Adoption Attorney and Adoptive Mother
INTERVIEWED BY TELEPHONE, JANUARY 21, 2013
Michelle, it is a pleasure to speak with you about children, families, adoption, and race. Given that you are a biracial woman, adoptive mother, daughter, adoption attorney, and a transracial adoption expert, I think your perspective will be fascinating. First, my condolences go to you on the loss of your father. What are two key values he taught you that you apply to your life today?
One of the things that I asked my father was “What is your philosophy of life?” He said, “Live it.” I think that internally I have always taken that away and have always believed in living my life and gaining new experiences. In fact I often say that I am more interested in spending my money on experiences than on things. That was definitely one of the values that I took away from him. Frankly being frugal is another value that I took away from both my father and mother. The other thing that I would say, especially because of his passing being so recent, [w]hat has definitely left an imprint on me is the whole concept about fighting for what you believe in and that everybody should be entitled to respect as a human being, regardless of race.
Some of the things that have come out during my dad’s passing shed light onto who my dad was and his desire for a racially integrated society. For example, one of the stories that I recently heard was about my dad’s time as a World War II veteran. He was stationed in Tennessee in the South in the 1940s. He was part of a movement that pushed for racial integration on that base with regards to the library. And as his friend said, “Your dad lived to tell about it.” And so as different stories came out in different parts of his life, I realized that he had always been pushing for racial integration. It wasn’t just personal. It was public. Another story is that he would walk into grocery stores and fast-food places, and if there were not enough blacks or no blacks, he would find the manager and tell them, “You need to hire some black people.” To know that my father actually voiced that concern, I think is probably part of the legacy of why I have such an outspoken personality and sometimes tell people what I think, which is not always in my best interest, but I do it anyway.
Tell me about your childhood: What was it like to be biracial and to grow up with parents from different racial and ethnic backgrounds? And can you expand upon how the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision shaped your reality and that of your parents?
I think that the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision impacted me more as an adult as I understood what my parents had done.1 My parents were married before the decision. So when they were married, interracial marriage was actually illegal in fourteen states. And as a child I remember hearing stories. For example my father is from the Jim Crow South Texas, to be specific. So we would fly to Texas. Now remember in the 1960s and 1970s flying was really expensive. But we would fly to Texas because there was no way that we were going to drive through Arkansas and Mississippi to get to Houston. It would be dangerous. So the fact that my parents were interracially married during a time when it was not popular, and in some states dangerous, it did impact our family, but I don’t think that I fully understood the meaning of the case and how it affected me or them on a larger scale as a young child. From what I understand, there were some family members that disowned my mother because she was going to marry a black man. My white grandfather refused to come to the wedding because my mother was getting interracially married. However, his wife, my white grandmother, whose parents refused to come to her wedding because she married a Catholic and she was Lutheran, made sure she was at her daughter’s wedding regardless. Fast-forward several years later: I have memories of fishing with my white grandfather. I do believe people can become more racially enlightened, especially in interpersonal relationships, if they choose to. Neither people or cultural norms need to stay stagnant, as evidenced by the Loving decision and my grandfather.
I think that my parents’ marriage in many ways affected my identity because my parents were married. One of the reasons why I think my identity as a biracial woman is so strong is because both of my parents were always present in my day-to-day life. Both of my parents’ racial identities were always present. One of my friends recently said that my parents were the only interracial couple that he knew who did not lose their racial identity when they got married. So my father, despite being married to a white woman, was still a black man from [the] Jim Crow South, and my mother, despite being married to a black man, is still the white farm girl from the North. Each one of their racial identities really impacted me because it is not only that I am a part of both of those racial identities, but it is also the integration of those identities. For me I always saw white and black getting along. I’m not saying my parents did not have their struggles; every marriage does over nearly a fifty-year period. But when I got up in the morning as a child, I saw a black man and a white woman get out of their bedroom, get up and make breakfast, raise the kids, and do whatever they were going to do. We always had dinner together at the dining room table as a family every night. So for me it was confusing when other people were fighting with each other on a racial level, because within my own personal four walls of the home, it was not what occurred.
In my family I am the oldest of three. I have two younger siblings, one sister and one brother. And in many ways I thought as a child that we were the strange family, in the sense of being the interracial family. But as I got older, especially when I got into college and met other families, I thought, “Oh, my God, we are Ozzie and Harriet” because we were literally the family that ate dinner together at the table every night. We were that family that went to church every Sunday. We were that family that had that suburban thing going on. So it was really this interesting realization that in a lot of ways we were very traditional, although in other ways we were very atypical. It was trying to figure out that balance.
As a young child we lived in Chicago. Apparently when my parents moved to that neighborhood in 1965, it was predominately white. When we left, in 1973, that same neighborhood was almost entirely black. So it was right at the height of major white flight. White flight was huge in Chicago. My mom remembers getting phone calls from people that would openly say, “Hey, the neighborhood is going to go black. It is changing. Do you want to sell your house?” And she would say, “Well, we just moved in.” In any case by the time I was school age, I was living in pretty much an entirely black neighborhood. In school I remember the one white kid in the class because that kid was the only white kid in the class. When we moved into the suburbs when I was roughly eight, I went from an all-black environment to an all-white environment. And then I was the only black kid among my peers. So it was a pretty radical shift. There were some childhood things that I was upset about, like how white kids don’t jump Double Dutch. I was just about to learn Double Dutch in Chicago, but we moved. If we had stayed in the city for one more year, I would have been able to do it. But there were definitely other and more important ramifications [from] moving to the all-white suburbs that left its imprint on me. By high school it was much more crystal clear about navigating the racial obstacles that come with being one of the few. Or maybe it was the racial obstacles just being in our society.
In school or in your community did you get teased because you looked different?
I got called the “N-word,” not a lot but I can tell you who called me it to this day. I don’t remember getting teased that much, but I do remember feeling different. I think that as a little kid the fact that my skin was darker compared to the other kids’ I interacted with was not as much of an issue. I do remember that once I started getting into junior high school and began liking boys and stuff like that, it became much more difficult for me because I didn’t look like all of the rest of my classmates, even though within my own home of course interracial dating was acceptable. However, outside in the real world a lot of people did not find it acceptable. So it made it much more complicated. To make a long story short, eventually I dated outside of my high school because it wasn’t really going to happen within the high school. There were some other complexities, given the few options of African American males in my high school, but let’s just say that there were few options and not good options.
What centered you as an individual and young adult that allowed you to reach to academic and professional success despite the obstacles that you faced [from] society?
I think that part of it was my inner strength. I always just assumed that I was going to college. It was something that I was going to do. Part of it was my family. I always had my family’s support. It was friends certainly. I also think, truthfully, moving to the suburbs for a better academic education was also a great influencer. The city school would not have given me the expectation to achieve, even though I personally had that expectation. Once I moved to the suburban schools it was just assumed that you went to college, regardless of race. Yes, there were a few teachers that you had to dodge—and that was one of things that you learned, that certain teachers would visually see you, and that was the end of your chance at excelling in that particular class. So you learned not to take certain teachers, right? And that was throughout my academic career. Among the few black students, whether it was high school or whether it was law school, it would get out: “Don’t take so and so because this teacher or this professor will never give a black student an A.”
Did you have mentors to help guide you through some of these obstacles? What did you do when you hit a roadblock or when somebody told you that you couldn’t achieve a task because of your race?
To a certain degree my parents were always there, but that is not to say that they did everything correctly. For example one roadblock that comes to mind was when I was in junior high. The school administrators told my parents that I shouldn’t take honors classes in high school despite having mostly As in junior high. And my parents listened to them. To make a long story short, I actually decided on my own that this decision was not appropriate for me, and so in my sophomore year in high school I changed my academic schedule so that I was taking honors classes. I think a lot of it is internal. It was an internal compass that said this isn’t right, and I am going to change it. At a very early age I was always this headstrong child, which I probably learned from my father. It is actually interesting that I focus on race now, because back then I focused on gender. Another example: in elementary school I learned that there was a boys’ soccer team but there was no girls’ soccer team. I went ballistic. And in fifth grade I actually organized a petition. And they had girls’ soccer the following year. I think that I got about two hundred signatures. I was, like, this is not appropriate, where is girls’ soccer?
I also remember a time when I was a freshman in high school. I was sort of coaching the girls’ basketball team, but I needed my father to assist me because there needed to be an adult. Anyway, we were at a game and somebody was messing around in the bathroom. The mayor, who was attending the game, came out onto the court—in the middle of the game, mind you—and proceeded to yell at the crowd about messing up the bathroom. I was livid. I actually said something to the effect of, “If this was a boys’ basketball game, you would have at least waited to come onto the court after a dead ball. But, no, because this is a girls’ game, you showed no respect and interfered with the play.” Later the mayor caught up with me as we were leaving and said that I was a “snotty kid and disrespectful.” My father told him, “No, she is not a ‘snotty kid.’ She is correct in her analysis of the situation.” And so I am not sure to what degree I would say that my parents were role models in standing up for what was right and to what degree it was probably just who I was.
Today you are a single mother of a beautiful son, who came to you through adoption. What does that mean to you and for you?
He is an amazing child, not just because he is beautiful but also because he is charismatic and dramatic and verbal and opinionated and variety of other things. I would say he is amusing. I think that it is part of achieving one of the things that I wanted to achieve in life, which is being a parent. I feel very blessed to be his parent. I hope one day he will be able to say the same, to say that he is blessed to have me as a mother.
What was it like to adopt your son?
I think that it was different for me than most people, partially because I knew too much about adoption, from being an adoption professional. I think to a certain degree I had to be pushed off the ledge, like a lot of people who are considering adoption. You think about it for awhile and finally somebody says to you, “You either have to do this or not do this.” More or less it was another adoption attorney who pushed me off the ledge. Although I have to say, I was one of those people, even as a child, who thought that I would adopt. As a child I was adamant that I was only going to adopt, which ironically turned out to happen.
I think the other way the adoption process was a very different experience for me was that, before adopting my son, I was connected with an expectant mom who later chose to parent her child. I don’t think that I was as devastated, angry, or some of the other feelings that a lot of potential parents have that come with a failed connection, because I felt that it was her choice, number 1. I never really viewed her child as my child until papers were signed, which they weren’t. And number 2, I didn’t feel like it was the end. I felt there would be another connection. I didn’t know when but that there would be. As it turned out it was a cliché: What is meant to happen, happens. The right connection was made for me in adopting my son. We are very much connected. But I also say that in my connection with his biological mom. From my perspective I am also tied to her for life through him. Therefore I feel like it was meant to be, in the sense that, if I had to be tied to a woman for life, I am glad it is his birth mom. I am happy to say that I like her, and I think that she likes me. I look at adoption like extended family. Just like when you marry somebody, sometimes you get great extended family and sometimes you tolerate them. I think that I have a pretty good extended family.
What narrative do you tell your son about how he came into his family?
My son is still a toddler. I am one of those “tell them the truth” parents. Also I talk to him like an adult, which might be problematic. But I break the story down basically to the level that he can understand. I have included in my library a lot of books on adoption. I think that my son and I are going to have a lot more conversations in the next year. He is just at that point where we will be able to have conversations. But he has always had children’s books with people who are adopted or families with adoption. I have also made sure that there are pictures of his birth mother out. In fact somebody was in his room the other day and saw a picture and said, “Who is that?” And my son casually said who it was. He just knew. I always want him to understand that it is part of his story and part of his identity. It is not a secret. It is not something that is to be discussed only when he is older. It is what it is. Also, because of what I do and because of how I feel about adoption, I had been going to a lot of adoption camps, adoption conferences. So by age two my son had already been to, like, six adoption camps and I don’t even know how many adoption conferences. I would just bring him with. And because of what I do through the multiracial community, a lot of my friends happen to also be adopted. If I need a babysitter, I call up my friends. They’re there as adults who have experienced adoption too. It is just a part of his world.
Does your family support your son?
Oh, yes. My family completely supports my son.
Did you have a conversation with your parents when you decided to adopt?
Yes. When I told my parents, especially my mom, she basically said to me it is about time. My nephew, who was five, had to do an art project at school about family. My sister thought that he was going to do something about her. It turned out that his art project was all about his cousin. And he had not met my son yet. It’s funny. In his art project he said something to the effect of, “This is my cousin from Chicago. He is black like me. He is African.” It was so cute. My nephew and niece couldn’t wait to meet my son. They call my son their brother even though he is their cousin. I think that as a whole my immediate family was very welcoming of my son. And he has a very close relationship with his grandma and had a very close relationship with his grandfather. Also I would say that some of my extended family was very supportive. What surprised me was that some of my extended racist family, which were mostly aunts and uncles, were also supportive. I would say that the whole family was welcoming. I was not one of those people that had to convince people about my decision to adopt or received negative feedback. And then, once you meet my son, your heart melts.
How did you become interested in transracial adoption?
I became interested in transracial adoption because of growing up in a multiracial family. I became a huge advocate for multiracial families. And I started getting involved in some multiracial organizations but didn’t feel like they really covered biracial people very well. Hence I started my own social group for biracial adults. One of the things that I discovered is that easily 40 percent of the biracial people who would show up for anything were adopted and mostly transracially adopted. I think of all of the biracial people I met that were adopted, I think that I only met one who was adopted by an interracial couple. Because of that I started having a lot of friends who were transracially adopted; even prior to that, one of my best friends was biracial and transracially adopted. I think that my best friend and I connected on the multiracial level as well as some other levels. But that was actually years before I started putting groups together. So that’s how I sort of tripped over into transracial adoption. And then I created Bridge Communications with a biracial transracial adoptee and then brought in another biracial transracial adoptee to Bridge Communications.
What does Bridge Communications do?
Bridge Communications focuses on diversity training or diversity parenting training. Most of our classes are geared toward transracial adoption. Although on occasion we do biracial identity work, or we do just general diversity training for corporations. But the majority of what we do is work with potential adoptive parents and adoption professionals to help them understand what it means to be a multiracial family and to make better choices for the children who will be living in multiracial families, through adoption usually.
Do you see progress in the transracial adoptive movement from the 1970s to the present time? What is different and what has stayed the same?
I do see progress, but I don’t see it with everybody. Since the 1970s there are a lot of things that I see as different compared to today. Based on some of the research that I have read, conducted by scholar Gina M. Samuels [an associate professor at the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago], and from my talks with her and other adoption professionals, it appears to me that a lot of the transracial adoption placements in the ’60s and ’70s were heavily biracial children as opposed to African American children with two African American parents. I see that now it is more African American children being placed transracially. I think that some of the parents today are consciously more aware that race is an issue in our society and are addressing that issue. I think that goes for some of the adoption agencies, although I see a lot of agencies still oblivious to it. And I think that it is a mix. Sometimes I talk to social workers, and social workers are really scared of IEPA, the Interethnic Placement Act. And so sometimes you can have private conversations with them, and they are much more aware of what is going on than what they are able to do. I like to call IEPA the affirmative action for white people to adopt black kids, frankly. And, yes, I realize I am misdefining affirmative action.
I think that provision within the IEPA Act of 1996 in relation to adoptions that concerned many social workers was the part that reads, “States and other entities that receive funds from the Federal Government and involved in foster care or adoption placements may not delay or deny a child’s foster care or adoptive placement based upon the race, color, or national origin of the parent or the child.”
Yes. Sometimes the things that I hear coming out of the mouths of some social workers, I am blown away at how uninformed they are about race in America. And because of the way things operate within the adoption system, I think that race is very low on the totem pole of things to be concerned about when placing black children. And that is today, especially in the private agency sector. For me there are different things going on. Everybody lumps adoption together, but I think that international adoption versus foster care adoption versus private agency adoption are three different segments of adoption. They overlap in some ways, and in other ways they don’t overlap at all. So for example in international adoption, even though international adoption is tanking, [some agencies that handle] international adoption, because of the requirements of cultural Hague trainings, . . . are beginning to address issues of race.2 They don’t address it as race per se; they address it as culture. And I would argue that culture and race are two different things. But race gets sneaked into some of the training via culture.
What would you say are the differences between race and culture?
Every culture has the possibility of having multiple races. And every race has the possibility of having multiple cultures. I would argue to a large degree that race is a social construct based on how people look and group together. And that race changes somewhat from country to country. But ultimately we have an understanding in the United States of black, white, Native American, Asian, and Latino. I would question Latino[’s] being a race, but that is how we operate in the United States so I am going to qualify them as a race for the purposes of how the layperson in America would define race. I realize that’s not the way it is defined on any type of census or that the fact that Latinos come in every race and every combination of races. I would argue that they are one of the biggest multiracial populations. Nevertheless they operate like a race in our society. Whereas culture has to do with how a particular group of people do things, whether it is art or food or rituals like marriage or burials. It could also be the way in which they have language between each other. And I don’t mean language in that people speak English or Spanish but in their body language and different cues that people communicate, like the way they greet people, how they treat the elderly, how they treat the disabled. Culture is how we operate within a group of people. [Like] most people we have multiple cultures because we have a bunch of subcultures. For example I operate as an American, but I also operate as a person in the African American community. I also operate as a midwesterner. I also operate as a woman. I have multiple cultures going on. I operate as being part of a multiracial family as part of my culture. So when I think of race, I would lump Nigerians, Jamaicans, African Americans as black, but they have very different cultures, even if they all lived down the street in Chicago.
Have you seen drastic changes in the challenges transracial adoptive parents faced in the 1960s and 1970s compared to those who are adopting today?
I do think that since the 1960s and 1970s racist things have become more subtle. I think that some of the things that the kids in the ’70s and ’80s had to deal with were very out in the open, and a lot of that stuff has now gone underground. The kids still have to deal with it, except that it is harder and more complex. One of the things that I do is talk at culture camps for teens. I am hearing twelve-year-olds, fifteen-year-olds telling the same stories that I am hearing forty-one-year-olds tell. In my Bridge Communications classes I put together a panel of adult adoptees to speak on their experiences. I try to get an age variation because I think, Rhonda, you’re right, especially when you have adults who are in their thirties and forties adopting, listening to forty-year-old adoptees tell their stories. The stories of those adoptees in their forties may not initially seem to these potential and adoptive parents as relevant to their realities and to what their child is experiencing. That is why I also find twenty-year-olds to tell their story, to show that it’s twenty years later and this is still going on. I don’t use teenagers because they have not processed their experiences, plus you need to get parental permission, et cetera. But I personally know from talking to teenagers that it is still the same stuff going on compared to the families who adopted transracially, for instance, in the early 1970s.
I think that back in the early 1970s there was at least the civil rights movement putting fire under the feet of folks in this society to think about social justice and racial inclusivity. We had the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW), who strongly addressed their clear concerns about children of color raised in white homes, especially black children raised in white homes, so there was at least from adoptive parents back then a recognition that maybe race does matter, and it is not just about color-blindness and love. Now I think some of our families operate in this “postracial” era.
I think you get a lot of people operating in a postracial era with some kind of color-blind religious stance. You know: “Love is enough.” It is interesting to me because you also have the other group of transracial adoptive parents who are so conscious of their white privilege and of racism that they work overtime to make sure that their kid not only gets their history and heritage of their racial background but also the cultural pieces, that they have friends of color and focus on the more complex stuff. It is not like they are saying, “Oh, let’s celebrate Kwanzaa with all of our white friends.” They make sure that they have black friends around the table too. They make sure that there are black role models for their kids. So I am finding that in this new millennium that you have parents at both ends of the spectrum. I think that there are more parents now that are aware and are very conscious of race and adoption matters, and I also see that there are parents that are more naive than ever.
What are the major concerns that you find particularly white adoptive parents face today when raising their children of color?
I think that white adoptive parents need to face their own prejudices, which I don’t think many of them have done. And therefore they don’t have a comfort level of adult people who are the same race as their child. What I find is a lot of parents adopting transracially will navigate to support groups of other parents adopting children transracially, which, by the way, I think is really important, that transracially adoptive families and other multiracial families interact with each other. For adoptive parents we should find support on multiple levels. But what I find missing is the fact that many transracial adoptive parents are not comfortable going into environments where everybody looks like their child. One of the things that is fascinating for me is that on Facebook, there is a group that talks about how to do black hair. How many black salons are in this country of black women doing black hair?! The group that gets the most attention is these white moms who are able to do black hair. It is interesting to me that they are still not interested in adults that look like their child, which I find problematic because obviously the kids are picking up on that message.
How do parents make that transition into the black community, where they become comfortable communicating with adults that look like their child?
It depends upon the parent. I don’t think that some parents will ever make the transition, which probably means that they shouldn’t be adopting transracially and that the social worker should do a better job of screening who gets what kid. Not everybody should be approved to parent across racial lines. But for those who do, I think that for most parents they have to ease into it. By easing into it, they need to start with other multiracial groups and then move deeper into the community in time. I think that it helps if they have a good relationship with their child’s birth family would be number 2. And number 3 they need to realize that their life does not have to radically change because they have become a multiracial family in order to find the resources of mentors and friends of the same race as their child. Sometimes people think that, just because I am adopting a child from another race, I have to now stop doing what I love to do. One of the things that I say in my classes is that if you love to bowl, instead of bowling in an all-white league, go find a multiracial league to bowl in. It’s not like you have to stop bowling. Black people bowl. Black people go fishing. Black people knit. Black people do all the same things white people do.
Going back to your previous question, the other thing that I find that white adoptive parents are now facing that is different from the past because of openness [open adoption] is how class and race intersect. And so let’s be frank: most birth parents are living on the edge and are probably near the poverty line today. And most adoptive parents, especially with the average cost of private adoptions being roughly $30,000, are at least middle class. So you have this intersection of class being forced because of the openness. In the past you had closed adoptions. So frankly you did not know one way or the other. But now you do, and so you have middle-class white parents meeting poor black birth mothers. And they are digesting often, especially if they don’t have black friends themselves, that black means socially and economically deprived. And some would argue that due to institutional racism that there are more socially [and] economically deprived black people. The truth is that most black people are not. And their kids are going to go to school with black middle-class kids probably, not black socially [and] economically deprived kids. Adoptive parents have this new challenge of how to integrate class in a positive way for their child, especially if their child is coming from a birth family that is struggling with economic issues, and adding in race on top of it.
There are always exceptions to the rules, but I would say, too, that one of the differences now, from what I have seen in the past, is that most birth mothers today are women already parenting. Most birth mothers of the 1960s and 1970s were perhaps the classic idea of a teenager getting pregnant or a very young woman getting pregnant, and this is her first child. Where[as] the realities of what I have seen as an adoption professional, now, is that, yes, occasionally I do get the teen that is pregnant, but most of these women are eighteen to twenty-six years of age and already have a child or two. These women slowly understand what it means to parent, and part of the reason that they are making such a difficult decision is the socioeconomics of being able to feed the two children or the one child or the three children that they are already parenting. It plays into this whole class-race thing going on. It is very different, I think, than it was in the past. Openness and the Internet have changed everything.
In your workshop sessions for adoptive families and those interested in adopting transracially, what material do you cover that helps parents understand the complexities of race and adoption? And what tools do you share that will help them navigate effectively through the triumphs and challenges of this type of family building?
Well, it depends on which program we are putting on, but usually in our standard class at Bridge Communications we break it out into three different sessions. The first session I like to call “Race + Adoption = Education.” And we always do interactive exercises because it is not a lecture. It is about incorporating exercises to help people process their own feelings. The first thing that I need to get people to do as quickly as possible is to address their own prejudices. People do not like to admit their own prejudices. We have in this society been instilled with all of this institutional racism that we see on TV, newspapers, magazines, Internet, et cetera. It is in us. Whether we can actually name it or not, it is in us. We have to first address those prejudices. So I like to do exercises that both let people see their world, world meaning their world in the United States, and then see how their family members view their own world, specifically how they view a particular group of people. And then we explore how we talk about those issues that were raised and actually make changes within our families to help primarily our children.
The second class focuses on role-play[ing]. I use role-plays from either stories that transracial adoptees have told me or transracial adoptive parents have told me. One client who was in my class about two years ago sent me an e-mail that said, “Michelle, let me tell you what happened at the Walmart today!” And I said, “Thank you, great role-play.” So I am constantly updating the role-plays because I want people who are going to the class to understand that this is not necessarily what happened forty years ago, but rather I got this e-mail two weeks ago or last year. So my role-plays are always contemporary with different scenarios of how to address sensitive situations adoptive families experience regularly.
Through the role-play[ing] we try to teach parents how to respond to different circumstances, what do you say to your child and to the person that, let’s say, made an insensitive comment to you about your family? How do you address these situations as a parent? How do you do it with humor? How do you do it with setting boundaries? How do you do it with finding support systems? You need to learn how to work through the different ways because different scenarios need different responses, and different people need different responses. Not only do adoptive parents have different personalities but so do the kids. And sometimes an adoptive family will adopt three different kids, and they all have three very different personalities. So parents need to learn that with this one kid, when people say stupid things or ask stupid questions with regards to transracial adoption, you can use humor. If the kid thinks it is funny, he will play along with you. And with another kid in the same family, if humor is not the appropriate response, then you really have to set boundaries because this child does not want to be put on the spot. So it is about teaching parents that they sometimes have to step out of their comfort zone. Actually all of this is about teaching parents to step out of their comfort zone to make it comfortable for their children to navigate the world.
I know that idea of stepping out of your comfort zone can be scary for some adoptive parents.
Yes, it is very scary for some parents but not all parents. Some parents welcome the challenge. In my classes what is so interesting to me is that the parents who welcome the challenges are the parents who least need the classes, because they are the parents who have already been seeking out these cross-cultural and cross-racial experiences. And those are the parents who probably already had black friends long before they were thinking about adoption. The parents who are the most resistant [to] coming through my classes are the parents that need it the most.
Usually for many potential parents who want to adopt, this is the first time that they have ever had to address transracial issues. What is fascinating to me, too, is when you have white people come through the first class who are not familiar with race issues, a lot of them will tell me that these issues are not relevant to them so they don’t need to address it. It is not personal. The reality is when you become a multiracial family, whether it is through marriage or adoption, all of a sudden some of the stuff becomes personal because it is no longer “somebody out there that I don’t know,” it is my child. I remember I did this one class where we had a couple in there who was adopting from Guatemala. This was about six years ago. They were very offended that their adoption agency made them go through this class. They were also very upset that they had to drive an hour to get to the class. Ironically I had people in the class who were flying in from Minnesota. That was easily resolved when I said in front of the class the family from Minnesota would get the award for coming the farthest. In the first class they went through the exercises having to do with their own perceptions and the world’s perceptions of race. It was very uncomfortable for the parents. And I have actually had people in the first class never come back because it was too uncomfortable for them to deal with stereotypes and interracial stuff. They didn’t want to address it.
This one couple, I remember the wife in particular, they went to the class. They really didn’t want to deal with this class. By the second class they came back with a whole different disposition. The mother said, “Since this class I have been paying attention to what people are saying. Do you know what my cousin just said last week about Latino people?” And that is when the reality hit, that this was going to be her child having to listen to her cousin say this racist stuff about Latino kids, and her kid was Guatemalan.
I think that the hard part is, particularly for transracial adoptees, making that transition from home to society in living color.
I agree. I hear that from the kids that I talk with. These kids need to have tools to help them transition into the broader world.
So what are three or four of these tools that you talk about that transracial adoptees are in need of when navigating as a person of color?
One would be understanding that racism still exists. That is a huge one: putting a name on racism and giving your child the words to talk about racism, I found that to be true especially with junior high kids. Often their parents want to make the world all rosy and not let their child think about difficult realities in the world. And so they don’t actually give them the words. I have actually been in classes where I have had to literally define words like minority to junior high kids. I don’t think that black kids with black parents would not know what the word minority means by the time the kid is thirteen. It would just be a word you would know by then that you could define. But I have found sometimes that kids of color with white parents do not know that word yet. So it is about giving kids a language.
Number 2 would be understanding the nuances of racism. Not only does racism exist, but you can break it down into the subtle and the overt types of racism. I think a lot of times people get the overt. It is the subtle form of racism that I don’t think many potential adoptive parents, in this case, get. One of the examples I use for parents, not so much for kids, is the University of Chicago study done a few years ago (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004). In that study résumés with “black names,” “Latino names,” and with “white names” were sent out to companies. Each résumé included the same credentials. And the white-sounding names got more calls to come for an interview. So this is one of those things that is subtle because it is not obvious. The person who would have had the black-sounding name may have thought that there were better candidates. The person who had the white-sounding name may have thought, Well, I am the best candidate. This study is what I like to use as an example to show that racial profiling is still going on, even if you can’t see it, and to help people develop an antenna for when it occurs. Not everything that happens is racist. And then I think the third thing, I would say, is explaining white privilege. There are different definitions to describe white privilege, but I would say the shorter definition is being white gives you benefits in this society for just being white—often benefits that are not recognized.
Like going into a restaurant without having a shadow of suspicion over you. I know that is a benefit that white people in my circles don’t see. On the other hand I have been to a restaurant with my husband and other black friends, and I hear, “Here we go again, we are invisible.”
Right. Or without the assumption that “Oh, this table isn’t going to tip.” And that you can actually be Caucasian and be considered an individual as opposed to a group. When often I think that if you are African American or from another group of color, if you do something bad, it reflects on everybody. Where the white guy who robs the store, it is just “Joe” who robbed the store. The black guy who robbed the store, [it is] “Those black people keep stealing.” So you get to be an individual, especially with negative stuff, if you are white. The group identity stuff is not as strong. Ironically it is really strong, but it’s the norm so we don’t have to discuss it. So it is the same thing when you see on TV that they are looking for some suspect. Somehow the black man or the Hispanic man is always described by their race. But if it is a white guy, it is just a male. We don’t need to put his race in there, sarcastically speaking. I think that is why there is this need for black magazines, Hispanic magazines, and other group identity media outlets, because what happens in those communities, especially the positives, are not necessarily reflected in general American media. And that is why you have to do some group identity activities.
But at the same time, if you are a black kid being raised with white parents, your group identity as a black person is not quite the same because you are raised in a multiracial family plus the adoption piece. And finding all those put together is important for the child. So when I am talking to kids, it is about understanding white privilege and understanding that some of the white privilege that your parents have, you are getting now sort of in a boomerang effect, because you are living with your parents so you get some of it. But once you go out on your own, you may not get that privilege. Even if that means that your parents have better jobs because they are white people, which means that they can bring in more money, which means that you can go on better vacations. It plays out in many different ways. Another example is that because everybody knows that you are that white person’s kid, they are not going to follow you around in the store. But once you go to another town where they don’t know that your parents are white, people will follow you around the store. And especially if you get kids—more in that junior high range as opposed to the teenagers—they haven’t had the independence to know what it means not to be part of their family. They are still perceived as part of their parents because they don’t have the independence, where the teenager who can drive might be in a different town now, shopping. So they haven’t been seen just as the black face or just as the Latino face. They are still seen as, “Oh, you are Bob and Suzie’s kid.” And so there is this big transition going on. You have to tie all this into the transition of preteen, teen, and young adult. The other thing is for parents to talk to their kids about their own perception of race and adoption.
As I mentioned before, we live in a racist society and it is subtle stuff. For example cartoons are my big beef at the moment because I have a toddler who is obsessed with cartoons. And so I am now watching cartoons and dissecting them by race and adoption. The other night, for example, we were watching Rio. It is a cute movie. What was my problem? The white people in the movie are the good people, and the bad people in the movie have African features.
For most people they would watch this movie and not think about the racial overtones. Rio is a very cute movie, and it is mostly about the animals, frankly, the birds. It is colorful. The music is wonderful. And yet I am thinking, By letting my child watch this, what message is he subtly picking up? Every time he watches Bob the Builder—that doesn’t have a single person of color in it despite the fact that it is located on a construction site—what message is he picking up as opposed to Rescue Heroes that have tons of people of color, white, and everybody?
That is something to think about.
I think most parents don’t really analyze cartoons. On a side note it is really interesting to me how much adoption plays out in cartoons too. For example Dinosaur Train has a transracial adoption theme.
The T. rex, Buddy, accidentally ends up in the pteranodon nest. Dinosaur Train actually addresses transracial adoption pretty well. There are episodes that actually deal with differences, like the T. rex can’t fly but the pteranodon can, but they are all a family, and they work together to make sure T. rex gets to where he needs to go—[in] a lot of ways they deal with it pretty well. Another cartoon called Sheldon has an adoption theme. We accidentally ended up watching the cartoon Anne of Green Gables. It has the orphan adoption theme even though it goes back to the 1800s. It is amazing to me how many times the theme of adoption actually comes up in cartoons. Sometimes it gets handled very well, sometimes not. I think most of the time it is the omission of stuff. But sometimes it is just how families deal with it. To me it is all very interesting.
Why do you choose to continue your work in transracial adoption?
I continue to do transracial adoption work for three reasons. The first reason is because of my friends and some of their stories. The second reason is I continue to meet transracial adoptees and parents that totally miss the race piece, and I think that we can do better. I do not want this new generation of children to go through the same things as the previous generation went through. That is not to say that every transracial adoptee has this horrific story. That is not true. But I think that we can do a better job. Some of the horrific stories that I have heard over time should not be happening again. I think that social workers should do a better job of screening potential parents. Adoptive parents, I think, should be getting continuous training and should integrate into a larger diverse community. And then the third reason is that we as multiracial families, whether by adoption or by union, sit in a very unique position in this society because if it is done in a healthy way, we have learned the ability to navigate different racial and cultural circles. Therefore we also sit in a very unique position to help different communities understand that we are all human and that we all deserve respect regardless of our race. I think that is why so many of us do this outspoken work. There are so many people who talk about the negative sides of it, but one of the benefits of being biracial or transracially adopted and being put out there is that we do have this gift of being able to navigate different worlds. If it is done right, we can feel comfortable in multiple worlds. Now it is not always done right, and not everybody feels comfortable in multiple worlds. But for those of us who do get to that point, it is amazing. We have the ability to talk to different communities in ways that can support unity. I don’t just mean we as people of color going into the white community and being able to talk to that community about “black issues.” I also mean going into the black community and being able to talk to the black community about “white issues.” If it is done right, we can also break down some of the myths about white people in the black community too.
I am sort of digressing, but as part of the training I do, it is also about getting white people to realize there are all sorts of stereotypes about them. It is fascinating. I do a whole exercise on stereotypes. So many white people know the stereotypes of people of color, but many don’t know the stereotypes about themselves. That is always fascinating, to get them to understand the stereotypes of themselves, which is really important because if their kid of color is connecting with their own racial community—guess what they get to hear? “Don’t your parents call you the ‘N-word’?!” It is assumed that every white person is racist. So if you are in a multiracial family, that can be very perplexing for a child, to have to defend that their parents are not the white racist people that another child or adult may think.
That is a huge task.
White parents think about how they are going to have to deal with race, but it is now about getting them to the point of how is your kid going to have to deal with race? And then also both inter- and intra-[racial situations], because if they don’t have any black friends, then they are not going to be able to understand all of the cultural nuances going on in the black community—or black communities would actually be more accurate. Therefore how do you teach your black child how to navigate the black community if you don’t know anything about it? Eventually, unless your child is going to stay in an all-white farming community in the middle of nowhere (which some kids do), they are going to move into somewhere where they will run into other black people, whether it is in junior high or college or when they move into the city, whatever. All of a sudden they are going to be interacting with black people who will look at their black face and assume that they know certain black cultural nuances.
Surprise!
Right. Surprise, exactly. One of the stories I like to tell is about one of my panelists, who did not know this, and when she got to college, she really wanted to connect with the black community. And because she did not know the black nuances, she had pissed off the black community there quite quickly. Ironically she had to have her white roommate, who grew up in a multiracial neighborhood, help her navigate back into the black community. So it is interesting to me: that story says yes, white people can learn this, because her roommate knew it. And number 2, how important it is for that black adopted child to know it because they should not be offending the people that they are trying to connect with. There are multiple layers of that story. That particular adoptee, too, also has a story of the cultural nuances where beauty became an issue. So when I am telling her story, I also talk about her going from an all-white neighborhood to going to a more diverse college, where the standards of beauty were different for the African American males compared to the white males from the white high school she attended. She also had to navigate the perception of who she was as a woman and what these black men were saying to her. In high school this particular woman was the “ugly duckling.” She went to college, and within a moment she became this beautiful Beyoncé, so to speak. That can be overwhelming at eighteen years of age, when you go from nobody is interested in you and nobody wants to date you to very full-on interest. That was a navigation that she had to deal with. I use her story, but there are many black women who have experienced that, whether they have white parents or black parents, if they grew up in an all-white neighborhood or not. You need to get places where the center of beauty is larger than blue eyes, white skin, and double d-flat booty.
What legacy do you want to leave your son?
I want him to be comfortable in his skin. I want my child to be comfortable eventually as a black man, as an adoptee, as being part of a multiracial family, and as an American. I want him to be able to navigate multiple communities to the success of whatever he should want to be professionally. I am pushing for neurosurgeon at this moment, but I may not win that one. But whatever he should choose to be, I want him to feel comfortable in who he is as a person. I want him to feel comfortable in the sense that if I dropped him into any particular place, he could drop and roll and be himself. He doesn’t have to assimilate to the degree that he loses who he is as a person but that he can still communicate with other people and show them the respect that he needs to show them, as well as demand the respect he deserves.
That is an important lesson you can learn in your adulthood years too.
Well, I am hoping that he can learn it at a younger age. The other legacy I want to give my son is to respect all people and view people within their own lenses. One of the things that I am very cognitive of right now in the adoption community is these all-inclusive statements. “All adoptees are X.” “All adoptees feel Y.” “All adoptive parents are XX.” “All adoptive parents feel YY.” “All birth mothers are X.” “All birth mothers feel Y.” I just don’t think it is true. I want my son to understand that, even though we can make some generalizations, there is not one view in any particular group. And I could expand that beyond adoptees to black people, to white people, to girls, to boys, to rich people, to poor people, et cetera. And then I want him to understand that people come from different experiences. He is going to have his own lens as an African American adoptee male child, who is raised in the Midwest with a loud, proud biracial mother that stresses education. So that is going to be part of who his world is and how he sees the world. His mother is a lawyer. If I have my way, my son is also going to have the experiences of traveling internationally. And I am doing my darnedest to make him bilingual. But my point is that he is going to have that lens. The legacy that I want him to see is that not everybody will have that lens. Not everybody will have the same educational level that he has. Not everybody will have traveled internationally. Not every body will be an adoptee who has multiple families. Not everybody will have been raised in a multiracial family. So the knowledge that he has may be different than the knowledge that other people have. And sometimes that means taking people in where they are at and learning to communicate and work with them, even when you may disagree with them or have more, or different, knowledge. All of those things I mentioned I want to leave with my son.
Thank you!