Racial identity important in transracial adoptions

“Parents who adopt children from overseas may have the best intentions, but some are confronting race issues they aren’t prepared for.

Parents tote their children to ethnic restaurants and cultural festivals, but are often oblivious to the biases and racism their children sometimes face.

“What we find is that parents are pretty good about the culture part, but not very good about the race part,” Victor Groza, professor of parent-child studies at Case Western Reserve University, said. “They don’t recognize racism.”

Groza said parents generally don’t create an atmosphere where it’s all right to talk about race as their transracially adopted children grow up in what are typically white communities.

Jane Jeong Trenka, adopted from South Korea as an infant in 1972, has been outspoken on the issues parents should consider when they adopt since writing her first book, “The Language of Blood.”

Although she no longer talks about her experience, her memoir details growing up in rural Minnesota, where her adoptive father mocked her Asian boyfriends, where her parents wouldn’t listen to her talk about the struggle of being different in a white community and where she would later know that she and her sister were second choice to a Caucasian boy — a commodity in adoption.

Trenka now lives in South Korea, as do about 500 other adoptees. Some return for a few years, but others, including Trenka, stay indefinitely.

Susan Cox, vice president of public policy for Holt International, said the agency tries to advise parents about potential risks.

A study released in November 2009 that surveyed 179 adult adoptees offered the first quantitative look at racial issues inter-country and trans-racial children face. The findings were published in the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute report, “Beyond Culture Camp.”

According to the State Department, 17,869 children were adopted into the U.S. from South Korea from 1999 to 2010 — 7.9 percent of international adoptions during that period.

“What we find is that parents are pretty good about the culture part, but not very good about the race part,” Victor Groza, professor of parent-child studies at Case Western Reserve University, said. “They don’t recognize racism.”

Most of the adoptees surveyed said they grew up in majority white communities, and some expressed anger.

“Sticking a child in a place where no one else looked like them in a dinky town is, in my opinion, child abuse,” one respondent said.

Philip Goff, 47, and Kate McGinn, 50, adopted infant girls: Ning, now 11, and Hilary “CeCe” Qian, now 8 1/2, from China.

Goff is director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and McGinn is the denominational archivist for the Free Methodist Church, North America.

Goff said they used Holt, and the importance of ethnic identity was clear in their first meeting. If it hadn’t been, he said, they likely wouldn’t have used the agency.

“Knowing your own culture, who you are from all different perspectives, is, I think, part of being human,” he said. “That was important to us.”

The Donaldson study revealed ethnic identity grew in importance for participants as they reached young adulthood.

So far, Goff said, they have had to work through the hard questions about Ning’s birthparents, similar to the questions any adopted child might ask.

Groza said a key indicator of how well parents will incorporate race into their children’s lives is the people they surround themselves with. Goff said he has Chinese colleagues at the university, but his daughters have bonded instead with the Chinese counselors at Chinese culture camps and their Mandarin teacher at school.

JaeRan Kim, who was adopted from South Korea at age 3, said culture camps, cultural festivals and even restaurant outings all became popular after her generation of adoptees, which includes Trenka, had grown.

She said the wide disconnect from language and culture often makes it more difficult for intercountry transracial adoptees to connect with ethnic communities in the U.S. than it is for American transracial adoptees.

“Anyone can go out and buy food or costumes from another country,” she said, “but it’s the feeling like you’re part of an ethnic community as a person of an ethnic background that you don’t necessarily get.”

Kim, now 43, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota in social work, said convincing parents that living in a more diverse area to benefit their children is something few adoption agencies are willing to do.

“At the end of the day, they don’t want to scare away parents from adopting,” she said.”

Racial identity important in transracial adoptions
[The Republic 12/19/11 by Hope Rurik,Scripps Howard News Service]

Reformatina says: “What this article doesn’t address is that placing agencies continue to place children of color with families who live in all white communities even when they know what the effects will be for that child growing up. Just because Holt discloses the issues transracial families will face does not mean they are acting in the child’s best interest in the first place by allowing children to be placed in these situations.

Interestingly, a second article which discusses the adoption myth of “love is enough” in relation to transracial adoption was published the next day.

“Racism and discrimination remain a reality for many black children adopted by white parents and this may affect their mental health, U.S. researchers say.

Darron T. Smith of Wichita State University and Cardell Jacobson of Brigham Young University, who wrote the book “White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption,” said black children growing up in mostly white communities encounter racial marginalization.

To live under a constant threat of being singled out on the basis of skin color can take a heavy toll on physical health, Smith said.

“If white folks intend to raise black children, they must know that denying or downplaying racial slights or taunts, for example, only adds to the misery of their children,” Smith said in a statement. “Because white Americans are least likely to understand racial discrimination they must have a real incentive to help their child learn to cope.”

Smith said when white parents adopt minority children, they need to be aware of the extent to which race is part of the children’s identity — and one way is to surround themselves with a multitude of black friends and mentors, not just one or two tokens.

White parents may mean well and love their children deeply, but if they don’t widen their circle, even considering moving to an integrated neighborhood, they really shouldn’t adopt black children, Smith said.

“It’s never a question of love,” Smith said. “The issue is, can white parents sufficiently humble themselves and do better socially and culturally for their adopted children?””

Whites adopting blacks: Love not enough
[UPI 12/20/11]

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