More food for my thought
Abductees Speak: Transracial Adoptees Take on the Adoption Industry
There are rumblings of a transracial abductee movement just beginning to surface. The very structure of transracial adoption is based on assimilating to white American society, and mainstream transracial and international adoptee organizations continue to exist within this structure. Many adoptees are isolated from communities of color. To organize and pretty much reverse that assimilation process is a serious battle. Also, because racism has changed and evolved into new and more sophisticated forms, this has had major impact on the white people who choose to adopt children of color. Now, transracial adoption is viewed as the ultimate form of cultural competency that puts whites on the road to becoming worldly anti-racist people. Many choose to adopt children of color, not just because of the “save the needy” aspect, but for their own social gain and legitimacy in the world of people of color.
Definitely more to chew on.
You know, as the mother of 3 biracial kids - this baffles me.
Truly.
If the people that want to adopt, are qualified to adopt, choose to adopt a child of a different race . . . WHO’S BUSINESS IS IT ANYHOW?? Are children impossible to adopt by people of their own race? No. All who ‘qualify’ based on ‘the standards’ are able to adopt, as far as I know.
In response to BusyMe:
Who’s business is it? I believe these women– who are questioning the system that pretty much systematically stripped them not only of their culture of origin, but also their racial identity– have every right to question the adoption industry. It is their business, because it is their lives and their experiences. As a potential adoptive parent and a parent of a child of color, I take those experiences seriously, no matter how painful or hard to hear they may be for me.
When they say “People aren’t used to thinking of transracial adoptees as people of color.” it reminds me that “colorblindness” is its own kind of racism.
Thanks Dawn, for posting that today. I was going to post an MLK day post anyway and this was good food for thought.
When all children who need homes and food have that, then I will start worrying about wiether they are being stripped of their racial identiy by some well meaning if some what clueless white people. It isn’t that I don’t apprecaite the fact that as an adoptive parent you must be aware of these issues it is just that in a world where children are starving to death I think that the energy is misplaced. Maybe I’m the one missing the point, but I think being alive gives you plenty of oppurtunty to discover your identiy. If people begin to see transracial adoption as a bad thing to do how many children are just not going to have homes???
I think that this kind of discoursive argument is very easy to construct, sounds really impressive, and is generally just as easy to deconstruct.
So, now people who adopt children of color need legitimacy in the world of color and are actually a new form of racist– a really sneaky one. Because *everybody* is some kind of racist. But according to that kind of corollary, then even the people who postulate this kind of discourse are *some* kind of racist.
And what it seems to boil down to is a love of an ideology more than actual love of people: it is more important for children of color NOT to be isolated from communities of color than it is for them to be placed into ADOPTIVE homes as infants.
From what I have read, people of color are very committed adopters– but there obviously is still a need for placement.
I would wonder what the authors of this discourse think about interracial marriage and interracially married couples giving birth to mixed children. Is that okay because one of the parents is of color?
I do understand the arguments against assimilation– I have made them, taught them at the university level, and I have unpacked the privilege backpack. But this kind of rhetorical bullshit that postulates that people’s best intentions actually reveals something deeply, sneakily sinister really pisses me off.
And it pisses me off even more that by even writing this post, because I am white, I could and would be called in some circles, a racist. That is the REVERSE of the privilege backpack.
Abductees. I’m sorry– it just pisses me off!
That kind of language is so spiteful and hurtful and angry and deliberately playing the victim.
I have this site linked in my adoption bibliography. I liked some of the writing and I sympathize with some of the writers’ stories.
I think these folks are coming from a place of their own pain and experience, and it isn’t my place to judge that.
But I do think the issues they raise are not major issues for our family, and I often wonder, as jenorama does where this puts interracial families in which the parents are different races themselves. Because all of our potential sperm donors (when we considered that option) are black men (one African, one African-American, one Carribean American) and our baby would have been “black” by American one-drop tradition, even if I gave birth to it.
So while I think the site is a fine thing and I think those folks need their space to vent, I think their theory is a bit limited. The world is just a lot more complex than they see it. On the other hand, some of them are speaking from experiences of having been raised in families that did indeed oversimplify the world, and thus hurt their children.
We in the US do live in a white supremacy and as long as we do, interracial families will be fraught with difficult choices and hostility from within and without.
But I suppose all families are fraught with something and I guess in the balance of things, given our interracial extended family (as shown in our sperm donor options above), interracial-ness is something we feel competant to take on.
I don’t really have any “white guilt” anymore, so I don’t really think our interracial adoption is about me trying to “gain legitiamcy with people of color” or whatever. What I have now, is a sense of ordinary human responsibility to use the privileges I have–earned and otherwise–to undermine unfair systems. I plan to teach that to my kids because it’s one of our family’s main values. In this country, racism is a big unfair system, but there are plenty of others too.
Jenorama, I think the difference between interracial adoption and interracial marriage and children who are the products of said is that in an interracial marriage the races are represented equally, whereas in adoption, this is not necessarily the case.
I think it’s very important to examine the process of adoption and ensure that people who choose to adopt a child from another culture are screened and educated to ensure the child’s culture receives the respect it deserves. The experiences of the two people who give their bios on the site are an indication that at least SOME people adopt children without examining their own racism first, and I have unfortunately heard stories from priviliged white people that support their theories.
Nowhere on the website are they saying that EVERYONE who chooses to adopt a child from a different race and/or culture is only doing so to pump up their anti-racist credibility. They see to be saying that they seek to spread wider awareness of the issue. And, in a world where religious groups are placing Muslim Indonesian Tsunami victims into Christian homes in order to convert them, this kind of work is absolutely necessary.
I went over to the website and read the two women’s stories. I am deeply offended by the term “abductee.” Especially the statement from the end that white people who adopt children of other races forcibly remove them from their culture and families.
My god daughter is Chinese. She, (as is every child I know adopted from China) was in an orphanage, she was abandoned. She was let go long before her adoptive mother found her. Now if you are speaking in a metaphorical sense, that white people erase the cultural ties these children have- I think that may have been common in the past. Now however I see families forming organizations and starting family rituals, visiting homelands, all to educate themselves and their children about their heritage.
Now for the white guilt thing. Adopting a child is a pretty extreme way to relieve liberal guilt or gain crediblity in diversity. It would be easier to write checks or march in MLK celebrations (we are doing that today- good liberals that we are). I really think people adopt because they want to parent. If they parent a child of color that comes secondary to parenting.
I think in the article these two women have valid arguments for their adoptions or experiences, but I think blanket statements are dangerous. It would be like me saying all adoptions are happy just because mine is.
Drublood, where is the thing about the Tsunami victims? I would like to read it.
Well, I guess instead of abducting my 4 kids of different color then me, (well, one is almost the same color pink as me) I could have left them in the foster care system that abducted them from the home of their birth mom who allowed every and any color man abused them (no racial predudice there). But since the feces (no matter what color you are, we all have it) was spread all over the walls and floors, and the filth caused the youngest to be airlifted to hospital due to severe dehydration and rota virus with kidney failure.
The abduction happened! Yep! I am an abductor, and my hostages are loved, clean, healthy and laugh! Now, I can go into any group of people and be accepted, because I have a child to match their skin color.
Boy, does that take off the guilt I have lived with being a pink person in a white world!
I think the reason the term “abductees” has been chosen is precisely because it gets under the skin of adoptive parents. I for one don’t want to be called an abductor, but I don’t get to be the person who defines the experience of transracial/international adoptees. It is the truth that sometimes big people make huge life-changing decisions for little people who don’t or can’t have any say. But these transracial adoptees have a right to be pissed off about what happened to them, in large part BECAUSE it was out of their control.
It seems like the arguments against the Transracial Abductees usually boil down to something like “They should be GRATEFUL they even have a family, a roof over their head, and food to eat.” Well, why? If you ask me, having a family, food and shelter are a basic human rights. What about the right to your birth culture and homeland? I don’t think the experience of international adoptees is so very different from refugees who lose their homeland/culture because of war or famime or other things that are out of their control. I think they deserve a little compassion and have the right to speak to their experiences.
If the internet is even partially representative of adoptive families from China, there are lots of folks out there that don’t have a clue. I am on a list where adult Asians and adult adoptees often try to share their experiences growing up in America and they are resoundingly dismissed, ignored, and attacked by other (White) adoptive parents and potential adoptive parents. There are a LOT of adoptive families who think that celebrating Chinese holidays only with other White parents of adopted Chinese kids is exposing those kids to “Chinese culture.” While there is definately something to be said for having a support system of other adoptive families, that is NOT Chinese or Asian American culture.
I don’t think we should dismiss the problems with transracial adoption as things of the past. There are parents on these lists who call their kids “China Dolls,” talk about their “slanty eyes” and adopt because they want to “save a child.” There are also parents who are trying to listen and learn, even when it is hurtful or hard. The adoption process is not perfect and voices that point out its flaws should not be dismissed or ignored, just because it is hard for us to hear it.
Oh and you can read about the tsunami story here: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/01/breaking-news-religious-right-tsunami.html
Thanks Amber. I second your experience of hearing and seeing some cringe-worthy attitudes from would-be and even post-adoptive white parents of children of color. As an anti-racist, I find these attitudes really upsetting. I also find the adoption hierarchy itself upsetting–the one that ranks children in order of desirability in which African American children come up last. I am suspicious that many white Americans adopt abroad specifically to avoid raising Black children, finding “china dolls” to be cuter, less scarey and more socially acceptable.
I have no way of ever knowing whether my child will have a “better” life with me or would have had a “better” life with birth family. Extreme abuse and neglect situations aside, adoption is not always “rescue” from dire straits. I think that this way of thinking about it is a bit defensive on the part of adopters at times.
I guess I don’t mind the term “abductees” or the rest of the site’s content because I regard it as a valid place to raise important issues and even more so as a place to air unpopular resentments. I am also confident about my own choice to adopt interracially and don’t feel threatened by criticism. Those folks are talking about themselves and their feelings and experiences, not mine. Also, many of the people on the abductees site say they love their parents and know their parents love them, but wish certain things had been different.
That partly confirmed our desire for openness in our adoption, if only to give our child a real experience of what “might have been” to compare our family to. I hope I have the grace and confidence that someday when my angry teenager yells “you dumb white people aren’t my real family!” I can hand him/her the phone and say, “fine, give them a call.” And let my kid work it out for him/herself in reality as opposed to daydreams.
Maybe I’m also not as offended by the site as some, because I feel empathetic with some of the emotions there, if not the actual experiences. I sure as heck have felt like an abductee in my family of origin plenty of times and I’m not adopted. Feeling alienated from your family is pretty common and needs expression at times.
I always find it interesting that a lot of angry Korean adult adoptees have these things in common:
raised in the midwest where it was mostly white
strong religious upbringing
raised white
didn’t address loss or culture
I also find it interesting that:
their anger is always directed towards the adoptive parents
no anger expressed about birth parents
no anger expressed about birth country
that they are not activists in their birth culture
My husband and I encountered this type of thinking adopting our biracial son. The black social worker accused us of contributing to “racial genocide.” We have two black children, and that social worker was the only black person to ever accuse us of assimilation or some master plan.
It’s important for white parents of black children to teach their children about racial differences, ensure they have contact with the black culture (e.g. our black friends and their black god parents), to prepare them for the world. My kids will tell you, they are black, and they are proud to be so. You do have a special responsibility as the white adoptive parent of a black child. You have to realize that going in.