Transracial adoptees and their adoptive parents: would you have liked to see more families like yours...?

almost human

Kazi I like you and I know this isn't what you want to hear - but the truth is, my truth is, when I see a transracial adoptive family I start to cry. It really gets to me. It gets to me because I know the internal struggles that child will go through because nobody reflects them and they don't reflect what they see all around them whenever they look in a mirror.

Even the story of your daughter gets to me, because she's getting excited about it because being so different and having parents who look different from her is an isolating experience. It's something she longs to be, which is not different. I remember being excited by seeing a mixed race family as a child too, but that sentiment was soon replaced as a reminder how atypical my family really was, and how alien I felt.

As a transracial child, I probably would have benefited from more such images in some indirect way, such as my situation being more acceptable by my peers, but I'm not confident that's a deep enough message and poorly utilized vehicle for social change. Our differences are celebrated, and we celebrate them too, and sometimes we enjoy the attention. But after the glow has faded, we are left alone to deal with the isolation of our differences. I wish it were handled more responsibly and portrayed more realistically.

As a transracial adult adoptee, I take exception to many of these portrayals in the media. While I would love to be less of a curiosity and more familiar to my peers, I don't want that to be at the price of having my difference exploited by, for instance, a bank commercial cashing in on the feel-good self-congratulatory messages they want to tie into their lending services. I would rather this state of family be portrayed in a meaningful way, because the media presents a superficial and cursory view which promotes and condones something which people entertain in already too simplistic terms.

As a thinking adoptive parent of a transracial child, I'm sure you know this all too well.

I think I would have benefited more from seeing and knowing other Asians personally. So that I wasn't always the other. So I could learn to accept those that look differently from what I am used to, So I could learn to accept that I am one of those people too. So I could get a sense of the culture I invariably represent by the color of my skin, and the shape of my eyes. So that instead of focusing on the unusual, I could feel something usual I was connected to in a very real way.

I didn't want to be exceptional or fodder for the media or to be a poster family for the next generation of rainbow family. I just wanted to have a normal life.

Mei-Ling

I don't know.

I think it would have 'reminded' me that I wasn't the same, and I was trying so hard to just fit in and be like everyone else.

But maybe if my parents had decided to move to a more diverse neighbourhood or be active in the community (instead of moving to an all-white neighbourhood, and then of COURSE I wanted to reject "being Asian")... it might have helped me realize that I was actually Asian and not a white person "wearing" Asian skin - that it was okay.

Flying Monkey #073177

Odd that you brought this up because I saw the Zellers ad not two weeks ago! My partner commented on it and asked how it made me feel. I just smiled and said what's done is done but at least others can look at a family like theirs.

wynn

Where we live, my children see what they call 'mixed up' families quite a bit in real life. They each have classmates or friends from after school activities and sports who are biracial, transracially adopted from foster care, or internationally adopted. They know lots of families like ours from culture classes. Our area is diverse anyway, there are lots of families of all kinds of ethnicities. Our public schools have children that speak more than forty languages besides English (according to our newspaper. I didn't count, myself).

I'm sure my kids have noticed that families on tv are more homogeneous than what they see around them in real life. But what they've really commented on is how on tv, the children are always so darn flawlessly beautiful. In tv world, they don't seem to have very many overweight preteens. It seems like anyone who doesn't look like they'll blossom into a supermodel is playing a comic relief role. Those are the things that bother my children right now. And my daughter would like to see more African American girls and women with natural hair. That's a big deal to her.

kateiskate

I had a lot of mixed emotions growing up...For one thing, I did my best to believe I was the same as my family and honestly really felt that I was white. I grew up in a community that had a tiny Asian population. This allowed me to further my "alter ego" as White Katie.

It may have helped me to be exposed to more Asians from an early age. Not necessarily Asian culture, but other Asian people. But I think to see more families like mine portrayed in the media would have just been strange to me.

Randy B

Funny but I've never really thought about it. My wife and I shop at Zellers quite a bit and never saw the poster and I've not had occasion to see the RBC ad either. If I did, I don't remember them at least.

I guess any ad like that is a good thing if it's done in a positive way. I know that I don't see colour or race when I see people so maybe thats why I've never noticed it. I'll look for them though and ask my daughter about it. I'm sure she'll view it as a good thing too although she may not notice what I'm referring to right off.

Jennifer L

My children also see quite a few mixed race families in real life. At school, there have many friends that are biracial and may not look like one of their parents, or are foster and/or adoptees. We also live in an area that is pretty racially diverse. They most certainly are not the only non-white faces in the classroom.

One thing that does irk me, however, is the lack of ethnic representation in things like keepsake items, artwork, Christmas ornaments, etc. I love those keepsake wood angels, with no features on the faces. But all of the mother-son, mother-daughter ones show parents and children that look the same. I'm still on the lookout for an ethnic "birthday angel", because all of the women in my family have their own "birthday angels".

It doesn't really seem to bother my children. But it does bother me.

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