The Function of Family: The Mangine family celebrates having three different ethnicities in their family, despite its challenges

Takeout boxes filled with veggie-free lo mein and extra white rice, bowls of Doro Wat chicken stew, a bag of fortune cookies and plates piled with fried sambosa pastries covered the Mangine family’s kitchen table.

For most families, this meal would be a mix-and-match medley of leftovers. For the Mangines, it’s anything but accidental. 

This was Feb. 10, the anniversary of seventh grader Josie Mangine’s adoption from Ethiopia. Normally, the Mangines would celebrate the occasion with carryout from Elsa’s Ethiopian Restaurant in Old Overland Park. But today Josie’s sister, freshman Veronica Mangine who was adopted from China, insisted on picking up Chinese food as well.

Ever since Josie and Veronica were adopted, their parents Valerie and Charles ‘Buddy’ have made it known that their heritages should be celebrated. Although the transracial dynamic brings challenges, they’ve developed their own family traditions and ways of incorporating all three cultures into their household. 

“I’ll be honest, before we adopted Josie I was worried about telling my parents because I didn’t know how they would feel about [Buddy] and I adopting a child from Africa,” Valerie said. “But all of our families have embraced the girls without holding anything back.”

However, non-family members can be more hesitant and feel the need to take a second look. When the girls were younger, children at the playground had a hard time understanding that they were siblings because they looked so different. 

Parents wouldn’t always realize that Valerie was Josie and Veronicas’ mom until one of them addressed her as “mom.” A few years ago, Josie and her friends caught up with Buddy in line for food at their country club and an employee, unaware that the two were daughter and father, scolded the girls for not waiting their turn.

But as a whole, the family focuses on the positive experiences and understands that most people have good intentions — like women with ethnic hair offering to help Valerie style Josie’s hair or elderly women making sure Veronica stayed tightly swaddled as a baby.

“I’m very thankful that I’m in a world right now where people are so supportive and my daughters have friends who don’t even question their race, they just love them for who they are.”

Buddy Mangine | father

Buddy also acknowledges that the world isn’t always so accepting, and there still is a long way to go. Growing up in Chanute, a predominantly white Kansas town of less than 10,000 people, Buddy had a teacher with multiple adopted Vietnamese children. He remembers seeing them walk by, feeling like that wasn’t right.

“Now, it hurts me to the bone that I ever felt that way because it was just a loving guy with his kids,” Buddy said. “That was so sad that I ever felt that that was so different because it’s not, it’s just a family.”

Since Buddy’s mindset has done a 180, he wants to ensure that his girls always treat everyone around them as equals. Following the events of this past year, he and Valerie have had discussions with their girls about racial unrest. Valerie and Buddy wish they could protect their children from the racism seen across the U.S. today, but they know how fast news spreads — Veronica and Josie heard about what happened to George Floyd on social media before they did — and how important it is for their children to understand what’s happening and why.

“Black people are definitely treated worse sometimes,” Veronica said. “So I’m glad that something’s happening about it.”

As a transracial family, they have to adjust to the realities of three different cultures and prepare their kids for potentially life-threatening situations. After receiving a speeding ticket from an overbearing cop at an inconvenient time, Buddy later used the incident as an opportunity to make Josie aware that some police officers can be unfriendly or even racially profile. He explained that if she’s with a group of friends and one of them does something they’re not supposed to, she could be found guilty by association due to her skin color.

While ensuring the girls grow up informed, Valerie and Buddy want them to learn about the cultures of their birth countries as well. They try their best to balance teaching Josie about Ethiopian culture and teaching Veronica about Chinese culture at the same time. 

“What’s even trickier than having children that are different ethnicity from us is having children that are different ethnicities from each other,” Valerie said. “Because you feel like you need to do as many activities for Josie and teach her about Ethiopia, as we did for China. So just trying to do that and developing an appreciation in them for their sibling’s culture as well.”

For Ethiopia, Valerie learned about the Ethiopian Kids Community group through Facebook. The group holds a weekend-long family summer camp in Minnesota with traditional Ethiopian games, music and food that the Mangines try to attend every other summer. Besides the activities, it’s a rare opportunity for adopted Ethiopian families to connect with each other.

“I feel good that my girls are seeing that there are lots of other families that look like ours,” Valerie said.

They also celebrate Genna, the Ethiopian New Years, in September by having a traditional Ethiopian meal. After a few unsuccessful attempts by Valerie at making injera, an Ethiopian bread, the Mangines have taken their annual Genna celebration to Elsa’s.

“I love [Elsa’s] food, it’s really nice,” Josie said. “I’m pretty good friends with the people that work there.”

When the girls were younger, they attended Chinese lion dances and Harvest Moon Festival events held by a Kansas City non-profit called Families Blessed with the World’s Children, where Valerie used to serve as a board member. Now, the Mangines prefer to honor Veronica’s heritage informally — with the Chinese New Years traditions of giving and receiving red envelopes filled with money, eating noodles for long life and eating oranges for prosperity.

Even though the girls have learned about their cultures from afar, Valerie and Buddy are eager to show them China and Ethiopia firsthand because they haven’t been back since the adoptions. Veronica and Josie, on the other hand, would rather go to Florida or stay local instead. Valerie and Buddy have decided to follow what they’ve read about adoption, which is to let the kids decide when and whether they want to return.

“When and if they want to do it, we’ll make it happen,” Valerie said. “But until then, we’re not going to push them to do that.”

Meanwhile, to celebrate the girls’ heritages, they’ve decorated their home with some keepsakes including a wood-carved giraffe sculpture, porcelain cricket box from the Ming Dynasty and painting of girls carrying water from an Ethiopian coffee shop. But they’re careful not to go overboard. They do not want to interfere with their girls’ fitting in, as much as any other parents would.

“It’s not in their face,” Buddy said. “I’m not going to go out and buy an Ethiopian garb and wear it around the house.”

Valerie and Buddy are also adamant that they’re just average, loving parents and shouldn’t be placed on a higher pedestal because they “saved” Veronica and Josie from a life of poverty in their birth countries. According to Buddy, both girls have strong backgrounds — Josie’s birth father was a leader in his community. Rather than viewing the girls as lucky to have been adopted, they look at themselves as lucky to have adopted the girls. Valerie and Buddy are proud to be part of a transracial family, and they’ve instilled that pride in their girls.

“Is there really a way families are supposed to look like? It doesn’t matter what you look like as long as you guys are family and love each other.”

Josie Mangine | daughter