Some people say the recently released movie “The Blind Side” has inspired them and will inspire others to reach out to youth, through adoption, foster parenting or another mentoring relationship. Others question whether it is a good picture of adoption. Perhaps it is not realistic enough, some say. Perhaps it plays into the “rescue” stereotypes—black boy from “broken home” taken into a “good Christian home” by wealthy white couple.
“The Blind Side” is the story of pro football player Michael Oher, who was a first-round draft pick for the Baltimore Ravens, and of the Tuohys, a Memphis couple who invited him into their home and family. The Tuohys, their kids, a tutor and the school community helped Michael turn around a .06 grade point average and graduate from a Christian high school, with a college football scholarship. (For those of you who are as football-illiterate as I am, the film’s title comes from a position Oher played in football. This position has the primary responsibility of protecting the quarterback’s blind side.)
I haven’t seen the movie yet. I just finished watching Oher and the Tuohys interviewed on 20/20 and have read some articles about him. So here’s my take on this story:
If this were a fictional screenplay, I might understand people’s concerns about stereotyping. However, this is a true story. So what if it happens to reinforce a stereotype? Are we supposed to deny that it happened and that it’s a great story about an incredible young man and his wonderful family?
It does seem that Michael was a better-behaved kid than many fifteen-year-olds raised in similar circumstances. He was very motivated to accept the help the Tuohys offered him, beginning classes at six in the morning and working with a tutor until late at night. I’m sure those years can’t have been easy for the family. His new sister, just his age, changed her schedule to take some of his classes and help him study. (She says that although a good student, she’d never studied as hard in her life as when she sat at the table with Michael for seven hours some evenings.)
I hope to see more of the sibling relationships developing in the movie. In the 20/20 interviews, it was obvious that his younger brother looked up to him and loved him, and that Michael and his sister had the same rapport and “I’ve got your back” sentiment (and the same competitiveness) that you’d expect in a sibling relationship.
On the ABC website, Leigh Ann Tuohy says it’s easy to forget that Michael wasn’t born to them. As an adoptive parent, I can attest to this. We forget that we may look different to those outside of our family, as Shoshanna expressed so well in her blog I Forget We Don’t Look Alike .
Comments on ABC’s website story are overwhelmingly positive. One mother says her 10-year-old foster son, whom she’s adopting next week, related to the movie and has begun saying “when I go to college”.
There is one comment on the site that made me cringe in disbelief, but I guess it’s good for naïve idealist me to realize those attitudes are still out there. The commenter said that the Tuohys could have helped Michael by paying for Sylvan Learning Center, “they didn’t have to bring down their daughter in the process”. WHAT???? Like I said above, the girl seemed to feel very protected by her brother. To imply anything else is disgusting. Maybe this commenter is related to that judge who was in the news a couple of months ago because he refused to marry interracial couples. I don’t get it; I just don’t get it.
I hope to see the movie soon. For me the bottom line is, the film could potentially be very good for adoption. Perhaps it will help someone be able to envision an older child, perhaps of another race, joining their family. This is the situation of so many of the foster children awaiting adoption. If it gives people the idea that hey, this could fit into my life, this is normal, then that’s great.
The film is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for “drug and sexual references and one scene of brief violence”. If you’ve seen it, I’d love to see your comments here.
Please see these related blogs:
African-American Support of Transracial Adoption
Black Males are Lagging Academically