Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption [New 2021 ed.] 9781517910532, 9781452965192

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part One: Where Are You Really From?
1. Garlic and Salt
2. Love Is Colorblind: Reflections of a Mixed Girl
3. Power of the Periphery
4. Finding the Universal: Reflections on a Multi-Prismed Identity
Part Two: How Did You Get Here?
5. Economic Miracles
6. Adoption Myths and Racial Realities in the United States
7. The Finer Meaning
8. Parents in Prison, Children in Crisis
9. Orphaning the Children of Welfare: “Crack Babies,” Race, and Adoption Reform
10. Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace
11. Disappeared Children and the Adoptee as Immigrant
Part Three: Colonial Imaginations, Global Migrations
12. If I Pull Away
13. Flying the Coop: ICWA and the Welfare of Indian Children
14. From Orphan Trains to Babylifts: Colonial Trafficking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering
15. Scattered Seeds: The Christian Influence on Korean Adoption
Part Four: Growing through the Pain
16. Hunger
17. Korean Psych 101: Concepts of Hwa-Byung in Relation to Korean Adoption
18. Evolve
19. Lifelong Impact, Enduring Need
20. From Victim to Survivor
21. Tending Denial
22. Performing Childhood
Part Five: Journeys Home?
23. What Lies Beneath: Reframing Daughter from Danang
24. Proud to Be Me
25. Praise Song for Ala
Part Six: Speaking for Ourselves
26. Researching Adoption: Whose Perspective and What Issues?
27. Beyond the Vietnam War Adoptions: RePresenting Our Transracial Lives
28. No Longer Alone in This Grief: Service-User-Led Support for Transracial Adoptees
29. The Making of KAD Nation
30. Generation after Generation We Are Coming Home
Adoptee Organizations
Acknowledgments
Permissions
Contributors
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z

Citation preview

Outsiders Within

This page intentionally left blank

Outsiders Within Writing on Transracial Adoption

Jane Jeong Trenka Julia Chinyere Oparah and Sun Yung Shin Editors

University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London

First published in 2006 by South End Press First University of Minnesota Press edition, 2021 Copyright 2006 by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin Preface copyright 2021 by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin See page 307 for copyright and original publication information for specific works reprinted in this volume. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-­2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu ISBN 978-1-5179-1053-2 (pb) A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Printed in the United States of America on acid-­free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-­opportunity educator and employer. 27 26 25 24 23 22 21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To the transracial/national adoptee holding this book: We are grateful Outsiders Within has found its way into your hands. It is our gift to you. We hope that you will find something here that will stretch your imagination, something that will offer you a perspective that you didn’t see before. May these essays and memoirs offer you guidance, camaraderie, and perhaps a roadmap for your long journey. May they give you the courage to share your own story with someone who comes after you.

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Preface Introduction Julia Chinyere Oparah, Sun Yung Shin, and Jane Jeong Trenka

xi 1

Part One: Where Are You Really From?   1. Garlic and Salt Soo Na   2. Love Is Colorblind: Reflections of a Mixed Girl Jeni C. Wright   3. Power of the Periphery Kim Diehl   4. Finding the Universal: Reflections on a Multi-­Prismed Identity Mark Hagland

19 27 31 39

Part Two: How Did You Get Here?   5. Economic Miracles Sun Yung Shin   6. Adoption Myths and Racial Realities in the United States Dorothy Roberts   7. The Finer Meaning Kimberly R. Fardy   8. Parents in Prison, Children in Crisis Ellen M. Barry   9. Orphaning the Children of Welfare: “Crack Babies,” Race, and Adoption Reform Laura Briggs 10. Shopping for Children in the International Marketplace Kim Park Nelson 11. Disappeared Children and the Adoptee as Immigrant Patrick McDermott

45 49 57 59 75 89 105

Part Three: Colonial Imaginations, Global Migrations 12. If I Pull Away Shandra Spears

117

13. Flying the Coop: ICWA and the Welfare of Indian Children Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark and Kekek Jason Todd Stark 14. From Orphan Trains to Babylifts: Colonial Trafficking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering Tobias Hübinette 15. Scattered Seeds: The Christian Influence on Korean Adoption JaeRan Kim

125 139

151

Part Four: Growing through the Pain 16. Hunger Shannon Gibney 17. Korean Psych 101: Concepts of Hwa-­Byung (화병/火病) in Relation to Korean Adoption Beth Kyong Lo 18. Evolve Bryan Thao Worra 19. Lifelong Impact, Enduring Need John Raible 20. From Victim to Survivor Ron McLay 21. Tending Denial Heidi Lynn Adelsman 22. Performing Childhood Rachel Quy Collier

165 167 177 179 189 199 207

Part Five: Journeys Home? 23. What Lies Beneath: Reframing Daughter from Danang Gregory Paul Choy and Catherine Ceniza Choy 24. Proud to Be Me Ami Inja Nafzger 25. Praise Song for Ala Julia Chinyere Oparah

221 223 249

Part Six: Speaking for Ourselves 26. Researching Adoption: Whose Perspective and What Issues? Kirsten Hoo-­Mi Sloth 27. Beyond the Vietnam War Adoptions: RePresenting Our Transracial Lives Indigo Williams Willing 28. No Longer Alone in This Grief: Service-­User-­Led Support for Transracial Adoptees Perlita Harris 29. The Making of KAD Nation Sunny Jo 30. Generation after Generation We Are Coming Home Sandra White Hawk Adoptee Organizations Acknowledgments Permissions Contributors Index

253 259 267 285 291 303 305 307 309 317

This page intentionally left blank

Preface Julia Chinyere Oparah, Sun Yung Shin, & Jane Jeong Trenka

We came together to dream Outsiders Within into being over fifteen years ago in response to the infantilization and silencing of transracial adoptees. We wanted to rewrite dominant narratives about transracial adoption and, above all, we were driven to disrupt the debate that presented us as either multicultural ambassadors for colorblind love or damaged victims. Rather than staying within the confines of the existing arguments for or against transracial adoption, we chose to reveal and challenge the forces that transform children into adoptable commodities. We conceptualized Outsiders Within as a gift to adoptees who were dealing with feelings of racial isolation and racial trauma on their own and who would find in the pages of this book companionship and community. We were also speaking to a wider audience of adoptive parents and siblings, adoption agency workers, policymakers, and opinion shapers in the hope that our stark critiques of the racism, colonialism, imperialism, and white savior complex inherent in transracial adoption would challenge liberal ideas about saving babies from dangerous and negligent others. Finally, we wanted to reclaim the member of the adoption triad who is most often demonized, blamed, and invisibilized—­first mothers—­and imagine the possibility of solidarities between adoptees and our first families based on an understanding of shared histories of oppression and of the stigma and coercion experienced by our first mothers. Did we succeed in those ambitious goals? Outsiders Within remains the only book of its kind, emphasizing, through the writings and artwork of Native American, black, Asian, and Latinx adoptees and allies, the intersectionality of adopted people’s lives. In the years since its publication, the book has found its way into the hands of thousands of adoptees of color. Adoptees whose journeys have passed through all seven continents have found within xi

xii  OUTSIDERS WITHIN

the book a new way to understand how birth and racial traumas continue to impact their lives, their relationships with families of origin and adoption, and their connections to communities of color. We have received correspondence from adoptees for whom reading Outsiders Within was a life-­changing experience and their first opportunity to access a broader adoptee community. Beyond that, the book has provided a powerful counter to a mainstream media narrative that is still focused on rescuing infants and the obstacles facing waiting adoptive parents. By speaking out, the contributors introduced a wide readership to the powerful presence and voice of adult adoptees of color. And the contributors’ astute and relentless critique of the complicity of the adoption industry with white supremacy, genocide, and empire pushed all parties involved to examine the workings of privilege, power, and money in the lives of adoptees, adopting families, and our communities of origin. In 2012, Outsiders Within was translated and published by KoRoot with a new preface by Jane Jeong Trenka in South Korea, a country that has sent over 200,000 adoptees around the globe. That edition expanded the reach and impact of the book and bolstered efforts to encourage Korean society to redress the inequalities, prejudice, and violence embedded within the Korean adoption system and the violation of the human rights of women and children. The Korean edition was part of a broader activist movement that has won significant gains. A coalition of internationally adopted people, unwed mothers, first parents, and their allies started to work to revise South Korea’s Special Adoption Act in late 2008. It was wholly revised in 2011 and enforced in 2012 to prioritize family preservation over adoption. Among other provisions, it installed a seven-­day waiting period before relinquishment so adoption agencies were no longer able to coerce pregnant women into giving up babies still in the womb. In addition, the process of birth family search was given legal parameters to make the process fairer for adoptees instead of leaving the process up to the daily whims of social workers at private adoption agencies. The law provided the legal foundation for the establishment of Korea Adoption Services, which is a quasi-­central authority over adoption matters, including birth family search; under the administration of liberal President Moon Jae-­in, the body was moved under the umbrella of the newly established National Center for the Rights of the Child. Other laws that were changed by this coalition led to the expansion of support for single parents, particularly for younger unwed mothers; private adoption agencies being banned from owning or operating unwed mothers’ homes as baby factories for the profitable international adoption industry; and “Single Parent Day” being legislated as a national holiday and celebrated for the first time on May 10, 2018. Celebrating single parents raising their own kids a day before May 11 symbolized the government’s prioritization of family preservation over adoption, as the government had already legislated May 11 as “Adoption Day” several years prior. This activism to

Oparah, Shin, & Trenka

lilJ

Preface  xiii

change legislation and social perceptions in order to preserve families has led to an increase in unwed mothers raising their own children and a decline in intercountry adoption. Only 303 children were sent from South Korea for intercountry adoption in 2018, contrasting with the 916 who were sent overseas in 2011, the year before complete revision of the adoption law. However, South Korea has yet to ratify the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-­operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption; birth families, including siblings, have no legal right to search for relatives; and the vast majority of adoption records still lie in the hands of private adoption agencies and orphanages and are regarded as their private property rather than property of the people whose information they hold. Because there is still no legal mechanism to compel orphanage owners to hand over these records—­ though they are encouraged to voluntarily cooperate with Korea Adoption Services—­the human right to identity remains out of reach, not only for internationally adopted people but also for the majority of late-­discovery domestically adopted people and those who aged out of orphanages. Much legislative work and change in social perception are still absolutely necessary to address these issues, guarantee nondiscrimination against all members of society, including QLGBT people, and discourage, instead of valorize, the practice of anonymous child abandonment at churches. Globally, intercountry adoption has declined significantly since this book was first published. Adoptions to the United States, which brings in the most children internationally for adoption each year, peaked in 2004 with 22,989 children and declined thereafter, with only 4,058 going to the United States in 2018.1 While more than 400,000 children live in foster care in the United States, many white adoptive families prefer children from outside the United States, both because they fear ties to black and Latinx communities of origin and because of the different racialization of Asian adoptees in particular, who, as Kim Park Nelson points out in this volume, are considered “culturally enriching.” The intercountry adoption industry uses the severing of adoptees’ ties to their first families to produce a fantasy of a “clean slate” as a selling point, rendering their mothers socially dead. The shortage of “clean slate” babies as a result of changes in international adoption practices is being filled by the international surrogacy industry. Facilitated by assisted reproductive technologies, as well as laws that diminish the rights of surrogate mothers and recognize babies carried by surrogate mothers as the legal children of the people who contracted the surrogacy services, poor (including white) and black women in the United States and women in the global South have become the new source for families (including Asian families) wishing to parent a child without the complexities of racial difference or familial ties. Our hope is that today’s readers will find that the critical tools in this book are still relevant today as they seek to unpack the intimate racialized politics of foster care, adoption, and surrogacy.

xiv  OUTSIDERS WITHIN

Outsiders Within has had a meaningful impact, yet, like any political project, it also has had its silences and failures. When we wrote the preface, the editors articulated our vision of building a “global transracial adoptee community.” In some ways, that community has come into existence. For example, when we created an Outsiders Within Adoptee Community Facebook page to solicit ideas from transracial adoptees for this preface, over 350 individuals, mostly adoptees from around the world, joined the community in less than a week. Books and artistic and activist communities by and for adoptees of color have sprung up. But we also recognize that this book is a very imperfect basis for panracial solidarity among adoptees. Raised by parents who chose to adopt from overseas, sometimes to avoid bringing black children into their families and/or to avoid dealing with birth families, Asian and Latin American intercountry adoptees are often brought up in environments saturated with anti-­blackness and in communities where they have little opportunity to create social connections with black people. Yet we paid insufficient attention to the deep work of unpacking internalized anti-­blackness that would need to happen for true, lasting solidarities to emerge between differently racialized and situated adoptees of color. Our efforts to decolonize our experiences lacked sufficient grounding in First Nations perspectives, and we did not sufficiently frame the contributions of non-­adopted people in the volume, such as Heidi Adelsman, who wrote about her adopted brother’s life and death from the standpoint of a white witness. All this is a reminder that the work is never done and that we must continue to evolve our analysis and our activism. Nevertheless, we remain deeply committed to the original vision of this book. Outsiders Within is not a comprehensive or exhaustive documentation of transracial adoption. Yet, despite its imperfections, its fearless anticapitalist and feminist of color critique continues to provide an important lens for understanding how children circulate within ideologies and structures of race, gender, sexuality, nation, and global capitalism. We hope that the contributors’ critical perspectives will gain renewed relevance as they help us to unpack contemporary crises. For example, what does the media and political focus on COVID-­19 as an obstacle to the family formation of white prospective adoptive parents say about the value of the lives of women and children in China, India, Colombia, and beyond? How does the Trump administration’s inadequate response to the pandemic reveal the inconsistencies in U.S. federal policies that profess to preserve families and reduce the number of children entering the foster care system while funding Christian adoption agencies? President Trump’s executive order “Strengthening the Child Welfare System for America’s Children,” signed in the midst of nationwide shelter-­in-­ place orders in June 2020, advocates family reunification without tending to the root causes that lead black and brown mothers to relinquish their children. In specific, it fails to redress the disproportionate impact on black, Latinx, and Native families hardest hit by job loss, illness, and death—­impacts

Oparah, Shin, & Trenka

IT!J

Preface  xv

that will likely fuel an upsurge in families unable to care for their children. At the time of writing, the Centers for Disease Control were reporting an infection rate for African Americans and Native nations as five times that of whites, with continuing rises in infection rates resulting in unimaginable disruption for families of color. In light of the global circulation of the virus, and its disproportionate impact on U.S. communities that already lose children to adoption, we wonder how the pandemic may permanently shift adoption norms and practices and what possibilities there are for policy and advocacy focused on supporting women of color in raising their children. As we close this preface, the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor and the subsequent worldwide protests are foregrounding the precarity of black life, creating a sense of urgency and even impatience for the editors. We find ourselves asking: How are transracial adoptees speaking out now that we have claimed our voice? Are we speaking not only about our rights and histories, our families of origin and journeys to reclaim our identities, but also about the anti-­blackness in our adoptive families and communities? Are we taking action to combat police killings and disproportionate infection and death rates in low-­wage black, Latinx, Southeast and South Asian, and Native American communities? We hope that this book will encourage all members of the adoption community to ask difficult questions and to talk to each other about the things we would rather leave silent. As we do so, we build courageous and self-­determined communities even as we work to build a world in which people of color have the resources and support to parent their children, and children have a right to their stories, their families and ancestors, and their communities of origin. Finally, the editors extend their sincere thanks to editor Erik Anderson at the University of Minnesota Press, who made this second edition a reality, and to award-­winning author Shannon Gibney, who not only brought this book to the attention of the University of Minnesota Press but also shepherded it to South End Press, which published the first edition. We remain deeply grateful to you both for your faith and commitment.

1 “Adoption Statistics,” U.S. Department of State—­Bureau of Consular Affairs, Travel.State.Gov, accessed April 26, 2020, https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/Intercountry-Adoption/adopt_ref/ adoption-statistics1.html?wcmmode=disabled.

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION Julia Chinyere Oparah, Sun Yung Shin, & Jane Jeong Trenka

W

e on the periphery, learning and watching from the outside, have a particular power with revolutionary roots.

-Kim Diehl For those Chinese girls we see with their "forever families" on urban sidewalks; for those Korean kids growing up on farms in rural America; for those African American kids single-handedly integrating small-town schools in British Columbia; for the children bought with the bribes of American dollars; for our sisters who have been kidnapped and sold; for the children who are deemed "unadoptable"-we must witness. This book is a corrective action. Over the past fifty years, white adoptive parents, academics, psychiatrists, and social workers have dominated the literature on transracial adoption. These "experts" have been the ones to tell the public-including adoptees 1-"what it's like" and " how we turn out." Despite our numbers and the radical way we have transformed the color and kinship of white families, the voices of adult transracial adoptees remain largely unheard. Our cultural production has been marginalized and essays discussing our personal experiences of adoption have remained undistributed and largely unknown. There are many reasons for our slim output, not the least of which is that transracial adoption is fundamentally an isolating experience. Adoptees of color may fear that expressing our opinions will estrange us from our white families , friends, and colleagues. We have become accustomed to protecting our loved ones from the harsh realities of our experiences with racism, loss, and trauma. Still others of us have been silenced through assimilation into white environments, and only in middle age-after careers and families have been firmly established-do we reach a point where we can acknowledge and heal from the pain of isolation and alienation. There is an enormous amount of internal, emotional work-some of it "unlearning" -that must be accomplished before we can even think about transforming our personal experience into inspiration for political action.

1

2

OUTSIDERS WITHIN

It is commonly pointed out that transracial adoptees have only recently "come of age" and therefore we should not be surprised by a paucity of writings by adult transracial adoptees. Yet there are many transracial adoptees who could be grandparents themselves. Among them are the indigenous people of North America and Australia, the Japanese orphans of World War II, and the children of the Korean War. So it is a fallacy to conceptualize transracial adoptees as perpetually sitting on the cusp of adulthood, one foot forever hanging in childhood. That said, it is not until recently that a critical mass of transracial adoptees has reached adulthood. This is largely due to the mass emigration of Korean children sent abroad for adoption, which peaked in the mid to late 1980s. Not only are there up to 200,000 Korean adoptees scattered throughout the world, according to some estimates, but also thousands of people who were adopted out of China, Vietnam, and India; Guatemala and Colombia; Ethiopia and Liberia; African American and Chicano/Latino communities in the United States; and the indigenous nations of Australia and the Americas-to name but a few of the "sending" communities, with more added to the list every year. Since the 1980s, the dramatic increase in transnational adoption has generated a transracial adoption boom. According to the US Department of State, a growing number of US citizens are choosing to adopt children from overseas due to a perceived reduction in the number of healthy infants available for adoption within the country. 2 In 1992, the United States issued 6472 "orphan" visas for internationally adopted children. Ten years later, the figure had risen to 20,099. Most of these children came from East Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. As the authors in this book suggest, this shift in adoption patterns is also due to the valuing of European, Latin American, and Asian children over black children, and prospective adopters' desire to adopt children who do not come with the "baggage" of home communities and potentially interfering family members nearby. While the United States is the largest adoption industry "consumer," thousands of children are also brought to Western Europe, Canada, and Australia for adoption each year. Discussions about adoption have typically separated adoptees who were adopted across racial lines within their country of origin (often referred to as "transracial" adoptees) from those who were adopted transnationally (referred to as "international" or "intercountry" adoptees). This separation prevents us from recognizing our commonalities as a source of solidarity. It also suggests that the problems facing transnational adoptees are primarily related to finding a family and adapting to a new country, rather than to the traumatic experiences of racism, marginalization, and discrimination, both systemically and on the personal level, within our adoptive communities. ·1 Increasingly, many of us who have been described in the adoption literature as intercountry or international adoptees have decided to redefine ourselves as transracial adoptees. This redefinition emphasizes how relentless

OPARAH, SHIN, & TRENKA

fill

INTRODUCTION

3

our racialization has been throughout our lives. In this book, we use the term "transracial adoption" to highlight the connections between adoptees of color, whether we were adopted domestically or internationally. At the same time, we seek to honor the multiplicity and complexity of the adoption stories gathered together under this umbrella. There is no homogenous transracial adoptee story, no single political line. Yet taken together, our writings create a hopeful vision of a different world, where children of color are neither sold nor expendable, our mothers and families neither erased nor exploited.

who knows? adoption and the politics of knowledge Writing about transracial adoption raises critical questions about the motivation of the author. Does it matter if the author is a white adoptive parent of children of color or a social worker involved in the adoption industry, like so many of the "experts" writing on the subject? As people of color who for so long have had our histories told and distorted by others, we know that it does indeed matter. Authors never write from a completely impartial place-our vision always reflects our social location in relation to gender, ethnicity, nationality, political perspective, and involvement in the adoption triad. Knowledge production is always marked by this locatedness. Theorist Patricia Hill Collins has asserted that an "outsider within" standpoint enables black women to gain unique insights that may not be available to those who share the worldview of the dominant community in which they operate. 4 Being within-yet excluded from-the dominant discourse is an incentive to create knowledge that goes against the grain. Who then is best positioned to write about transracial adoption? Who occupies the position of "outsider within"? In a treatise on what he labels the "tragedy of race matching," Randall Kennedy argues that adoptees do not have a unique perspective on race, family, and adoption. Pointing to the differences of opinions among adoptees, some of whom ardently support transracial adoption while others condemn the practice, Kennedy concludes that there is no greater insight associated with the experience of being raised across racialized lines. Some observers will be tempted to defer to these witnesses because they bear a supposed "authority of experience." One difficulty, however, lies in determining which of them to defer to, since adoptees' opinions conflict. An even more fundamental challenge consists in deciphering, evaluating, and making use of the asset that is deemed to endow adoptees with their special wisdom~namely, their experience. In reading memoirs and other accounts by adoptees, one encounters not the raw experience of interracial adoption but rather an interpretation of it. 5

While the essays, poems, and visual art in this anthology confirm that there is no singular "adoptee experience" or "adoptee perspective," this

4

OUTSIDERS WITHIN

should not lead us to discount the voices of transracial adoptees in favor of more authoritative "experts." Nor should it blind us to the emergence of a body of work by transracial adoptees and our allies that is highly critical of the colorblind rhetoric used by many supporters of the practice. Rather than seeking to discredir the perspectives of critical adoptees-or looking for token adoptees who can be deployed to support positions within the existing debate-we seek to embrace the heterogeneity and multiplicity of the global transracial adoptee community, to shift the terms of the debate, and to open up new avenues for exploration. That is the challenge of this volume. There are two dominant and competing discourses on race and adoption. On one hand, some scholars and social workers claim that transracial adoption damages children of color, leading to low self-esteem, identity crises, and difficulty relating to their communities of origin. This perspective was parricularly prevalent among the black and indigenous social workers who actively promoted same-race placements from the 1970s onward. On the other hand, public opinion-backed by recent studies undertaken by scholars wishing to disprove the centrality of racial identity-asserts that "love" and swift placement into a stable family are the key factors in a child's development. This research denies that children of color adopted into white families suffer from problems related to self-esteem or racial isolation and asserts, to the contrary, that they acquire the advantage of an ability to move with comfort within both white and minority worlds. Proponents of samerace placements are therefore accused of taking a politically motivated separatist stance that promotes racial divisiveness and ignores both the plight of waiting children and the empirical evidence that transracial adoption works. Opposing this rigid adherence to racial thinking, advocates of transracial adoption depict transracial adoptive families as sites of hope for a multicultural utopia. As Rita Simon asserts, The studies show parents and children, brothers and sisters, relating to each other in these transracial families as if race was no barrier to love and commitment .... In a society torn by racial conflict, these studies show human beings transcending racial difference. 6

Transracial adoptees swim in the murky waters between these conflicting accounts. On one hand, we resist being defined as victims condemned to half-lives between cultures, without meaningful connections to our families or communities. Our willingness to work through seemingly irresolvable tensions with our adoptive families, our ability to (re) build connections to communities and families of origin, and our successful efforts to create new identities authentically based on our experiences are testimony that we can indeed survive and thrive. On the other hand, our experiences of racism, isolation, and abuse and our struggles with depression, addiction, and alienation indicate that adoption across boundaries of race, nation, and culture

OPARAH, SHIN,&. TRENKA

fill

INTRODUCTION

5

does indeed exact a very real emotional and spiritual cost. We live within this constant paradox, aware that our very lives are acts of transgression. The immutability of our bodies-born in one place and raised in another, speaking different languages, nourished from different tables-are manifestations of the uneasy and often violent clash of the ideologies of race and nationality. Adoptees of color are therefore outsiders within the two powerful discourses on transracial adoption. Yet we refuse to be limited by the terms of reference of the current debate. Instead, the contributors to this volume choose to ask different questions altogether.

beyond the adoption triad: race, colorblindness, and backlash The impact and significance of transracial adoption is not limited to the families in the so-called adoption triad-birthmother, adoptee, and adoptive parent. In fact, transracial adoption has become a potent symbol in the battle to rearticulate racial meanings and policies in the post-civil rights era. Three decades ago, black and indigenous social workers in the United States and Britain, concerned about the one-way traffic of children of color into white families, fought successfully for the implementation of race-matching policies that would place children into families with the same racial origins. In the past decade, these policies have been attacked and discredited as essentialist, outdated, or racist. Critics have pointed to the large number of children of color awaiting families, arguing that permanency is far more important than race. They have questioned the placement of multiracial children with any white parentage into families of color, arguing that this ignores the complexity of the children's racial origins. And they have suggested that same-race placements infringe upon the rights of white adoptive parents, denying them the opportunity to adopt children purely on the basis of their race. The battle over same-race placements occurs against the backdrop of a broader debate over the continuing significance of race, as well as the morality and legality of measures designed to provide redress for racial inequalities. In the United States, neoconservative organizations such as the American Civil Rights Institute and the Campaign for a Colorblind America have presented themselves as the true inheritors of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., rearticulating civil rights rhetoric in defense of those they portray as the new disadvantaged minority: whites. In this context, King's demand that people be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, is mobilized against government interventions designed to redress racist exclusion. Affirmative action, in particular, has come under fire, with California as the testing ground for the neoconservative colorblind agenda. The passage of the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209, outlawed affirmative action by government agencies, leading to a dramatic decline in the numbers of black and Latino students admitted to the University

6

OUTSIDERS WITHIN

of California system. A significant success for Ward Connerly's American Civil Rights Institute, Proposition 209 has been followed by a series of legal challenges to affirmative action programs nationwide. But the attack on progressive racial remedies does not stop there. Proposition 54, the Racial Privacy Initiative, which aimed to outlaw the collection of racial statistics by all gmunmenr agencies (other than law enforcement), was brought to the California ballot in spring 2004. If implemented, the initiative would have prevented state agencies from identifying the race of adoptable children and prohibited the collection of statistics demonstrating racial discrimination in government programs ranging from housing to education. Although it was defeated, the 43 percent support that Proposition 54 received indicates that a large minority of voters in this bellwether state are convinced that people of color receive unfair racial preferences and that the solution to racism is keeping state agencies from acknowledging the existence of racial categories. In effect, any acknowledgment of race is being recast as "racist." While affirmative action has been the most visible site of the swing toward a colorblind agenda, transracial adoption has also earned the attention of the neoconservative lobby. In the context of adoption, colorblind ideology represents both children of color and white potential adoptive parents as victims of racial ideologues. Children are being forced to wait in foster homes and institutions, we are told, because of a social category they neither perceive nor understand. White parents are being penalized because of their race and denied the opportunity to build families. In this narrative, the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and the subsequent Interethnic Placement Provisions (IEP)-passed during President Bill Clinton's administration-are presented as a necessary legal defense of the right of children and potential adopters to be united regardless of race.7 In this sense, the attack on same-race placements can be seen as the resting ground for the later assault on affirmative action. "The underlying common sense notion that "love sees no color" provides a useful ideological framework for the reframing of the racial script so that those seeking to assert that race matters are recast as segregationists or ideologues. This narrowing of the discussion to a debate between two camps impoverishes our understanding of transracial adoption. It also prevents us from considering other possibilities. How would the proposed remedies change if we asked about the right of low-income parents to receive adequate economic support to keep their children, the right of women with addictions to receive treatment and continue their parental roles, or the right of children not to have their mothers taken away and put behind bars? How would the debate change if we considered the right of mothers in the global South and nations surviving the aftermath of war to food, housing, health care, and education for themselves and their children! The contributors to this volume do not limit their concerns to the terms of the existing debate. They do not seek to present either exemplary

OPARAH, SHIN, & TRENl