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Sensitivity Training

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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

With more and more prospective parents adopting kids from abroad, it is no longer rare to spot children in the playground who do not look like their parents. But manners have not caught up with the times, and an innocent query from a confused observer can upset both parent and child.

Khyber Attack

Griff Witte, foreign reporter for the Washington Post
and
Ahmed Rashid, journalist based in Islamabad, Pakistan and author Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (Penguin, 2003) and Taliban (Yale University Press)
- on the increased violence in Afghanistan

» "Afghans ...

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Fire Side Chat

Christopher Breiseth, president and CEO of The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, NY
- on Franklin Delano Roosevelt's fire side chats to the country at the time of war

» The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute

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Sensitivity Training

Dawn Davenport, researcher and writer specializing in adoption and author, The Complete Book on International Adoption: A Step By Step Guide to Finding Your Child (forthcoming from Random House Broadway in 2006),
- says curiosity, not malice, prompts insensitive questions to adoptive parents

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We Should Be Moving Shortly...

Sewell Chan, reporter for The New York Times
- on labor negotiations between the transit union and the MTA
and
Ed Watt, secretary and treasurer of the transit workers union local 100
- on the transit workers' negotiations with the MTA

»

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Open Phones

Brian and callers remember Dillon Stewart, the New York City police officer who was shot and killed yesterday.

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Feedback: Adoption

Subject: doesn't just happen to adoptive families
a note on the very personal and sometimes rude questions that strangers will ask about other people's children:
my family background is quite diverse. black american, native american, portuguese, italian, and french on my mother's side; black american, jamaican, and senegalese on my father's side. NO ONE in my family is the same skin tone, or even has the same facial features. My point is: you just have to deal with other people's ignorance in as succinct a manner as possible. be as polite as you can while you let them know that they are being rude, or that there is a better way to ask whatever question they are posing. and your kids will learn to handle themselves assuredly because they KNOW who they are and who their family is.

-SW

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