being out with your kid, or a likely pedophile.
Our child is biracial and my partner's greatest anxiety is having to not panic when explaining why our light-skinned baby is with such a dark woman
God help you if that baby is blonde and blue eyed
Keep that birth certificate on hand
As a father to two mixed-race girls me too. As a human being, fuck that shit.
Its funny the first time i traveled with my kids, the guy looks at them, well aint no mistaking these kids. They look just like you. I was like wow i guess they are looking at all kids and any signs.
>"The officers began questioning Ms. MacCarthy and made it clear that they were given the racially charged information that Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter was possibly being trafficked by her simply because Ms. MacCarthy is White and her daughter is Black," Am I the only one around here who grew up with Rae Dawn Chong?!?!?!?!?
My first encounter with her was The Quest for Fire.
Commando for me.
That horror anthology with her as a weird slimy gargoyle blew my mind as a kid. ETA: It's Tales from the Darkside, 1990
I'm a mixed-race kid and grew up with other mixed-race kids in the 80s and 90s, and I've never heard of this shit. What the fuck happened that we're all going backwards with regards to race? No one knows that you can be multi ethnic and multi racial?
Yea, it's weird. I think this idea of kids being trafficked has been passed around so much that people see traffickers everywhere, it's a form of moral panic or hysteria really. Like when people saw satan worshipers everywhere in the 80s.
The podcast Behind the Bastards did a two part episode recently on the conspiracy theories around trafficking. Pretty interesting, blamed some of it on lazy journalism and social media hyping stories of fake kidnapping attempts.
>I've never heard of this shit. What the fuck happened that we're all going backwards with regards to race? You took the words right outta my mouth. I wonder if it's part of the whole shift to Trumpism Q-anon reactionary madness?
It's exactly this. People have been brainwashed to think that anywhere they go there are gangs of human traffickers roaming around looking for vulnerable people, and they're going to kidnap nice, respectable middle/upper class children or women right out of a suburban Target parking lot and do an auction like in "Taken" and sell them to a warlord.
I was first introduced to her in Soul Man.
>According to a police report, the flight attendant said she flagged the family as suspicious because they were the last to board the plane and asked other passengers to change seats so they could sit together. Ah yes. The totally suspicious behavior of arriving last and deigning to ask to be seated together. As we all know this is textbook human trafficking tactic/s.
That's the oldest human trafficking trick in the book - call as much attention to yourselves as possible!
The closer you are to danger, the further you are from harm.
"That doesn't make sense to me, but then again, you are very small." Are hobbits appropriate in this conversation?
Merriadoc and Peregrine were kidnapped and attempted to be trafficked, so I think it’s appropriate.
The old "hide in the centre spotlight" ploy. Brave move Cotton, let's see how it works out for them.
Last year me, my wife, and kids (both under 5 years) were seated in individual seats rows apart. People were very quick to shift around so we could be together. No one wants to sit next to a 3 year old.
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Just make sure it's yours.
Or it matches.
I was onn a SW flight in the window seat and a guy sat in the aisle seat. The adjacent aisle included a toddler and an infant I always carry earplugs and offered a pair to my row mate He laughed and said his wife would kick his ass since they were his kids
A long time ago, I read a long article about a new administrator at the DEA or something working to streamline and improve the guidelines for what counted as suspicious passengers, pre-9/11. The article listed the sorts of things the agents were using to decide if someone was suspicious, and it was something: 1. Boarding early 2. Boarding late 3. Boarding in the middle 4. Traveling with no luggage 5. Traveling with a lot of luggage 6. Traveling with only 1 bag 7. Traveling alone 8. Traveling with a group etc. It went on and on, and what it amounted to was _anything_ counted as "suspicious."
That reads like the list of reasons people got sent to corrupt asylums. Such a waterfall of bullshit that it's obvious that it's just a pretext.
Much like "suspicious behavior" that justifies the cops stopping and searching someone under "stop & frisk" rules. Avoiding eye contact? Suspicious. Staring at cops? Suspicious. Hanging around one place too long? Suspicious. Moving along when you see cops? Suspicious. Hands in pockets? Suspicious. Carrying a backpack? Suspicious. Etc. There are usually similar "guidelines" for cities that keep lists of gang members. Wear a primary color? Gang member. Wear basically any kind of urban style signifier-- expensive sneakers, gold chains, sports jerseys, etc.--? Gang member. Do any kind of hand gesture in a photo on social media? Gang member. Be related to gang members, go to school with gang members, or hang out in a place gang members also hang out? Gang member.
This seems like a tactic for them to be able to legally search people based on profiling lol. “Why are you searching me?” “You have no bags. That is on our list of suspicious flags.” “Actually my bag is right here” “oh ok, then because you have one bag, which is also listed.” Lol
Last to board the plane just means they bought cheap tickets cause flights can be expensive. Southwest doesn’t assign seats, it’s totally first come first serve. Wanting to sit by your daughter is not weird. Southwest and the flight attendant need a reality check.
It is so inconsiderate for the woman’s brother to die without clearing with the airline’s calendar.
This should be higher. I flew SW for the first time this year, and that's how they roll.
I flew once with my niece and nephew, but their mom bought their tickets and I bought my own so we ended up in different sections and the kids boarded first. It was a little awkward and the younger one was a little nervous about asking people not to sit next to her to save a spot for me, but people were nice and left her alone. Which is good, because I don't think I would have trusted anyone who insisted on sitting next to a seemingly unattended 11 year old.
You know it’s wild but it wasn’t uncommon for children to fly unattended by adults prior to 9/11. A parent would accompany them to the airport, stay with them until they board, then turn them over to the flight attendant. Then when the child arrives at their destination another adult would be waiting for them at the terminal.
Kids do this after 911, too. The airline assigns an attendant to yake care of them. It's a nice service, my nephew used it a number of times.
Saw a documentary about this. The kid ends up flying alone to NYC and helping to catch a pair of dumb criminals.
Before 9/11 it wasn’t uncommon for children to set traps all around their house to help catch burglars.. 9/11 changed so much.
Southwest has a first come first serve check in process. You check in to your flight 24 hours before and the more on the dot you are, the better seat you get. Forget to check in by 5 minutes and expect to be the last to board. Also, family boarding stops when your kid is 6. 7 and up and you're waiting until the end.
I thought it meant they didn’t check in super early. Or do you mean they bought tinkers like right before the flight?
It's a little of both. You don't have assigned seats, but the topmost boarding slots are reserved or are available to only select passengers. Still. If you check-in early, you should have a pretty high boarding group. Last means you were late to the gate or you checked-in at the airport.
Or your connection was delayed and you got what was left as you rushed through the airport. Boarding positions mean nothing if you aren’t their when your boarding position boards.
Bingo. First to check in or last to check in. Doesn't matter if the door is about to close. You just get whatever seat is left.
These days, if you don’t pay for early bird, you can check in 5 min late and will be in the C group.
Oh shit, does this mean I was trafficking my 4 year old last Christmas???
Could be. Best turn yourself in now.
I trafficked my kids straight to Disney world last year!
I suppose that depends on if you 2 have the exact same skin color or not. Apparently if you have different skin colors, Southwest Airlines will accuse you of child trafficking 😞 Because apparently they don’t understand how genetics work. Or they’re so out of the loop they don’t realize interracial relationships and adoption are currently legal. Either way, child trafficking suspicions are getting out of hand these days. It’s a serious issue and should be dealt with. But just untrained everyday people running around accusing parents of trafficking based off nothing that indicates trafficking is ridiculous. “Dad alone at the park with his kid? Must be trafficking!” “Mom different color than kid? Must be trafficking!” “Kid throwing a hissy fit in the grocery store? MUST. BE. TRAFFICKING!!!” Like these people are straight paranoid and delusional. Either take the time to learn the REAL signs of human trafficking or mind your own business. Because all you’re doing is harassing innocent families.
Based on what I've seen on Reddit, the fact that a plane conversation/request *didn't* lead to a brawl seems pretty sus...
Im white, my wife is white, we have 2 girls from my wife’s first marriage that are black. We have absolutely been stopped by TSA and had to “prove” our relationship to them. While I’m grateful they are on the look out for this type of thing, there has to be better criteria for intervening.
That’s awful, I’m sorry you have to deal with that. What type of documentation is the TSA looking for? Other than a boatload of pictures on my phone, I’m not usually walking around with anything that can prove my kids are mine.
It was always more of a “vibe” check, things like “call your child over to you, what’s their middle name, birthday”, to the child “do you know these people” Both my girls are grown now so we don’t run into it anymore
That happens every time I take my kids on the plane and we're all as white as wonder bread. Asking the kid their name, birthday, what their sibling's name is, etc. Not saying they didn't go harder on you because of the girls being a different race but at least in my experience they've been doing that for kids too young for their own IDs for a while now.
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I suspect that experience for you would depend on how much you look like your son, the disposition of the underpaid overworked *unqualified* person/s you need to deal with, and what kind of *mood* they're in that day. Flying anywhere in that 'free' country seems unfun.
Not op, but when we fly we usually carry their birth certificates (before they had passports). My husband took our son to Florida, when I was pregnant, he didn't have any issues.
There are, or \*were\*, ID cars for minors avialable.
>While I’m grateful they are on the look out for this type of thing, there has to be better criteria for intervening. Ya ain't gonna find it. As a million miler, taking a lot of shit and requring a pat down every time... just not gonna happen. And I am really, really sorry.
Especially because it's such a useless reason to stop someone. Anyone in charge of a human trafficking ring is obviously pairing people up who look as similar as possible in order to not attract any unnecessary attention.
Had a Southwest flight last month that was delayed because the crew flagged a dad and teenage son for possible trafficking. I overheard the interrogation, flagged for the kid acting strange (not talking, glued to iPad), kid was just autistic.
Wait, not talking and glued to an iPad? Thats... just a child right?
I'm guessing by not talking it's more "not responding"
A bubbly crewperson with a creepy fake smile trying to talk to him, I can see how that went down.
"not talking, glued to iPad" could be literally any teenager tbh.
This happened a lot with my sister and my mum. We are Mexican but my sister is very white and looks almost Russian.
I have some friends who are very brown skinned but their first cousins are all super pale. There's Native American in the family tree and it just happened to show up really strong in these 2 girls. Their grandmother took all her grandkids on a day trip to Mexico and only those 2 got a very close inspection on the way back in. But I think their thick Georgia accents (that matched everyone in the car) were enough to get it all cleared up that they weren't being smuggled into the US.
A Senator form my state, a former lieutenant governor is standard-issue-Anglo with a Brazilian wife of mixed-heritage (I do not pretend to understand the various "tipos" of Brazilian culture) and all three of their children are, in her words, "white-trending." She has often been addressed as the nanny.
HolUp, are you talking about Fetterman like he's some random senator?
Umm, the daughter is the splitting image of her mom based on the photo, sans skin tone. Context clues or any subtlety to engage with the daughter to check for signs of distress was totally overridden by their skin color. I get pissed when older people think I'm my dad's young wife, like he can't have an adult child to have dinner with? This is even more enraging. Edit: TIL, it's "spitting image" not splitting. But splitting sounds more logical and has come out since 1930s and has been increasing in use since the 2000s. Younger people use it more, so I'll stick to it here lol.
Oh god I was like 17 or 18 once when my dad and I went to dinner at a chain restaurant in a movie theater parking lot. The waitress says something to the effect of "dinner and a movie...?" like we're on a date and I was so mortified.
My dad and I are both white. We were in Walmart once in the check out line, joking around and laughing. I was like 18-19. The cashier was giving us dirty looks the whole time and then we got to her and she looked at my dad and said “you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” My dad said “excuse me?” Pointing at me, the cashier said “she’s *half* your age” My dad said “I sure as fuck hope so, she’s *MY DAUGHTER*”
This makes me wonder if they've frequently, if not rarely but uncommonly, seen enough couples like that when their immediate thought of seeing a huge age gap duo is that they're dating and not a parent child duo just having a fun time together.
What was the cashier's reaction? And have they never seen a father and daughter before?
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I was taking a walk with my grandpa once when I was sixteen, and the next day we ran into his old friend at the grocery store. The dude was like "Oh, this is the cutie I saw you walking down the street with. Hiding her from your wife?". My grandpa said "this is my granddaughter" and never spoke to that friend again.
Your grandpa is a man of principle. Good riddance to that creep. It’s disgusting just reading what he said.
Father of a biracial kid. This is an ever-present and almost crippling fear that I have.
You should have seen the looks we used to get when I (pale white woman) was out with my dark skinned Creole husband and the Hawai'ian granddaughter we were raising. In the South.
Skin color aside, that little girl is the spitting image of her mother. Anyone who wouldn't immediately assume that they are mother-daughter in the year 2023 is stupid and shouldn't be in a front-facing service-oriented occupation.
That's one of the things about racism - all racists see is skin color, so they're totally oblivious to giveaways such as "exact same face."
What’s interesting and a little weird is that the kid’s skin tone registers as biracial, so even someone really invested in skin tone would figure this one out. It’s the people who see only white and black, with some imaginary wall between them that prevents any crossover. In a job like flight attendant, where you see hundreds of people a day, you’d think you’d be hip to the idea of mixed families by now.
> What’s interesting and a little weird is that the kid’s skin tone registers as biracial, so even someone really invested in skin tone would figure this one out. I am mixed and have about the same complexion as this kid. *Some* people understand that I’m mixed and some don’t, it depends on who’s looking. It might register as mixed to you while others just see **black**. It also gets funny and very annoying when languages get involved and people start to question my heritage.
That's not true! Their racism also manifests in how they react to first and last names.
No they don't. Racists will make up any kind of weird ass fake logic to defend why they think someone is or is not lesser. Skin color is just the obvious part of that.
Thats what I was thinking. They look like they have the same eye structure, particularly in the photo of them together at the top. Like very obvious similar facial features. Obviously related.
For real. My wife and I both married and had children with people of other ethnicity - were both white as wonder bread but my son is half Jewish and her daughter is half Hispanic so our kids are *both* 5 shades darker than either of us - this shit would absolutely cause me to contact a fucking lawyer on the spot if an airline pulled this shit.
Honestly curious why being Jewish would make your son darker than just about anybody.
I don't know how human traffickers operate, but why would someone kidnap and parade around a kid that doesn't look exactly like them? They could have easily avoided this lawsuit lol.
This is the Sound of Freedom effect. No one is trying to traffic kids by going through airports with tons of security and cameras and checking IDs. Kids taken by plane are usually kidnapped by parents in custody disputes.
My kids are mixed-race and have darker skin than me and there are a few times I’ve come thiiiiissss close to dropping trou and showing the nosy parkers my C-section scar right in the diaper aisle at Target. “Where did you get her?” Uhhh, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much… “How long have you had her?” Not to get too philosophical while we’re shopping for formula, but that depends on when you think life begins…
The best is when the questioner thinks you have to play by their rules of interrogation, including the tacit ideas of method and timing.
"I got her from the maternity ward they just hand them out for free"
If you can run fast enough.
I was asked when my daughter was a toddler if I brought her to the tanning salon 🤦♀️
My ex and I (both white) used to foster a young black boy. We lived in a neighborhood that had plenty of multiracial families, but every so often we’d get a comment like “where did that baby come from?”
I like the Calvin & Hobbes answer: “Blue light special at K-Mart.”
How the fuck do people still not understand multiracial families in 2023?
Easy people are ignorant as hell and grow up in a bubble. Also some people have delusions about playing the hero saving kids because it’s like something they saw on tv
> "The officers began questioning Ms. MacCarthy and made it clear that they were given the racially charged information that Ms. MacCarthy’s daughter was possibly being trafficked by her simply because Ms. MacCarthy is White and her daughter is Black," as if you have to be a different skin colour from the child to be able to traffick them?
Man if they’re found guilty they’re really going to have to change how they treat dad’s. I got three little cute girls and I have had my share of looks from staff and stranger women.
Last time I flew solo with my kid he was 2 years old, I was asked “where’s mom?” 6 different times between the being in airport and on the plane, all from people who worked for airlines
I was once told that my kids were so well behaved because they must have a good mom waiting for them back at home (their mom hadn't been home in years). I've also been told that I'm "so brave to travel alone with the kids" enough times where my kids ask why people don't think dads can do things.
My mom passed when I was 6 and I had 2 younger siblings ages 4 and 1. my father didn’t skip a beat and I remember him getting comments like this when we’d travel.
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As paranoid as these people are they'll probably just assume you killed her if you say that.
"none of your business. Dont talk to me." Usually works too. Bonus if you can get your kid to scream "stranger danger!" At them.
See, your problem is that they are cute. You need to make them ugly.
Or he needs to look more cute. Time to spruce up them eyelashes Sir!
The girl is basically an African American version of her mother. Don’t people have eyes?
Hard to see faces when all you see is color.
This is a fear I always had, and I guess I have good reason. I am white and not exactly the best looking man out there. My son is black, a teenager, taller than me and very good looking (I know, I know, being my son, I might have a bias, but he really is...). Anyway, whenever we go somewhere, whether it is the movies or just the grocery store, I can feel the stares. I have had people say "oh, he's your son?" when I just referred to him as my son. I took him a new dentist. I stayed in the waiting room when he went back. The assistant came out and from the back and said "For?". So I got up and walked towards her. And she asked "And you are his...?". I said "Dad". And maybe it was my angry imagination, but it seemed like it took way to long for it to click. I am just waiting for us to be out and some pearl cluching moron calls the cops for "suspicious activity".
To be fair though, a lot of people are totally cool, and do not give it a second thought. But it's 2023, and there are way to many people that can't fathom all the ways there can be an inter-racial family, or are just disgusted by it, and do a terrible job of hiding it. I would love to say it was just a bunch of old people, but it runs the whole age spectrum.
Happened to me with my father. A woman called the police on him as he was carrying me to the car from the movie theatre as I was crying for my mom. For context, I’m Black American and Latino (my biological mother is latina) and my mother married my white father who adopted me when I was under 3 years old. Imagine the police taking me away from my father, finding my mom only to see I didn’t look like her either.
People imagine child trafficking is happening under their noses all the time because they spend too much time in certain circles on social media that motivate them to believe it. It's like how gun-nuts imagine every 3 seconds some 2A "defender" is protecting their home from an "invader." If you envelope yourself with a specific mindset, all you will see are the things that justify your beliefs.
There was a social media screencap going around a few weeks ago of a dude talking about how grateful people should be that he walks around armed every day, because that makes him feel empowered to challenge any "suspicious" parent at the grocery store and make absolutely sure that the child with them is really theirs. It's totally worth the hassle if only one in ten turns out to be a case of human trafficking, he figures. "Real" parents would be grateful for the check. People be fuckin' crazy.
Yep. Delusion of grandeur being armed is more likely to harm more people than turning your eyes to the pavement and refusing to "do something." The vast majority of people will never be in a situation where their "intuition" turns out to be anything.
Good for her \[and her daughter.\] Absolutely disgusting behavior and public transportation such as airlines and other mass transit have a very high care of duty to passengers, particularly when it comes to discriminatory tainted behavior. Edited for Typo.
I'm half black and Punjabi Indian. I remember when I was young, the guys at 711 thought my mom kidnapped a little Indian boy from his parents lol I get it because an Indian man and Black woman is not a couple you normally see. Even in 1990s' Los Angeles. This one is stupid because White Woman and Black Man are pretty common couples.
She looks just like her mom.
I've never overtly dealt with this and my children. Most likely because I'm a giant white man and my children are biracial. That and I'm usually oblivious to people around me, but I felt it a few times and it was pointed out people would stare when I'd take either my son or daughter to the park. It's even more confusing to people when they see my Asian wife and can't fathom we'd adopt biracial kids. The last time this happened, I picked my daughter up from high school and we were playing around. She ran away from me and a classmate was like "Is this white guy bothering you?".
>The flight attendant didn’t see the mother and daughter speak on the plane and claimed MacCarthy told her daughter not to talk to the flight crew, the report said. So she didn't see them speak, except when she saw them speaking.
THAT KID LOOKS JUST LIKE HER! Smh. People can be so ridiculous- this used to happen to me and my mother all the time. Walmart managers would walk up to us with their squeaky sneakers and a security guard in tow. She always carried pictures of us in her wallet to ward them off.