{"id":23105,"date":"2013-04-02T02:43:28","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23105"},"modified":"2013-04-02T02:44:51","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T02:44:51","slug":"rutgers-student-a-german-%e2%80%98brown-baby%e2%80%99-helps-others-search-for-their-identities-and-creates-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23105","title":{"rendered":"Rutgers Student, a German \u2018Brown Baby,\u2019 Helps Others Search for their Identities and Creates Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/news.rutgers.edu\/focus\/issue.2012-04-27.6252264798\/article.2012-05-08.5362197842\" target=\"_blank\">Rutgers Student, a German \u2018Brown Baby,\u2019 Helps Others Search for their Identities and Creates Community<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/news.rutgers.edu\/focus\">Focus: News for and about Rutgers faculty, students, and staff<\/a><br \/>\nRutgers University<br \/>\n2012-05-01<\/p>\n<p><strong>Carrie Stetler<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>She grew up in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Willingboro_Township,_New_Jersey\" target=\"_blank\">Willingboro, New Jersey<\/a>, as Wanda Lynn Haymon, the only child of an African-American mother and father who made her feel special and loved.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nBut when relatives whispered at family gatherings, she knew they were talking about her. One day she asked her parents if she was adopted.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n\u00a0\u201cDo you feel adopted?\u2019\u2019 they answered.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nShe did, but had no proof until 1994 when Wanda Lynn discovered that she was born Rosemarie Larey in Viernheim, Germany, the daughter of a black soldier and German mother. Although she was born in 1956, just 11 years earlier, Nazis, who regarded blacks as racially inferior, sent some of the estimated 25,000 Afro-Germans to concentration camps. Many were subject to medical experiments or were forcibly sterilized. Others simply disappeared.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAfter the war, the stigma of bearing a bi-racial child was so great that many mothers brought their children to orphanages, which often placed them with African-American families in the United States.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nToday, Rosemarie Pena\u00a0 (her married name) is completing her master\u2019s degree at the Rutgers-Camden, in the Department of Childhood Studies, researching the history of \u201cbrown babies,\u2019\u2019 as they were known at the time of their birth, as well as people who identify as Afro-German around the world.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nPena also heads the Black German Cultural Society of New Jersey, an academic organization that connects Afro-Germans internationally. Its mission is to document and inform others about black Germans and their history. For post-war adoptees like Pena, the society helps them find closure and connects them with others who share their experience&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rutgers Student, a German \u2018Brown Baby,\u2019 Helps Others Search for their Identities and Creates Community Focus: News for and about Rutgers faculty, students, and staff Rutgers University 2012-05-01 Carrie Stetler She grew up in Willingboro, New Jersey, as Wanda Lynn Haymon, the only child of an African-American mother and father who made her feel special [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,28,125,8,20],"tags":[3228,9805,10736,2948,10737,2536],"class_list":["post-23105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-europe","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-afro-germans","tag-black-german-cultural-society-of-new-jersey","tag-carrie-stetler","tag-germany","tag-rosemarie-pena","tag-rutgers-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}