Transracial Adoptees According to the Media: Grappling, Struggling, and Hopelessly Confused

I wrote a post on this before, but with the surge in anti-Asian violence and the Atlanta spa shootings of six Asian women, there's been a wave of new interest in the alluring story of the Asian people raised by white people.

I find this absolutely insulting.

Why? Imagine a tiger escaped from a zoo and killed a family of humans. Then the news media goes to interview Tiger King and asks, "You do know that tigers kill humans. So how can you live with tigers?" In this case, a white person killed Asian people, ergo, we must interview the strange and most mysterious anomaly that is Asian transracial adoption. (Transracial adoption means that the adoptee is not of the same race as the adopted parents. It doesn't mean we're changing our race.)

As a resident of a suburb of Philadelphia, I can say confidently that there are plenty of adoptees, Chinese and otherwise, who very strongly identify as Asian American. Just because our parents don't look like us doesn't mean we are confused about who we are. I don't look in the mirror and see a white girl. I see me.

There's been a long-standing tradition in the news media (cough, NPR, cough) to portray adoptees are grappling and struggling on such sophisticated ideas on race because apparently, we are so busy struggling in the vortex of our lifelong racial identity crisis that we cannot have intelligent ideas.

There's an expectation in society that I should be in racial limbo my entire life. One of the themes of "Somewhere Between" (a documentary made in 2011 about Chinese adoptees in America and does labor under the misbelief that we were all abandoned) was literally that we don't belong anywhere. We're stuck somewhere between. I loathe that this idea gets hammered again and again and again. We get it, our parents look different from us--but that doesn't take away our identities as full human beings. Nor does it mean that all adoptees are a monolith that can simply be described as "grappling."

I found NPR's latest article on Asian adoptees raised by white people to be one of the most insulting examples of this phenomenon to date. The article is entitled "'Am I Asian Enough?' Adoptees Struggle To Make Sense Of Spike In Anti-Asian Violence" 

In the title, the two main themes are put front and center:

1) When Asian people get murdered by a racist gunman, apparently Asian adoptees immediately think, "Well, how does this apply to me? Do I count as Asian? Asian enough to...get shot?"

2) That we as adoptees are struggling to understand what a hate crime is, what murder is, and what racism is because we're too damn busy struggling with who we are.

It's like they expect all adoptees to not have any eyes and that when we look in the mirror we all just see a white person and that we're moaning in our sleep at night, staring up at the stars, and begging God to answer, "What color am I?"

Sorry, I have no intelligent thoughts on race because apparently I'm too busy GRAAAAAAAPPPPLING with who I am. 

In the article, this idea is further pounded into people's brains:

She says Asian adoptees experience racism and are grappling with anti-Asian violence just like the rest of the Asian American community. It's just hard to articulate that when you've never felt like you truly belong in either world. - Kimberly McKee

Again, leaning on the theme of Asian adoptees never belonging anywhere, and consequently having a struggle with anti-Asian violence. Look, if you are an adoptee who is truly struggling, then good for you, you're thinking about who are you introspectively and working through it. But for the media to take a tragedy of Asian women getting shot and immediately making a beeline for the Asian adoptees, pushing their grubby little fingers into the "don't belong," "struggling," and "grappling" narrative, is so incredibly insulting.

AND what kind of question is "Am I Asian Enough?" in the context of Asian women being killed and shot? Are you wondering if we count. Yes, we count. And why is it that adoptees are "struggling" to make sense. I think it's pretty goddamn clear to me. Racism and violence and murder. It's not a mystery. But I forget, I'm just a confused adoptee who doesn't belong anywhere and who is stuck in racial limbo. Pardon me.

Here's another recent example spurred by the anti-Asian hate crimes, the shootings, and the stompings, and the attacks: "Beautiful Portraits Show How Adoption Influences Asian American Identity" on BuzzFeed.

The word grapple/grappling is used twice in the article in relation to our sense of belongingness in the Asian community. For instance in this quote: "While we’ve progressed so much in claiming our identities as Korean adoptees, that doesn’t mean we’re not still grappling with its complexities."

I have been pissed and annoyed at our portrayal in the media for years now, and I'm shocked but not surprised that the recent surge in anti-Asian violence has caused a spike in Asian adoptee stories that regurgitate over and over: we don't belong. I hate that the world looks at us like we live in a fish bowl, ready to be plucked out and examined whenever the mood strikes. They only highlighted this artist's work because it was relevant, topical, and therefore worth writing. However, if anti-Asian crimes weren't spiking, would they have highlighted her work? Because it feels to me like a grievous insult to only pay attention to the great work adoptees and other Asian people do when we (as a community) are under attack or killed.

There are adoptees who are questioning, grappling, and struggling with identity. But there are non-adoptees who also are and adoptees who aren't. The media gets to pick who they interview, whose voices they highlight, and which narrative to spin. Is it any wonder that when white people are racist in the world that journalists think the Asian adoptee diaspora is a jackpot of inner conflict, the very idea of white and Asian battling it out inside an Asian body, the very concept of white and Asian people living together as natural enemies but, like, actually with love? 

You know, there are tons and tons of multiracial and biracial families in the world and in America. Plenty of people I know have parents of different races, but the media doesn't give them the same treatment. They might have ideas of belonging too--as do we all--and yet, the media doesn't ask Betsy about how she grapples and struggles to make sense of her race if she has a white mom and black dad, or white mom and Asian dad, or black mom and Asian dad. No, they don't ask Betsy if she's helplessly confused about her racial identity. She might express a sense of being welcomed or not welcomed by different people, but the media does not give her the helpless forever wanderer of this godforsaken racial dessert treatment. The media does not question her right to live with her parents based on primitive ideas of who owns who, whether she belongs with parents who might not look exactly like her, whether it is even right for her to live with them. A caveat to this is when a biracial person lives in an area full of non-multiracial people, such as a half-black, half-Japanese person living in Japan or a half-white, half-black person living in Africa or some parts of America. But generally, there are interviews conducted every day with multiracial people and it never comes up in the interview. You don't even know they're multiracial because it isn't deemed a crippling struggle for them to overcome.

I am a Chinese American woman. I am a Chinese adoptee. My parents are white. I have intelligent ideas about race. I'm not grappling. I'm not struggling. I'm not in racial limbo. I feel accepted and a part of the Asian American community and identity. And I don't have anything to prove to anyone. So will the news media please stop pushing this monolithic experience?

P.S. After meeting up with a friend of mine after many years, who also happens to be adopted form China, we were able to share our experiences with other people trying to pigeon-hole us into what identities THEY thought we should be. I think she said it best when she said, "It's not we who are grappling to figure out what race we are, it's everyone else grappling with us and where to put us!" I told her to slap that on a t-shirt and I'd buy it.