I think of that African American English and very hip-hop culture. Usually, like, lower class, but then again I know black people who aren’t any of those stereotypes… one of my favorite professors. She is black and her [black] husband is a physician, but I wouldn’t think of that first. I really don’t identify with being black because I’m not into the, like, hip-hop culture and the bling-bling with the jerseys.50
By contrast, biracial youth who have racially mixed social networks with numerous real referents (both Black and White family, friends, and peers) are more likely to rely on realistic social comparisons than constructed ones, and consequently are less impacted by the limited negative stereotypes about Black people. Khanna concludes that “social networks provide both opportunities for and limitations to the types of social comparisons that individuals can make with others (realistic or constructive), and as a consequence, the types of comparisons they make influence their racial identities.”51 In Khanna’s study, most of the biracial respondents in racially mixed social networks identified internally as Black, while few of those in predominantly White social networks identified internally as Black.
The Socializing Role of Parents
The importance of the parents’ role in helping children make sense of the social comparisons they are making, as well as other race-related experiences they are having, cannot be overemphasized. As shown here, the choices parents make about where they live and where their children go to school has implications for identity development. Their own racial ideology will also influence how they socialize their children. All parents, regardless of their own racial group membership, send messages to their children, directly or indirectly, about race. As discussed in previous chapters, learning about race begins at an early age, but both the process and content is different for Blacks and other people of color than for Whites. “In contrast to the explicit racial socialization strategies used by black families, the process in white families is both subtler and different in content.”52 When interracial couples have children, they bring to the parenting experience different racial socialization histories, and unless one of them is a mixed-race person, neither of them has had the experience of growing up as a biracial child. Because the rates of Black-White marriage are higher for Black men than for Black women (25 percent versus 12 percent in 2013),53 and mothers are usually the primary caretakers in families, the most common scenario is for the White mother to be the primary caretaker of the children.54 If parents are not in agreement about the racial socialization strategies, this may be a source of tension.
For example, during the preschool years children begin to learn racial labels. Some parents may intentionally choose “Black” as the child’s label, recognizing that if the child looks Black, he or she will be treated as such. Emphasizing the child’s Black heritage in a positive way may be viewed as a strategy to counteract the devaluing messages of the dominant society.55 Such a choice may be a point of conflict, however, for the White parent, who may feel left out by this choice.
If the parents have separated and the custodial parent is White, what meaning will a Black or biracial identity have for the child? While it is certainly possible for a White parent to actively promote a positive sense of Blackness—seeking out culturally relevant books and toys, developing a Black or biracial friendship network, seeking out multiracial environments—it may not always be recognized as important to do so. If Blackness is devalued by either parent or within either extended family, if the Black parent is disparaged in front of the child, or if there are no positive ties to a Black community, then it will be very difficult for the child to value his or her Black heritage. There will be no buffer against the negative messages about Blackness in the wider society, posing a threat to the child’s developing self-esteem. Of course, it is also important that the White parent not be disparaged in racial terms, but in the context of the wider culture that is less likely to happen because Whiteness is more highly valued.56
Some parents choose to teach their children to label themselves as biracial, hoping to affirm both identities. But the concept of “both” is a complex one for preschoolers to understand, simply because of their cognitive immaturity. They may learn the “biracial” label, with little grasp of its social meaning initially, though that will change as they get older. Psychologists Robin Lin Miller and Mary-Jane Rotheram-Borus recommend that if parents are going to encourage a biracial identity, they need to provide substantial positive exposure to both racial groups to help the child understand what it means to be a participant in both cultures.57 The research of Khanna as well as Rockquemore and Brunsma illustrate the benefits to young adults who have had such experiences.
The challenge for parents of preschoolers, regardless of the chosen label, is to affirm who the child is and to help the child see him or herself positively reflected in the environment around them. Necessity is sometimes the mother of invention. One grandmother, unable to find a doll that matched her biracial grandchild’s complexion, made a Raggedy Ann–style doll for her, choosing fabric of just the right shade. A wonderful book depicting a multiracial family consisting of a White father and a Black mother, Black, White, Just Right!, was written by a grandmother who wanted to offer her grandchildren that kind of positive reflection.58 A Google search will reveal a growing list of children’s books specifically written with multiracial families in mind.
Parents who have a “color-blind” ideology may be reluctant to talk to their children about potential encounters with racism, hoping perhaps that if they don’t mention it, it won’t be a problem.59 Talking about the possibility of such interactions and providing children with appropriate responses they might use in such situations is one way to inoculate children against the stress of this kind of racism. Several of the biracial adults profiled by Lise Funderburg expressed a wish that their parents had prepared them better for the situations they would encounter. Said one, “I thought my parents should have talked to me about it or tried to figure it out, but I don’t think they knew themselves, so they just didn’t try at all.” This respondent, now a parent herself, is being more proactive with her own racially mixed child.60
Identity in Adoptive Families Considered
In 2013 more than 40 percent of adoptions in the US were transracial in nature, up from 28 percent in 2004.61 In considering the identity development of children of color adopted by White parents, issues similar to those experienced by nonadopted biracial children emerge relative to the question, “Where do I fit racially?” However, some issues are unique to children adopted into White families. In particular, the absence of an adult of color in the family to serve as a racial role model may make adolescent identity development more difficult. In addition, the identity process is often complicated by the adolescent’s questions and feelings about the adoption itself. “Who are my biological parents? What were the circumstances of my birth? Why did my birth mother give me up for adoption?” These questions add another layer to the complex process of identity development in adolescence.
However, as in the case of nonadopted biracial children, the role of the caregivers is critical in easing this process. Race-conscious parents who openly discuss racism, who seek to create a multiracial community of friends and family (perhaps adopting more than one child of color so there will be siblings with a shared experience), who seek out racially mixed schools, who, in short, take seriously the identity needs of their adopted children of color and try to provide for those needs, increase the likelihood that their adopted children of color will grow to adulthood feeling good about themselves and their adoptive parents.
Consider the case of Alan, a dark-skinned Black male raised by White parents in a predominantly White community. In an interview with me, he remarked that his Black friends were often surprised to learn that his parents were White. How was it possible that a Black guy with White parents could be so “cool”? He attributed his social success to the fact that his parents always sought out integrated neighborhoods and plac
ed him in racially mixed schools. They encouraged his involvement in athletics, where he made strong connections with other Black boys. In junior high school, when the identity process often begins to unfold, Alan felt most comfortable with those Black boys. He explained, “Whenever I went out with my [Black] friends or played my sports… that’s where I liked to be. That’s where I found myself.” When his parents wanted to leave the city on vacation, he found himself less and less willing to leave his network of Black friends. Their idea of getting away meant social isolation for him. As he got older he realized that he didn’t want to go on vacation to a place “where there’s three Black people in the whole town.”
While it does not seem that he ever rejected his parents in his adolescence, as a young adult he has put some distance between himself and his extended family members. He is the only Black person among a large extended family, and his mother’s relatives live in a rural area in a state with a very small Black population. Whenever Alan goes to visit them, he feels very self-conscious, very aware of his visibility in that environment. His parents, respectful of his feelings, do not insist that he accompany them on those family visits. Alan has considered a search for his biological mother but has not yet pursued it. His parents have responded to the possibility in a supportive way.
Alan’s experience is contrasted with the experiences of several Korean adoptees I have taught over the years. In all of these cases, the young women grew up in White families that considered their daughters’ racial category irrelevant to their child-rearing. No particular effort was made to affirm their Korean heritage, beginning with the choice of their first names, which typically reflected the parents’ European heritage rather than the children’s Korean heritage.
The names themselves often led to encounters with racism. For example, one young woman told me of an experience she had cashing a check. The White male clerk looked at her face and then looked down at the surname on the check and asked, “What kind of name is that?” She identified its European origin. The clerk looked dumbfounded and said rudely, “What are you doing with a name like that?!” Such experiences remind these adoptees of their outsider status in White communities.
In one instance, a young woman reported that when she was a child a Korean family friend had offered to take her to Korean cultural events, but her parents had declined the offers, encouraging instead her complete assimilation into her adoptive culture. Unfortunately, complete assimilation was not possible because she did not look the part. Her Asian features continually set her apart, but with no cultural connection to any Asian community she had no one to share these experiences with and no help in learning how to cope with the racism she encountered. In college she began to realize her need for some connection to an Asian community and began to explore how to make those connections. In reflecting on the choices her parents made, she said, “In a way I think my parents messed up and that they taught me to hate what I really was. Maybe if they hadn’t ignored my racial heritage so much I would have an easier time accepting that I am an Asian and that I always will be.” At least, that is the way she believes the world will always see her.
In a mixed-method study, Godon, Green, and Ramsey surveyed 109 transracial adoptees (TRAs) and interviewed a subset of eleven. The backgrounds of the study participants, all of whom had been adopted by White families, represented fifteen different birth countries, but most were from South Korea. The average age of the participants overall was twenty-six; the subset of interviewees were a bit younger, with an average age of twenty-one. My Korean student’s experience was echoed in the narratives of the study participants. Though all ultimately viewed their adoptions as positive, many reported feeling racially isolated growing up and felt discomfort at being visibly different from their White adoptive families.62
One participant described her frustration when she joined the Asian American Association in high school: “I totally did not fit in.… It kind of made me mad because I looked like them, so I felt like I identified with them, but once I got in, I learned I really don’t at all.” Caught between the expectations of two groups, TRAs often felt rejected by White people due to physical differences and by people of their birth ethnicity due to lack of language and cultural knowledge.63
As with biracial youth, adoptive parents who attend to the identity development needs of their children for a same-experience peer group can reduce the isolation and discomfort for their children. In the case of Eunliz, a twenty-year old Korean adopted while still an infant, she and her parents lived in an area with many Korean adoptees. Her parents encouraged her to learn about Korean culture and provided the opportunity for her to attend Korean culture camp every summer, allowing her to develop sustaining connections with other Korean adoptees. She eventually studied the Korean language and traveled to South Korea, a trip she described as one of the best experiences of her life. Clearly her adoptive parents took a race-conscious approach to her socialization, which has contributed to her self-confidence and comfort with her ethnic identity.
By contrast, twenty-two-year old Selma, also adopted from South Korea as an infant, grew up in a family that had a color-blind ideology. They discouraged her from actively exploring her Korean identity by learning about her cultural background and minimized her experiences with racism.
When she told her parents about her classmates’ racist comments, her mother advised her to “stop being the victim.” Her father refused to acknowledge even the possibility that she could have a different perspective: “My dad, being a Christian, he sees humans as of one blood. He tells me all the time, ‘Stop it, stop it, you’re not Korean, you know you’re American…’ He couldn’t fathom what it’s like to be a minority.” Even though her father seemed to have good intentions, he adhered to the color-blind approach to race and thereby negated a central aspect of Selma’s identity.64
When Selma found her own way to a Korean American church, finally, in a room full of Asians, she realized what she had been missing. “I never realized how uncomfortable I was until I was comfortable.… I felt for the first time that I didn’t have to explain.”65
Journalist Mark Hagland, himself a Korean adoptee and adoption literacy advocate, insists that “parents who believe they can raise their child color-blind are making a terrible mistake. And it’s shocking how many people I meet still think this way. If there’s a single thing I can share with white adoptive parents [it’s to] look at the adult adoptees who have committed suicide, or who have substance abuse problems. Love was not enough for them.”66 He and other adult transracial adoptees argue that teaching children to cope with the racism they will inevitably encounter is a necessary part of the White adoptive parent’s responsibility. Abigail, a twenty-one-year old Chinese female adoptee, said, “I think every adoptee inevitably is going to go through a period where the shock of race is real.… It can happen when you’re 8 or 13 or 28. And when you’re really depressed and feel really different, you don’t want to hear love is enough.” For Abigail, the best thing that her mother did when she felt depressed was to “listen to her pain, rather than dismiss her with excuses or denials.”67
In some instances, preparing children for encounters with racism can be a matter of life and death. Karen Valby, writer and adoptive White parent of two Black girls, acknowledges that “many adoptive parents, including me, feel tremendous anxiety about introducing concepts of racism to their children.” Hagland, the adoption literacy advocate, has a response for her and others: “Are you not going to teach your child how to cross the street? [Are you going to say] ‘I could never talk about being hit by a car because then my child would fear it.’ Well guess what? Part of your role as a parent is teaching your child how to safely cross the street.”68
Alex Landau, a Black transracial adoptee, had such a life-threatening encounter in 2009, when he was just nineteen. Stopped by the police and accused of making an illegal left turn, he was ordered out of his car and searched. Landau’s White father had never had “the talk” t
hat is a rite of passage in African American families—when Black parents explain to their teenage sons how to behave if stopped by the police. Landau asserted his rights with the three police officers present and asked to see a warrant before they searched his car. The officers responded by punching him in the face. He was knocked to the ground and remembers hearing one of the officers saying, “Where’s your warrant now, you f—ing n—?” When his mother arrived at the jail, she was horrified to find her son there with forty-five stitches in his face. Though the officers were cleared of any misconduct, the City of Denver awarded Landau a $795,000 settlement. He and his mother are now working to educate other transracial families. Landau says, “I know my mother wishes she could have had the insight herself to prepare me for the ugly realities that can occur.”69
Almost twenty years ago I was invited to moderate a panel of adoptive parents who were sharing their experiences with interracial adoption with an audience of prospective parents considering the same option. The White panelists spoke of ways they had tried to affirm the identities of their adopted children of color. One parent, the mother of a Central American adoptee, spoke of how she had become involved in a support group of parents who had adopted Latinx children as a way of providing her son with playmates who had a shared experience. She also described her efforts to find Latinx adults who might serve as role models for her child. There were very few Latinx families in her mostly White community, but she located a Latinx organization in a nearby town and began to do volunteer work for it as a way of building a Latinx friendship network.
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Page 36
