The New Gratitude: Privilege in the Adoption Dialogue

Adoptees are always expected to be grateful. Period.

If you say that you simply don't believe that as an equal human being you shouldn't be made to express your "gratitude" at a frequency greater than any non-adoptee, then you are automatically termed an ungrateful, ill-adjusted adoptee. Other adoptees and adoptive parents and other people suddenly turn away and shun you because well, the absence of being grateful is apparently being a spoiled, conceited little brat.

Yet, no one looks twice at the motivations or underlying levels of gratefulness of non-adoptees. No. Society just doesn't work that way, doesn't look that way, doesn't feel that way.

New Vocabulary marching into the adoptee community sweeps these ideas away with the torrent of more mainstream ideas. The idea of "privilege" and what it means to have "white privilege" for most transracial adoptees adopted by white parents becomes twisted up with the original "grateful orphan" narrative. As Thanksgiving is fast approaching, I think it's apt to mention it now.

I think we need to keep the ideas separate between white privilege and transracial adoption (adoption in general). I have friends of all different colors and races. I understand what privilege is and I know that I don't need to fear the way my black male friend does when I go out for a drive or go to the store. That's acknowledging privilege. However, what I consistently see on social media is a backhanded nod to a racist power construct. Adoptees falling over themselves to replace the word "grateful" with the word "privilege." As in "I am privileged to be adopted by white people."

It's a twist of the classic Oliver Twist or of an old orphan trope. You're using the fuel of the never ending comments "You're so lucky" to be alive, to be loved, to be adopted at all, to not be dead, to be fed, to be in America...and funneling it towards a Woke New Culture, where "privilege" rather than "right" becomes the primary vehicle that brought you to this moment of being alive.

In undergraduate college, despite the school claiming that it was die-hard liberal, the population was woefully ignorant and racist. Racist in that charming Woke way that people get, where they assume that black people are dumber by nature because of, gasp, systematic inequality, and not having a drop of intelligence or compassion to realize how very racist that is. And so, being non-white I felt ostracized. Then further, being adopted by white parents I felt ostracized. Not only did other people decide I was too different from them because my skin was not white, but I had black and white professors telling me that I was racist because my parents' skin was white. In so few words, they were exhibiting their intolerance of multiracial families and their inability to reconcile existences outside of their constructs that allowed them to think of each race as a fighting faction.

Being part of a "white" family, whatever that means, was somehow a reflection of my moral ineptitude, despite the fact that other white students were never scrutinized. I think it was a subconscious resentment of the fact that I was "seen" as being non-white while I was apparently enjoying all the fruits of whiteness, like I had gone out of my way to trick them. The reason other white students were not scrutinized was that there was no trick. They were viewed as the "future of whiteness" as convertees that the college wanted to brand as freshly brainwashed in the right direction. I? I was an abomination to the belief that multiracial families were impossible because inequality ran so deep. My very existence was simply not possible in the world they were trying to build, a world where nothing mattered but the color of your skin. Because that would be enough to galvanize the young people towards change.  And so, my transracial adoption needed to be shoved into the context of "slavery" and "colonialization" and "human trafficking." My ex-friend made several unflattering remarks about how my parents "bought me," claiming that I was a "sexual fetish" for my parents, an object. Needless to say we are no longer friends and I have serious doubts she ever really liked me.

What does it mean for an Asian transracial adoptee to have this so-called "white privilege"? For one thing, must all privilege be white? For another thing, why are people trying to hard to shove us into those boxes of white and black? We are Asian people and despite the protests of my myopic college professors, I don't inherit the whiteness of my parents. Their skin color, surprise, does not dictate my morality. I have seen circular conversations on adoptee chatrooms, with comments much like this:

"I can't have white privilege. I'm not white! And I was made fun of for my squinty eyes and called a chink!"

"Well, we may not have white privilege when we are alone, but we do when we are with our white families. It rubs off on us."

End of conversation.

Because, apparently, it is enough to separate the world into white and black and look no further. It is so simple, isn't it? This world that Woke Culture has created, to simply say that privilege is like a light switch that turns off and on, that is dependent only upon the color of our skin, that, in fact, erases our identities. With white parents? You got white privilege. Walking alone? No white privilege. Ta-da!

Here are the flaws:

1) Blaming privilege and the unequal treatment of people based on racial or ethnic constructs on the binary value of "White" and "Not-White" lets people way too easily off the hook. Everyone has some sort of privilege. Asians have their own privilege if you really wanted to continue categorizing people in this way. To absolve yourself of all social awareness the minute your white friend or parent steps out of the room is awfully shallow. Victim by day, Assailant by night. What a load of shit.

2) Upholding white supremacy by bowing down to the concept that white is inherently better. By adoptees repeatedly saying that they are thankful or are privileged to belong to a white family is solidifying their belief that other families are inferior. I know transracial adoptees adopted into black families, mixed families, gay families, Asian families, etc. Are you seriously insulting their families just because you want to emphasize how very, very saved you were? Every headline wants to highlight the delta F, the change in our fortune. From homeless to broadway! From orphan to cherished American daughter! And apparently, for some ignorant people, the delta F becomes even larger if you add in the fortune of being placed in a white family. "I was once an orphan in an orphanage...but now, I have the privilege of being adopted by a white family. And believe me, do I acknowledge my white privilege."

3) Enforces the Grateful Orphan/Adoptee narrative by having you regurgitate the social bromide of being the lucky, thankful, grateful little wretch saved from the maws of misfortunate and death! We owe it to ourselves to understand how our existences don't hang tenuously by the strength of our professed gratitude, that we have the right to be loved, to be in a family, to have life and happiness. Rights are not always fulfilled, but that doesn't mean they aren't inherent human rights. Our lives are no less valuable than anyone else's, despite society's often relentless attempts to convince you to the contrary. The nonstop comments from strangers about what a lucky girl you are to have parents and the subsequent dirty and disgusted look they give you when you refuse to prostrate yourself before them for rightfully pointing out just how wrong they are. They are disgusted because to them, they made a valuation of your life that was so much less than anyone else's, and wanted you to confirm it. They think to themselves, well, you shouldn't have parents, you shouldn't be alive. You were saved. Aren't you such a lucky girl? And if you had the gall to ask them, "Do you ask your own daughter that?" They wouldn't understand. Because why on this blessed earth would their daughter need to feel lucky for having love and life? It's not like she was a dirty orphan.

Seeing other adoptees spout such crowd pandering nonsense about being grateful when I think we should have grown as a community by now to move past that is damaging for the overall progress of adoptee rights. It is quite frankly unbelievable how adoptee communities, whether online or in person, whether in a private chat room or a public one, will go out of their way to state their gratitude without any questions asked, as a disclaimer, as a defense, as an introduction as important to speak as their very own name.

Hi, I'm an adoptee and before you get any silly little ideas in your head that I'm not grateful, let me assuage your curiosity. I'm grateful, so very very grateful. Good? Done? See? I said it. Now, let's talk about separation trauma and attachment disorders. Oh, and maybe even a little bit about racism and the Hunan scandal. But hey, don't get mad at me! I told you I was grateful, didn't I?