It's getting noisy in here! This is what an Adoptee Hears
Putting the Race in Transracial Adoption
"Babies and children don't see race or culture! It is so beautiful that they'll just attach to anything!""Oh, I just love the Chinese culture. Their language is so musical!"
"I love how she doesn't even notice she's a different race!"
"Race is just a cultural concept. If I raise her in an all white community where she'll be the only one who is different, I'm sure she will never ever ever feel sad at all."
"White people shouldn't be allowed to adopt."
"You must immediately relocate your family to a more diverse location!"
"Adoption is cultural genocide and modern day colonialism."
"My Asian baby is a person of color, whether they like it or not, so I must feed them a steady diet of Mulan. I simply forbid them from watching any white princess because they are not allowed to enjoy white people things...otherwise, they will not feel good about being Asian and I'd be a racist!"
My opinion: Race matters, but race isn't the whole story. You cannot recreate a hypothetical culturally proper past. Some people want to connect with their heritage, some don't, some will change their minds many times. Don't force it. You don't need to be surrounded by the same faces, but living in a bowl of milk isn't great either. Be aware of subliminal messaging. Be aware of your location and whether it breeds stereotypes and false perceptions. Provide the chance to learn about culture, but do not force your child on a steady diet of Chinese school, Asian dancing, Asian cooking, and Asian art. Your perception of their culture is probably incorrect. their perception of their culture is probably incorrect. Don't go chasing unicorns and living inauthentically.
The Grateful Adoptee and the Savior Adoptive Parents
"Your kindness has changed the life of this girl!"
"She is so lucky to have you all!"
"God bless you!"
"You are truly the best of humanity!"
"You must have a great heart to take in these unwanted children!"
To the adoptee:
"You should be grateful these kind people took you in."
"You are so lucky to have parents who raised you after you were thrown out!"
"Aren't you thankful for being adopted?"
"Aren't you glad you're not in China/Korea/wherever?"
Adoptees who want to be "good" by throwing others under the bus:
"I can't help it if other adoptees aren't grateful!"
"I, for one, appreciate my parents, without whom I would be dead."
My opinion: This is the most toxic and common narrative in the adoptee community and has existed since the dawn of time. This narrative is based on a foundation that takes one MAJOR false assumption as fact, that the adoptee/orphan is undeserving of the same basic human rights as non-adoptees. By suggesting that the adoptee is being given more than their allotted share in life and by suggesting the adoptive parent is going above and beyond and out of their way to provide basic human rights to another child, you are creating an environment of adoptee self-destruction and suicide. Implying that a child does not deserve to live has consequences in the real world. If they do not deserve to live, then they deserve to die. While all adoption situations are not equal, we are creating a toxic stew for them all to swim in. Those drinking from this poison, the adoptees, are FOUR TIMES more likely to commit suicide than non-adoptees. Drugs, you say? Special needs, you say? No matter the situation, they have one thing in common and that is living the Adoptee Experience. If you feed a person poison, you should expect them to suffer.
The Unwanted Orphan Narrative
"This little girl was found abandoned under the bridge." (and I, the News media, will purposefully leave out the part about it being illegal to keep the child and how legally only abandoned babies may be adopted by another family and how finding spots were chosen specifically so that people could find the baby quickly and get them to the orphanage, but you know what? My heading looks so much more dramatic.)"Unwanted babies filled the orphanages."
"Watch how this orphan reacts to her new mom!"
"Thousands of Chinese babies are being thrown out, thankfully, this American couple decided they wanted to adopt!"
"What would her life have been like without adoption? It breaks my heart just thinking about it"
My opinion: Adoptees are not unwanted. Period. In China, there was the so-called One Child Policy. In Korea, crushing social standards and the loss of human rights for Korean women with baby boys. In many countries, crushing poverty and a lack of means of surviving. The answer is never that the baby themselves was not good enough, was not wanted enough, was not loved enough, to be "kept." The answer is far more complicated than that. In so many adoptions and international adoptions, the adoptive parents and the birthparents never meet. They do not know the story. It is far easier to make up a story. It is far more lucrative to sell a story when that adoptee is an "unwanted orphan."
Dear American and International News Media. Growing a fucking pair. Don't you have celebrities to terrorize? Or maybe, god forbid, actual news to report? My life is not a game.
"God has blessed us with this gift!"
"God bless you for taking in the unwanted orphans of the world!"
"God had a plan and brought us together!"
My opinion:
God's plan included human trafficking? God's plan included the mass sterilization of Chinese women? God's plan included drugging women and forcibly performing abortions on them as a display of what befalls women who defy the one child policy? God's plan included birthparents chased by police and pursued by local officials to have newborns wrenched out of their arms at the hospital?
Oh, well, just as long as you're happy, I'm sure that's all God had in mind.
DEAR ADOPTIVE PARENTS: You cannot own another human being. No matter what you think God may have said to you or granted you, the truth of the matter is that humans cannot be owned. And no adoptee has ever asked to be an adoptee. You chose to adopt. They didn't. Can you sit in that truth for a minute?
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