Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP/File

Joe Biden, then vice president, shakes hands with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow, March 10, 2011. Mr. Putin won’t congratulate President-elect Biden until legal challenges to the U.S. election are resolved and the result is official, the Kremlin announced Nov. 9, 2020.

During his time as deputy secretary of state at the end of the Obama administration, Antony Blinken became known as the values guy – constantly underscoring in staff meetings, Washington speeches, and while traveling abroad how American values of democracy and human rights are at the core of U.S. foreign policy and global leadership.

“We are not the leader of first choice because we’re always right, or because we’re universally liked, or because we can dictate outcomes,” Mr. Blinken said in a June 2015 speech at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “It’s because we strive to the best of our ability to align our actions with our principles, and because American leadership has a unique ability to mobilize others and to make a difference.”

That focus on American values, plus an accompanying commitment to strengthen and lead alliances from Europe to Asia, are expected to form the twin pillars of Mr. Blinken’s foreign policy vision as he takes the helm of the State Department next year as President-elect Joe Biden’s secretary of state.

Yet while U.S. allies and partners are already welcoming America’s impending return to a more traditional and internationalist conception of its leadership role, U.S. adversaries will almost certainly be less happy about the reorientation.

And perhaps none of those adversaries will be more unsettled by a robust U.S. return to the global stage and efforts to reestablish moral leadership, foreign policy experts say, than the Russia of Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Putin has worked hard over recent years to undermine U.S. alliances – particularly with Europe – as well as faith in and the spread of such American values as democratic governance and universal human rights. Moreover, he has taken advantage of a U.S. pullback from leadership – for example in Syria or in diplomacy with Iran – to advance Russian geopolitical goals.

So to the extent Mr. Biden’s foreign policy intends to challenge the recent advances of adversaries like Russia and do so by fortifying alliances while reemphasizing American values, a more combative U.S.-Russia relationship is very likely on the horizon, experts in big-power relations say.

“It’s already quite clear from what Biden said during the campaign and since the election as he’s announced his national security team that he’s going to put America’s alliances and the values component front and center in his foreign policy,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow in U.S. foreign policy and European affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

“Biden will make a point to stress his commitment to America’s allies and to democracy and freedom,” he adds, “and that will stick in the craw of the Russians and others who have seized on a move away from those commitments.”

Not a policy, but a “mess”

It is not as though U.S.-Russia relations have enjoyed an extended honeymoon that is about to come to a screeching halt, experts say. Despite what Mr. Kupchan calls President Donald Trump’s “affection” for Mr. Putin, the Trump administration has also ramped up sanctions against Russia and approved sales of offensive weaponry to Ukraine’s besieged government, which still finds parts of its territory occupied by Russia.

The problem, he says, is that there has been no clear policy guiding U.S. action toward Russia – with the president indulging his “friend” Mr. Putin while top White House advisers and many in Congress have taken a more confrontational and punitive approach.

“We haven’t had a Russia policy under Trump, we’ve had a mess. Under Biden there will be a Russia policy,” says Mr. Kupchan, who served as the National Security Council’s senior director for European Affairs in the Obama-Biden administration.

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

Antony Blinken, President-elect Joe Biden's nominee for secretary of state, speaks at Mr. Biden's announcement of his national security nominees and appointees at his transition headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, Nov. 24, 2020.

And as in Mr. Biden’s overall foreign policy approach, a Russia policy is likely to elevate expectations in terms of human rights and acceptable international behavior in any diplomatic outreach, some international relations veterans say.

“What the Blinken selection for secretary of state and other choices for the national security team tell me is that we’ll see something a little more active and more elevated in terms of the place of human rights and values in the Biden foreign policy, and I’d expect to see that shift in U.S.-Russia relations as well,” says David Kramer, a former assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor under President George W. Bush.

Mr. Kramer says he’s expecting a clearer and unambiguous message from Washington to Moscow. “I’m hoping Biden tells Putin: ‘Get out of Ukraine, stop interfering in our and other countries’ elections, and stop committing gross human right abuses on your own people,’” says Mr. Kramer, now a senior fellow in the Vaclav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy at Florida International University in Miami. “‘And when you do all that, give me a call.’”

No Russia “reset”

Since Mr. Biden’s victory a month ago, more speculation has focused on how the new president might deal with the other major adversary in global affairs, China. Mr. Biden is expected to adopt some of the more confrontational stance toward Beijing that President Trump has instituted, while eschewing the overall cooperative approach from the early Obama years that envisioned ushering a rising giant to the table of Western-modeled global leadership.

Similarly, when it comes to Russia, the Biden administration is not expected to rekindle old hopes of welcoming Moscow to the table of Western democracies. A common theme Mr. Blinken espoused during the presidential campaign is that a Biden administration would not engage the world “as it was in 2009, or even in 2017” when the Obama team left office.

Thus there will be no talk of a “reset” with Mr. Putin, as Mr. Blinken (and his boss) have turned more hawkish on Russia.

The question will be how much attention the new administration will be able to give to setting a more confrontational tone, as Mr. Biden focuses on domestic issues, from the pandemic to rebuilding the economy.

“Over the last few years, and from Ukraine to Venezuela, the Russians pushed into new areas and in increasingly provocative ways, but they didn’t meet with a lot of resistance or pushback” from the U.S., says Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. “If a Biden administration does take a tougher stand and adopts more punitive measures,” he adds, “it will cause Putin to recalculate the cost of his actions and perhaps to recalibrate.”

But even if Mr. Putin is prompted to “become more cautious down the road,” Mr. Gvosdev says he also would not be surprised to see Mr. Putin use the waning days of the Trump administration to take some bold steps. For example: rushing to complete the final 100 kilometers of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Western Europe, or a provocative confrontation or two with U.S. forces in the Baltic.

The point, Mr. Gvosdev says, would be to establish that Moscow can also play tough if there’s going to be a more hawkish team in Washington pursuing a more activist human rights agenda.

Pragmatic orientation

The incoming Biden foreign policy team is indeed expected to underscore democratic governance and a return to a more universalist conception of human rights from the narrow focus on religious freedom pursued by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. But at the same time, the sheer enormity of the domestic challenges awaiting Mr. Biden means no one should expect a rush to bold actions on the global front, most foreign policy experts say.

“The Biden team is largely pragmatic in orientation, so they’re not going to be looking either to carry out regime change or to use lofty promises to cajole adversaries into changing their stripes,” says Mr. Kupchan, who is also a professor of international affairs at Georgetown University.

For U.S.-Russia relations, that pragmatism means cooperation could be limited to arms control – perhaps a quick five-year extension of the New START Treaty, which expires in early February – and perhaps some effort to work together in the Arctic.

Mr. Blinken has also spoken of using Mr. Putin’s discomfort with Russia’s growing dependence on the Chinese giant to its east to encourage a more cooperative relationship.

“I do think we’ll see even more of the U.S. strategy to loosen the quasi-alliance that has emerged between Russia and China,” Mr. Kupchan says.

But no one expects such underlying concerns to prompt a friendlier Mr. Putin any time soon.

“Anyone hoping for more cooperation between the U.S. and Russia had better rein in those expectations,” says Mr. Kramer. “You’re about to be very disappointed.”

As he slings a backpack stuffed with his kitchen knives over his shoulder, Japour Walker sets out from his modest Florida ranch in one of Jacksonville’s Black working-class neighborhoods.

Donning a “Black Panther” pullover on a chilly morning, the 30-something chef’s hike to work takes him through commercial alleys studded with grease-stained tire shops and food trucks selling crab patties, a local delicacy. On the corner there’s a man on a bicycle hawking pork chops from a red duffel bag.

The bulk of Mr. Walker’s neighbors here along the Trout River on the city’s northern margin have traditionally voted Democratic.

Yet this year, while Mr. Walker declines to share his own ballot choice, he says a surprising number of his neighbors – mostly Black men like him – pulled the lever for the leader of the Republican Party. They helped President Donald Trump notch a convincing win in Florida, a swing state that, like Ohio, has trended red in recent cycles. While the vast majority of Black voters helped Democrat Joe Biden win the White House, Mr. Trump improved his share by an estimated 2 to 4 percentage points over 2016 – capturing about 1 in 5 Black male voters in parts of Florida. There were 40 to 50 point swings toward Mr. Trump in other Democratic constituencies, including among Latinos in South Florida and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and Native Americans in North Carolina.

“You know what, he did send money when people really needed it, and he did confront foreigners, who do come and take some of our jobs,” says Mr. Walker. “I appreciate him for that.”

Despite his defeat at the polls, Mr. Trump’s gain of Black and Latino voters has raised fears among Democrats and hope among Republicans. “The joke is that the GOP is really assembling the multiracial working-class coalition that the left has always dreamed of,” David Shor, a Democratic polling and data expert, told Politico. Given a rural white base slowly losing demographic ground, Republicans like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio see “the future of the GOP” in what he calls in all-caps these “AMERICANS”: the multiethnic and multiracial working class. The underlying advice for both parties: Don’t assume racial groups are monoliths or that you can take for granted that someone is going to vote a particular way based on their racial identity. 

The shift wasn’t enough to reelect the president, who lost the Electoral College by 306 votes to 232 and the popular vote by more than 6 million, but Mr. Trump’s appeal to these voters became part of a GOP incursion that saw the Democrats lose ground in House seats, while control of the Senate hinges on two January runoff races in Georgia.

Patrik Jonsson/The Christian Science Monitor

Japour Walker stops to chat on his walk to work in Jacksonville, Florida, on Nov. 18, 2020. Many Black working-class Americans like him, particularly men, joined Latinos and Native Americans in boosting President Trump's election numbers compared with 2016, impeding some hoped-for Democratic gains.

What remains to be seen is whether the gains can be repeated and expanded once Mr. Trump is off the stage.

“This is nobody’s father’s Republican Party – it’s Trump’s party,” says J. Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College, in Salisbury, North Carolina. “The base is always very willing to accept whatever he puts out, but it’s the establishment elites trying to figure out what they do now. If it’s personality-driven, how do you replicate that?”

Those gains, compared with 2016, may also have been complicated by President Trump’s unwillingness to concede his loss to President-elect Biden. As part of the effort to overturn the election, the Trump campaign and supporters of the president filed several dozen lawsuits in battleground states that sought to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters in majority Black cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia without presenting evidence of widespread fraud in court. All but one of the lawsuits have resulted in failure or withdrawal for the Trump campaign and GOP. Meanwhile, a group of Detroit voters filed suit against the Trump campaign under the Voting Rights Act for trying to disenfranchise them.

“We can clearly see in this election that Black voters faced the pandemic, demonstrations, and [other obstacles] to cast their votes,” says Francille Rusan Wilson, an American studies professor at the University of Southern California, in an email. “The strident and desperate attempt by the Republican party to reject hundreds of thousands of legally cast ballots of Black Americans damages not just the GOP’s ability to garner sizable numbers of votes from Black citizens but will have a lasting and poisonous effect on our democracy.”

The appeal of toughness

What the long-term effects of efforts to disenfranchise voters in majority Black cities might be is unknown. Black and Latino Americans who voted for Mr. Trump cite, not Republican policy, but rather personality: his unwillingness to back off, a penchant for the hustle, and a pugilistic sensibility.

Mr. Trump’s “policies spoke for themselves in the Black community, and most Black people want nothing to do with that,” says Nathaniel Q. Smith, CEO of Partnership for Southern Equity, an Atlanta-based nonprofit that promotes racial equity and shared prosperity. “But a lot of [Black Americans] have drunk the Kool-Aid, not who [Trump] is, but what he represents, which is an idea. Wealth, opulence, machismo – he represents all of these things to a certain segment of the community. It allows people to be more comfortable moving forward toward a more uncertain world.”

“I don’t believe that Republicans” can build a blue-collar populist party, “but it’s up to the Democratic party to not take what has happened in the past for granted,” says Mr. Smith, in Atlanta. “Just like we need to understand where white folks are coming from who voted for Trump, Biden needs to understand why these percentages of Latino and Black men voted for Trump. That’s the most important question to answer.”

In a postelection caucus call, moderate Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who flipped a Republican seat in 2018 and won reelection, urged Democrats to refrain from using phrases like “defund the police” and socialism – not only because they can be exploited for political gain, but because they clash head-on with working-class values.

“I want a job, not a stimulus check,” one Black voter in Savannah, Georgia, told the Monitor recently.

In “Trump’s Democrats,” a just-published book, researchers Stephanie Muravchik and Jon Shields found both unsettled economies and a fighting spirit.

Troubling for Democrats is what Ms. Muravchik sees as an “eclipse” of local politics. She recalls a lifelong Democrat who gravitated toward the Republican Party after realizing, with a sense of shock, that her anti-abortion stance clashed with the Democratic Party platform.

What’s more, “in these parts of the country there is a pervasive honor culture, where [especially] men have to defend their reputation for toughness in the face of any kind of threat, and that is something that informs their intimate lives,” says Ms. Muravchik. “The director of one rec center said that one game that is sometimes a problem that boys play is a slapping game, where they take turns slapping each other until somebody breaks down. So we said, ‘Are these troubled kids?’ ‘No, they’re just ordinary kids around the city.’ That also plays out at the political level, where the mayor embodied an ethos of ‘If someone takes a shot and you don’t punch back, it shows your weakness and they roll over you.’”

Even though she often had different political beliefs than her subjects, “I came away filled with a lot of admiration for these people that are pushing a boulder up a hill to figure out how to help ... other people who share the community with them and this commitment to each other,” says Ms. Muravchik, a visiting assistant professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in California.

While the pair studied mainly the white working class in places like Johnston, Rhode Island, their findings appear to inform what happened on Nov. 3 to other lower-income Americans angling for an American dream, says Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, who represents areas along the U.S. border with Mexico.

What resonated in the Southwest

“Much of the Rio Grande Valley has demographics similar to some of Trump’s strongholds in white rural communities,” says Representative Cuellar. “It’s homogenous, but not white, mainly Hispanic, rural, religious, patriotic, socially conservative, and hurting economically.”

This year Representative Cuellar saw a strong primary challenge from a progressive opponent. He persevered and eked out a narrow victory on Nov. 3.

Hardly a monolith, Latino voters broke in different ways – with Latinos in Arizona and the Upper Midwest helping propel Mr. Biden to victory in battleground states. Among Venezuelans and Cubans who broke for Mr. Trump in South Florida, memories of socialism, whether fairly applied or not, rose through the clutter of political ads. Some who gained citizenship legally resent those who come here without documentation and support Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. And the summer’s slogan “defund the police” did not play well along the border, where state, local, and national law enforcement are major employers.

On a victory tour through Texas’ 28th Congressional District last week, voter after voter cornered Representative Cuellar to ask about the law enforcement grants now that Mr. Biden will be president. He assured them that those grants are still coming.

Mr. Trump’s willingness to fight for the working class “hit home – that’s real stuff,” says Congressman Cuellar. “I also heard in Spanish, ‘He sent me a little check, he got me food.’ ... And he was able to touch deep-rooted fears or memories of socialism.”

The same trends played out in Native American strongholds. The Navajo Nation helped flip Arizona for Mr. Biden – the first time the state voted for a Democrat since the 1960s. But its vice president, Myron Lizer, recently said that values like hard work, family, and ranching seems to now align more with Republicans than Democrats. The fiercely independent Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina had been Democratic stalwarts, but 70% of them voted for Mr. Trump on Nov. 3.

“I definitely know that Trump made some inroads with those groups this time, but it always surprised me that Democrats did so well with them in the first place,” says J. Miles Coleman, a political scientist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “It reminds me of something Lee Atwater would always say: How come Democrats are basically trying to tell poorer and working-class constituencies, ‘If you vote Republican, you vote against your own interests’? Atwater would say that those values of the flag, those cultural values, are important, too. If the Democrats move too far left, they may lose on a lot of these cultural issues.”

When wages are rising

If patriotism and honor culture are animating, so are kitchen table issues.

Mathematician Robb Sinn at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega crunched Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for clues. The weekly wage for Americans in the 10th percentile of earners, of which minorities make up a greater share, grew by $4.24 per quarter in the first three years of the Trump presidency, compared with an average of 88 cents of gains per quarter across Barack Obama’s eight years. Although higher-income groups saw weekly wages grow by larger dollar amounts, the gains in the 10th and 25th percentiles were larger than any other group.

The Trump economy also attracted 400,000 new Black wage-earners per year during his presidency; Mr. Obama averaged 250,000, Mr. Sinn found.

No matter their race, blue-collar workers “don’t need advanced statistical analysis,” says Mr. Sinn. “They’re, like, ‘Hey, I was getting raises, I was doing better, I could take my kids to Disney.’ If their finances are better, they remember that. This shows what actually happened with real blue-collar workers. It shows what was actually going on at those kitchen tables.”

But can Republicans capitalize on Mr. Trump’s achievements among working-class minorities? Without a Trumpian figure, such efforts will struggle, argues Mr. Sinn. Nevertheless, he adds, “I’m old enough to remember when the Republican Party was out of touch with the working class. Now it seems like the roles have reversed.”

She got good grades. She flourished as a cheerleader, and those girls became her core group of friends.

Having been adopted into a loving, New England home, April Dinwoodie seemed fine – her life had been set straight. 

On the inside, she didn’t have the words to express what it felt like to be a transracial adoptee in a solidly white home and community – to be OK yet not OK.

“My experience, while on the outside looks just totally fine, like ‘What’s the problem, April?,’ ... it was hard,” says Ms. Dinwoodie, an educator and facilitator on adoption, identity, and race. “And a lot of people just don’t buy that. They don’t believe that.” 

Transracial adoption is often understood in dichotomous terms – a fairy tale or nightmare, an act of grace or, in one of the most extreme takes, a form of genocide. Those dueling views emerged this fall during the confirmation hearing of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett after she introduced her seven children, including two Black children adopted from Haiti.

But to the backdrop of the larger reckoning on race that has boiled for years in the U.S. before spilling onto the streets this summer, adult adoptees like Ms. Dinwoodie are pushing back against stubborn myths and misconceptions – and demanding that adoptive parents engage more purposefully in anti-racist work. “I’ve gotten a harder edge to some of my words, and I’ve gotten sharper about things, because I think there’s more urgency than ever before,” says Ms. Dinwoodie, who also hosts the podcast “Born in June, Raised in April: What Adoption Can Teach the World.” 

“I think there’s a confluence of things or maybe some intersections of the things that are happening right now. … The community of those of us who have been transracially adopted have been talking and coaching and advocating and sometimes screaming and yelling and sometimes crying for a long time,” she says. “And I think there’s a lot of readiness to meet the moment.”

Courtesy of April Dinwoodie

April Dinwoodie, whose adoptive parents are white, founded AdoptMent, a mentoring program for adoptees.

Lopsided statistics

Adopting across racial lines in the U.S. began after World War II, when children born to servicemen overseas – and often orphaned at home – gained the attention of the larger American public. Those first multiracial families helped pave the way to transracial adoption domestically.

The first recorded placement of an African American adoptee in a white home was in 1948. Today, 44% of all children adopted in the U.S. are adopted across racial lines, according to an Institute for Family Studies (IFS) analysis of adopted kindergartners in the U.S. Many of those placements include adoptive parents of color, even though they are often ignored in the adoption narrative, says Michelle Hughes, an adoption attorney in Chicago. A small portion include Black families that have adopted white children, which can stir up its own harmful stereotypes. One Black mother who adopted a white child posted a video that went viral on Instagram challenging in a rap song the assumptions she faces – that she must be the nanny, for example.

Yet based on the IFS study of kindergartners, 77% of adoptive mothers in the U.S. are white, while only 39% of adoptees are white.

That demographic reality has always raised suspicions. Some of that traces back to systematic racism like that faced by Indigenous communities across North America. In Canada, for example, during the “Sixties Scoop,” roughly 20,000 Indigenous children from 1951 into the 1980s were “scooped” from their families and “assimilated” into white families. There was also backlash against international adoption, especially as Christian communities in particular adopted in large numbers, sometimes with a religious zeal that raised suspicions about their motives. Corruption and criminality in the industry have also been a problem, bringing the practice to a trickle in more recent years.

In the height of the Black Power movement in 1972 in the U.S., the National Association of Black Social Workers took a “vehement stand” against the adoption of Black children by white parents. Nearly 50 years later, in the wake of protests after the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minnesota, some of those same questions have resurfaced.

When Justice Barrett was asked how her family responded to the video of Mr. Floyd’s death under a policeman’s knee, she said she and her Haitian-born daughter, Vivian, “wept together.” 

It could have been a moment of understanding about the layered experiences in multiracial households, but in polarized America it descended into an ugly debate, with her supporters using her transracial adoption as an example of her enlightened views on race, which in turn generated backlash. Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to be an Antiracist,” ignited a frenzied Twitter debate after he pushed back: “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people.’”

Adult adoptees speak up

Kevin Hofmann, a biracial man who was adopted into a white family as a baby, says he doesn’t recognize his experience at either extreme. He does say it was “heartbreaking” to watch the confirmation, as Justice Barrett’s details on the vulnerabilities her children faced in Haiti served to reinforce the “white saviorism” messaging that abounds in international and transracial adoption. “We need to understand that adoptees bring just as much to a family as that family gives to us,” he says. “It was a decent thing our parents have done, but we’re not projects.” He also dismisses the criticism that white people shouldn’t adopt Black or Hispanic children. “Children of color are overrepresented in foster care. So if you say, ‘We’re not going to adopt over racial lines,’ the only alternative is you let a lot of children age out of foster care.”

Courtesy of Kevin Hofmann

Kevin Hofmann, shown here with his adoptive parents, is the author of "Growing Up Black in White."

For decades, many parents, especially in the international adoption arena, aimed to “assimilate” their adopted children as Americans. In the past decade, says Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, a psychologist who counsels pre-adoptive parents and adoptees in Denver, a keener awareness of the need to cultivate children’s ethnic, cultural, and linguistic bonds has grown. But in too many families, especially in domestic adoption where the cultural differences can be more nuanced, a notion of “colorblindness” has prevailed – at the expense of the adoptee, she says. “As a parent, you love your child and may not think so much about race, but the truth is that the rest of the world is always going to see race first,” says Dr. Wirta-Leiker, who was adopted from India into a white household and later adopted a son from Ethiopia. “And so we have to prepare our kids for that.”

The generation of adult adoptees must lead the way, she says.

Mr. Hofmann works for the state of Ohio as a trainer for adoptive parents and uses his own experience to show the hard work that underlies transracial adoption. Born in the wake of the Detroit race riots in 1967 and the product of an affair, he was adopted at 3 months old by a white minister and his wife in Dearborn, Michigan. When he was about 11 months old, the family “woke up to a burning cross in our front yard,” he says.

His parents were keenly aware of the emphasis on white supremacy at the time, so they relocated to a Black neighborhood of Detroit, his white siblings growing up in Black schools. “So from age 3 to 18, I was always around kids that looked like me,” Mr. Hofmann says. “I didn’t have to rely on the media and especially ’70s TV to tell me what Black was. I got to go out every day and see.” In fact, he recalls feeling sorry for his siblings because they were white.

In the end his family shows how influential racial identity can be in a multiracial context. He remembers preparing his father’s eulogy several years ago, sitting in his mother’s kitchen with his siblings and their families. In that room were different races, ethnicities, and maternal tongues. “I think it’s just a beautiful thing what our family became,” he says. “And that’s all because of the exposure that we had as kids.” To shine a light for others, Mr. Hofmann wrote “Growing Up Black in White.”

When love isn’t enough

Yet, some transracial adoptive parents acknowledge that the love and work inside their own family isn’t enough, given deep structural racism – something that’s been made clearer this summer. Shelley Vermilya and her former partner adopted two Black children in the ’90s in Vermont, one of the whitest states in the U.S. Well aware of her own limitations as a white parent, she filled their home with African American books and music; she drove her children an hour away to get their hair done by a Black hairdresser. Around the dinner table, they talked about class and gender, sexual identity, and race – so much that the kids would roll their eyes. “They’d say, ‘God, there goes Mom. She’s going to start on transgender now,’” Ms. Vermilya says.

And yet as an equity scholar-in-residence in the Vermont public school system who is also writing a book on transracial adoption, Ms. Vermilya says that she is aware of how much more work needs to be done by society at large. “Love hasn’t been enough to get them where they are or have them be who they are,” she says. “Society’s got to come up with some love as well. … So it’s been my life’s work to work with people on this to get them to understand the systemic issues.”

This summer has caused her to reflect more deeply. “I’ve really wondered, especially this year and the pain for people of color, if that was too much pain to ask a child to feel, or if I gave them enough of a foundation in life that they’ll be able to really carry on well and understand the complexities of that kind of experience, sort of knowing whiteness from the inside and being Black and facing the world that way.”

Karen Moline, an adoptive mother in New York City whose son was born in Vietnam, grappled with her own decision to adopt abroad in 2001, becoming a reform advocate for more transparency on the international front. She too has faced gnawing questions: Were her actions in the best interest of her child? “Maybe their lives are ‘saved’ from physical danger, but does that mean their lives in this country are better as transracial adoptees? The second half of that sentence is always left out,” she says.

Challenging parents to be advocates

That is starting to change, as adult adoptees push for their experiences to be more deeply understood. For Ms. Dinwoodie, who also founded AdoptMent, a mentoring program for adoptees, and gives trainings and talks, her ability to have conversations about race with her own family is “very, very recent,” she says, only after American football player Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem in 2016 as an act of resistance against racial injustice – a stance some in her family couldn’t understand.

Ever since it has been a constant balance.

Ms. Dinwoodie knows her story starts with violence and loss – complexities that would follow her regardless of race. When she tried to reconnect with her biological mother, she learned she was the product of a painful family secret: Her mother had been raped and had given her up. When she found her, her birth mother refused to form a relationship. Ms. Dinwoodie is still looking for her birth father. 

Ms. Dinwoodie’s adoptive parents had the best intentions from the start, but silence and denial about race were able to grow, especially since she was biracial. It reached into the most quotidian acts. Growing up in a farmhouse on a well system, all the family had to take quick showers. But it was physically impossible to get the suds out of her hair with a quick rinse. She remembers panicking about it every time. As she tells the story, she worries it will break her mother’s heart to hear it. “I just love her so much,” she says. “I know my mom is constantly worried that she wasn’t a good mom and that she failed me, and she didn’t, because I wouldn’t be able to do what I do without that strong foundation she gave me.”

So she continues to speak out – testing the limits of that fragile balance in her own family. And she intentionally looks for people who seem to have it all together, those without the extreme hurts that land them in emergency rooms but with the subtle gaslighting and denial that can do so much harm down the line. Even in herself she recognizes that she might be married or have children if she hadn’t had to expend so much energy on her own identity. 

“I really feel that, now, if you are a white parent adopting a Black or brown child, you actually have to be doing clear and very obvious anti-racist work,” she says. “You have to welcome Black people into your home as your friends, as your neighbors. You’ve got to have Black art on the wall. You have to be in the schools demanding for changes to curriculum and looking at data around suspensions, and looking at over-policing of Black and brown children. You can’t just simply transactionally parent your kid. You’ve got to be doing that through a very clearly defined and purposeful anti-racist, anti-bias lens.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct a mischaracterization of Colin Kaepernick's protest. He refused to stand for the national anthem.

screen grab from Google Play

Launched in 2018, Parler touts itself as “the world’s premier free speech platform.” In the wake of the election, millions of new users have joined Parler, pushing it to the top of the App Store charts.

Launched in 2018, social media platform Parler markets itself as “the world’s premier free speech platform.” It first made headlines as a refuge for conservative provocateurs who had been banned from Twitter for violating that company’s terms of service. Now, in the wake of the election, millions of new users have joined Parler, pushing it to the top of the App Store charts and further into the mainstream. 

Q: How does Parler work?

From a user experience, the platform mirrors Twitter, just with different lingo. In the same way you would retweet or like a tweet, users can “echo” or “upvote” a “parley.” Posts can include up to 1,000 characters, as well as images, gifs, or videos. To access certain features like direct messaging, you need to provide proof of identification. 

Although Parler calls itself “unbiased social media,” and CEO John Matze says the site was never meant to become a conservative bastion, endorsements from figures such as Senator Ted Cruz and Fox News host Sean Hannity have raised the company’s profile as a viable right-wing challenger to Twitter. The Wall Street Journal reported that heiress Rebekah Mercer – whose family has backed other companies such as Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that worked on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign – is bankrolling the project. The company does not currently accept advertising. 

Audrey Courty, a Ph.D. candidate studying social media and political extremism at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, says it makes sense that Parler would embrace the surge in popularity regardless of the founder’s intent. “At the end of the day, Parler is a business,” she says. “It’s not in their interest to just be a niche platform, but at the moment, it’s a very good strategy to get yourself off the ground.”

Q: Can you really post anything? 

No. The company says they follow the Federal Communications Commission’s guidelines on violent or obscene speech. In a post on Parler, Mr. Matze outlined the “very few basic rules”: No pornography, no death threats, and, he wrote, no “posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section.”

Parler claims to give users the power to moderate their feeds but experts point out that it more or less operates like a regular social media company. Parler makes it clear in the user agreement it retains the right to terminate an account or remove content for any reason. While debunked claims about voter fraud and QAnon theories are flourishing unchecked, and white supremacist and anti-Semitic ideas are not hard to find, some liberal users have reported being banned from the site after criticizing the company’s legal practices.

Benedict Evans, an independent tech analyst, says crackdowns are expected on any growing platform. “Everyone is a fan of free speech until they have some users,” he says.

Q: What does this mean for Silicon Valley?

It’s unlikely that Parler will replace Twitter. While its earliest champions had nowhere else to turn, today’s top Parler users have remained active on mainstream social media. Outrage over Twitter’s handling of the president’s tweets may have doubled Parler’s user base, which is now reportedly 10 million, but that is still a far cry from Twitter’s monthly active user base of nearly 70 million in the United States alone.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean Parler is likely to disappear completely. Mr. Evans says he can imagine the company “dibbling along” for another decade if the Mercers keep funding it and it’s not torpedoed by a scandal – like a “parley” leading to offline violence. 

That’s what Ms. Courty calls dangerous speech, which most people across the political spectrum agree needs to be regulated.

“What we can’t agree on is how to regulate it, who should regulate it, and what it is,” she says. 

So far, a group of white, male developers in Silicon Valley have been making those decisions, with little to no transparency. That’s certainly not working, says Ms. Courty, but she doubts Mr. Matze – a white, male developer based in Nevada – has the answer.

No matter the weather or the season, books for younger readers delight little ones and their grown-ups. It’s a great moment in children’s literature, with a wider range of voices than in the past. Here’s a selection to warm your heart, make you smile, and inspire poignant discussion.

I Talk Like a River (ages 4-8) 
By Jordan Scott, illustrated by Sydney Smith

Canadian poet Jordan Scott’s picture book, “I Talk Like a River,” is truly written from the heart. Gorgeously illustrated by Sydney Smith, this story will help young readers understand what it feels like to be different, to sit in the back of a classroom hoping the teacher doesn’t ask you a question, or to wake up mornings, like the young narrator, with “word-sounds stuck in my mouth.” 

Neal Porter Books

“I Talk Like a River” by Jordan Scott and illustrated by Sydney Smith, Neal Porter Books, 40 pp.

Based on the author’s own experiences as a person who stutters, the poetic language and stunning illustrations make it a joy to read and share. The fold-out spread, of a freckle-faced boy whose words evade him, is breathtaking. In his note at the end, the author explains what stuttering feels and sounds like, as well as how his dad helped him discover what it means to talk like a river.  

It’s a beautiful love letter to a parent who showed his son how to be quiet and walk along a riverbank. A gift to those who struggle with any kind of difference, “I Talk Like a River” is full of joy and rich with encouragement.

All Because You Matter (ages 4-8) 
By Tami Charles, illustrated by Bryan Collier

Tami Charles’ latest picture book, illustrated by Caldecott Honor winner Bryan Collier, is a tribute to the love and care of a parent for a child. Charles’ words are poetic and empowering: Children are told, “They say that matter is all things that make up the universe: energy, stars, space. ... If that’s the case, then you, dear child, matter.” 

Scholastic Books

“All Because You Matter” by Tami Charles and illustrated by Bryan Collier, Scholastic Books, 40 pp.

In an endnote, the illustrator explains how he tells the story visually and credits growing up with a grandmother who was a quilter for his exquisite collages. “All Because You Matter” is an exceptional book to guide grandparents or parents sharing family history, and it’s a relevant read-aloud for these times.

Swashby and the Sea (ages 4-7) 
By Beth Ferry, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal 

Swashby is a cranky recluse who’s perfectly content with his “salty and sandy and serene” sea. When interlopers appear in the form of a girl and her granny and they dare to set up umbrellas and beach chairs on his stretch of sand, Swashby doesn’t like it a bit. So what does the old sailor do? He writes messages to the unwanted visitors who are disturbing his peace and solitude, admonishing, “No trespassing!” and “Keep Away!” But the mischievous waves have other ideas. Lesson learned! No one controls the sea. 

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

“Swashby and the Sea” by Beth Ferry and illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 32 pp.

Caldecott Honor winner Juana Martinez-Neal’s illustrations, from the swirly ocean wave endpapers to the sandy beach scenes inside, make this a perfect summery story to share, reminding us of carefree days at the beach. A delightful tale with a just-right ending, “Swashby and the Sea” swept me away.

Wild Symphony (ages 4-8) 
By Dan Brown, illustrated by Susan Batori 

Bestselling novelist Dan Brown, of “DaVinci Code” fame, has written a charming children’s book, “Wild Symphony,” with illustrations by Susan Batori. A moray eel, a mouse, a blue whale, and a frog – and every animal you’ve always admired or feared – jump off the exuberant pages of this oversized picture book. 

Rodale Kids

“Wild Symphony” by Dan Brown and illustrated by Susan Batori, Rodale Kids, 44 pp.

Young musicians and poets, children who love word puzzles, and admirers of whimsical animals can turn pages and hear the music that Brown composed for each animal by aiming a smartphone camera at the page. (Watch the delightful preview and download the book’s accompanying free app at wildsymphony.com.) 

Bits of advice are excellent jumping-off places for discussion. On the spread about Wondrous Whale, Maestro Mouse says: “If you listen carefully to nature, you’ll hear conversations all around you.” 

Skunk and Badger (ages 7-10)
By Amy Timberlake, illustrated by Jon Klassen

When Badger, who’s set in his ways and determined to carry out his very important rock work, opens the front door of his aunt’s home, he’s in for a surprise. A visitor, Skunk, has come to stay. If only Badger had read the correspondence from his aunt alerting him she was sending a roommate. 

A geologist who needs space to observe and catalog his large rock collection, Badger temporarily hands over the box room. But he wants no part of this chatty roommate until Skunk serves up a candlelit supper. Now Badger begins to think he might be OK. They make deals: You cook; I clean. Badger even relinquishes his rock room. 

Algonquin Books

“Skunk and Badger” by Amy Timberlake and illustrated by Jon Klassen, Algonquin Books, 136 pp.

Thus begins a rollicking good adventure and an unlikely friendship story reminiscent of a slightly prickly “Frog and Toad” tale. Amy Timberlake’s language is delightful – a “Chicken Coop d’Etat”? Be still my heart. As they tip-claw around, testing their living arrangement, Skunk and Badger begin to appreciate each other. 

While not truly a picture book, the clever illustrations by Caldecott winner Jon Klassen perfectly complement the story. Newly minted readers with a sense of humor, who appreciate read-alouds that make their adults smile, will enjoy this one. I can only hope this marks the beginning of an enduring if unconventional relationship that will play out in many more books.

AP

A Tigrayan woman who fled the conflict in Ethiopia prays at a church in a refugee camp in Sudan, Nov. 29.

Just in the past decade, the number of international migrants has risen nearly sixfold, a global mixing of people unlike any time in recent history. All the more reason then to watch a new civil war in one of the world’s most diverse nations – Ethiopia. The future of democracies depends increasingly on how such countries hold together their multiethnic societies.

The monthlong conflict between Ethiopia’s government and a rebellious minority, the Tigrays, threatens its long-term attempts at political harmony among 10 ethnic regions. It also threatens stability across the Horn of Africa as tens of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting.

How the war ends will determine if Ethiopia can hold together as a country. Many foreign governments are pushing for a negotiated settlement. For now, the war is more about how it began and whether opportunities to keep the peace were missed.

On Nov. 4 the well-armed leaders of the predominantly Tigray ethnic state, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), allegedly attacked a national military base near the region’s capital, Mekelle. Just weeks before, they also held an election in defiance of central authorities. Faced with such belligerence, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed chose to deploy the military – rather than any peaceful alternative – to quell the rebellion.

Mr. Abiy came into office in 2018 vowing to form a more united democracy. An ethnic Oromo, his ascent marked a power shift away from the Tigrayans, who make up 6% of the population but held an outsize grip in the nation’s capital for nearly three decades. Tensions have been rising since Mr. Abiy systemically displaced Tigrayans from political positions and the military.

The prime minister treats the Tigrayan rebellion as an illegal attack on Ethiopian sovereignty. His predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, underscored the futility of dialogue with the TPLF in an essay in Foreign Policy last week. He argued that Tigrayan leaders – his erstwhile colleagues – provoked the conflict to manipulate international mediation in an effort to regain influence through peace talks.

In seeking a decisive military victory, Mr. Abiy has stoked already escalating ethnic tensions elsewhere. In recent months, an estimated 2.5 million Ethiopians have been displaced by violence. Three days before the Tigray rebellion, at least 54 people were killed in a schoolyard in Oromia, another ethnostate.

Mr. Abiy’s harsh response surprised many people. He won the Nobel Peace Prize a year ago for negotiating an end to a 20-year military stalemate with Eritrea. Ethiopian troops serve in U.N. peacekeeping missions. As the war nears a resolution, Ethiopia must look for fresh solutions in other African countries that have erupted in inter-ethnic warfare. South Africa, Rwanda, Burundi, Nigeria, and Mozambique have all faced similar challenges. Each in its own way grappled with building what Mr. Abiy himself calls a “social compact” that creates a “just, egalitarian, democratic, and humane society.”

If he sees the conflict in Tigray as a necessary step to protecting that vision, victory under arms requires a corresponding strength: the wisdom and courage to forge an identity beyond ethnic difference that embraces all Ethiopians in peace.