I quickly found myself in rather deep water, however, since explaining the background of the struggle required discussing racism and its destructive manifestation in our history of African slavery. Imagine the squirming I suffered inside as I (a white woman) explained to my newly-adopted Ethiopian daughter how white people went to Africa to steal black people and bring them here against their will, their heritage stripped from them. The growing look of baffled alarm on my daughter’s face finally resolved itself into a gut punch of a question. “Am I your slave?”

How else could it look to her, after all? She had had no choice in the matter of her adoption and emigration to the U.S. When I regained my composure I tried to point out the many differences, all the while knowing in the back of my mind that, in truth, children are as powerless to control their fates as the captured Africans were.

All I could offer was the promise that I would never force her to do anything against her will or raise a hand against her, that I would protect her from harm, and that I would show up on time. From that moment my job was clarified for me: I had to parent through moral authority alone, by earning her love, respect and trust through my own actions. Anything else would be tyranny. If parents must be dictators at times, they must at least be benevolent dictators.

Besides, the cat is out of the bag as far as resistance to unjust civil authority is concerned! I’ve shared with her the courage stories of civil disobedience, and encouraged her to think of resistance to tyranny and injustice as a good and important thing, a hero’s quest if ever there was one. I have, in effect, put myself on notice.

If I ever have to post bail for her for an act of conscience, I will be proud to stand up in church and make that announcement. I think that will tell me I did my job well.

Part of their testing for rank promotion (the belt tests) is board-breaking. Actually breaking the board isn’t required, but trying is. Among the lower ranks, the first class in which they try board-breaking is scary or exciting, according to temperament. It is definitely possible to get hurt doing this; what is required is careful preparation and then decisive action. My daughter was extremely apprehensive the first time. The prospect of striking the wood clearly had her rattled, and she kept darting nervous glances my way where I sat in the parents’ section. As I recall, Lisa’s son was the first to raise his hand to give it a try. He took his fighting stance in front of the instructor who was holding the board, and then slammed it with a hammer fist. Crrrack! We all broke into spontaneous applause as the two halves went flying. Before long, Lisa’s daughter was waving her hand in the air to take her turn, but K. was shrinking visibly.  As an athletic performance with an audience,  this was a task that required both physical courage and social courage.

At last she could hang back no longer. Her turn inevitably came. She had been in this country for less than a year since her adoption from Ethiopia.  She was still as thin as a stick and her white uniform billowed around her small frame. Her teacher talked her through the steps; she looked my way; he encouraged her more, and coached her through a few warm-up swings. She then drew a deep breath and smashed the board in two with her little hand. “I did it!” she cried in amazement. “I did it!”

She sang the whole way home.

As they advance through the ranks, their breaking techniques are required to get more challenging, more complicated. Sometimes at a belt test K. tries and fails to break. Recently, a mom broke her arm at her own black belt test, a sober reminder of how dangerous incorrect technique can be. At K.’s most recent test she was again the last person to break, still hanging back until the end. But her two breaks were quick and decisive: first an upward knee-smash followed by a quick pivot to the second board and a palm-heel strike. 

Recognizing when it’s time to be the hero, and doing it even when you’re scared: that’s courage.

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