transracial adoptees

This has been on my mind a lot lately. Even though there are many transracial families in my circles and I think they are beautiful (it's when I'm with these families that I get the most excited about my future family), this is not the norm in society. And even though the family members may not see the child as Black the rest of the world does. In some of my reading I’ve come across adult Korean adoptees who talk about how their white parents didn’t prepare them how to be Korean in America. Years ago the advice given to transracial adoptive families was to treat the children as if they were white and completely assimilate them into North American life. But transracially adopted children grow up and need to have survival skills for the racism and discrimination they will face. D and I experience white privilege and don’t have a clue what it means to be a person of color living in a white society. We recognize this and will commit to surrounding ourselves with people of color so that this child will have opportunities to be mentored and learn how to address discrimination.

Right now I’m reading “Outsider’s Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption”. This book is written by adult transracial adoptees. It’s so good – and at times difficult – to read something written from the adoptee experience. They are the experts on their own lives. Not the adoption agency personnel, not social workers, not researchers, and not other adoptive parents. At our agency adoption education seminar we heard from a panel of adoptive parents, all who had adopted from overseas locations, but I really wanted to hear from the older kids that had been adopted years ago. What was their experience as an African living in Canada with white parents? How could we as prospective adoptive parents learn from them as we contemplated our own futures? What did their adoptive parents do well and in what areas was their room for improvement? Adoptees need to be given a voice in this process. As adults we are making some pretty significant life changing decisions for these children. Wouldn’t you want to know what they think about it?