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Race Matters

Well, at 27 years old, I can say quite confidently that I am:

~Possibly the world’s biggest dag;

~A confessed book nerd. I would rather spend money on books than clothes;

~A spelling nazi. I can spot a spelling mistake from a few kilometres away (well… maybe not quite that far!);

~A nerd. A nerd that would prefer to spend her Friday and Saturday nights at home feeling comfortable with a book than out on the town;

~Anti-social. I really dislike social events. Mainly ones that require being around a lot of people I don’t know;

~NOT a workaholic. I like to go home and not have to think about what I do from 9-5

…and I’m sure there are many more.

The saying “just be yourself” has become something of a cliche in our western societies. And although it has some nice connotations, it’s definitely one of those things that’s much more easily said than done. It has taken me 27 years to accept the above list of things about myself. Ten years ago, I was struggling to be something I’m just not: social, loud, attractive, popular, grammatically stupid. There’s no place more like high school that teaches you the contrary to “just be yourself”. But you know what? I have struggled to “just be myself”. And a lot of the time, that’s still not good enough for a lot of people, but I’m kind of over caring.

You know what I love about being around my Mum, Dad and sister? Is the feeling that I can just be myself. And things like my racial heritage and hobbies don’t really matter. I mean, I like having somewhat intellectual discussions about books and (stupid) people (LOL), but it’s nice to think I’m not being judged purely on those things. And that’s great. I’m sure that’s something my parents strived to achieve in having children: a place where their kids can feel accepted and loved (awww). And I’m sure many adoptive parents have this same sentiment in mind. Why wouldn’t you? But unfortunately, the outside world just isn’t this way, and it can be a bit of a contradiction to the values you’re being taught when you’re an adoptee of a different race to those around you behind closed doors.

One adoptive parent recently wrote about her frustrations with the things people say in regards to race and racial difference. It seems she got a little annoyed, saying how race shouldn’t really matter because we’re all human: why does it matter what piece of land we all come from? And that’s a nice thought and sentiment. It really is. But I think that what a lot of adoptive parents fail to realise and accept is that as much as it sucks, that’s just the way the world is. Furthermore, race does matter, and I don’t agree with telling this to children. Why? Because as soon as we walk out our front doors, we’re taught that it does matter, and we realise later on that it matters, because it makes up for a huge part of the people we are. Like it or not, race partially defines who we are as human beings. Yes, it might suck, yes it might make people uncomfortable, but it matters. Colour blindness is just that: blindness. It’s ignorance and it’s a failing to accept the world for what it is. Colour blindness doesn’t make you more moral than the person next to you who thinks otherwise. You’re not doing the world a favour by adopting a child. Adopting a child from a different country doesn’t mean you’re making some huge change to the world. Regardless of whether or not you adopt, the world is going to keep on spinning, and people are going to be just as narrow-minded as they always were.

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Fitting In: A Place All Us Adoptees Want to Be

I was recently asked what I thought/think about this video. It’s about three Indian American adoptees who go back to India for the first time since they were born and adopted to the US. (There’s also an article here for anyone who can’t be bothered watching the whole thing.) I had a few thoughts while watching this documentary, and I thought that what stands out quite a lot to me, as an adoptee, is the simple fact that most of us transracial adoptees “simply” want somewhere we can truly belong, because I think that’s – ultimately – a human need that many people seem to take for granted. Whether we’re Korean, Indian, Chinese, Australian… whatever, we all want/need to feel that we truly belong somewhere, and adoptees often go without that. Yes, of course we feel like we belong with our adoptive families and those that love us, but really… love cannot make up for the feeling of truly belonging somewhere; to something.

So I’m going to attempt to go through this doco and write my thoughts here. I’m not sure how far I’ll get, but we’ll see. LOL.

At the beginning, one of the adoptive mothers of one of the adoptees says:

I don’t think of Kaylan as Indian at all. I just think of her as my daughter. I don’t think of the colour difference… I don’t know how she sees herself.

I think a lot of adoptive parents are like this: colourblind. And it seems they consider this to be a positive trait. It almost seems as if it’s like justification in their actions of adopting. And I know my own family is also this way. My sister has said many times that she doesn’t see me as Korean. She just sees me as her sister. And although I know she means well, I think this attitude – from parents – only poses a “danger” to adoptees. Colour blindness ends up in ignorance of the things adoptees and children of colour go through in the wider world. It means that you’re not only blind to your child’s differences, it also means you’re blind to the experiences their differences make them targets for.

(In a less serious way, this has to be mentioned. LOL) Anisha (what a gorgeous name) says:

I love Indian food. If I could eat Indian food all the time, I would.

For what it’s worth, I feel the same way about Korean food. LOL. Not sure if that’s genetic or not, but there’s just something so familiar and homely about Korean food…

I think a lot of things are demonstrated through these three adoptees. The second one says:

I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I am, so I may as well… live it up.

I’ve sometimes thought this way: that there’s nothing I can really do about the empty feelings that come with being adopted, so I should just make the most of what I have in Australia, without Korea or any connection to it, other than my external appearance that I can’t change (not without a lot of money and a lot of plastic, anyway). But there’s a sadness that comes with thinking this way about life. It kind of feels like saying: “well, I have no hope of getting back that part of me that’s lost to adoption, so I’ll just make do with what I have”. It’s a sort of defeatist way of thinking, but the alternative poses so many challenges. Challenges that mean changing a part of who I already am, risking a part of who I am now to chase down something that may not even be possible. And could prove to only be a huge waste of time. It also means confronting things about ourselves that may be scary and may only oppose that which we’ve already learned and experienced. In one word: scary.

Anisha goes on to say:

I think I stand out really bad(ly). I’m really conscious of how I look. …if I walk into the grocery store, people look at me before they look at my Mum.

I think all of us adoptees are conscious of this. How can we not be? Others have communicated, through their accusatory looks, that we’re different to those around us.

Lizzie says:

I see myself as white. But I’m not as materialistic as a lot of Americans are.

I found this quote kind of interesting. I feel the same. That’s not to say that all non-adopted Aussies are materialistic. But I think being adopted gives you something else to think about. While others are thinking about the next pair of shoes they want to buy, we’re thinking about how we can go into that shoe store and not be looked at strangely when we want a gorgeous pair of shoe wear just as much as our blonde friends.

As stupid and as obvious as this may sound, the main difference I see between myself and the adoptees in this doco are the countries we come from. These girls go back to India and see a massive country full of poverty. As far as I know, my going back to Korea later this year is going to be very different. I doubt I’m going to see much poverty, but one of the most high-tech cities in the world, with internet that my husband only yearns for. As much as I know that Korea may have been just a little different 30 years ago, it would almost be easier to go back to my birth country and see poverty: people living in the streets with little access to basic needs. It would easily show reason as to why I may have been given up. But to see both wealth and luxury is going to be a tad difficult, and I’m almost afraid of how vulnerable and sick I may feel for a while… and I know I’m going to have to continuously remind myself that I, in all likelihood, was given up because of cultural necessities… not so much financial reasons… My birth mother is one of six. It’s likely her family isn’t living on the street…

The adoptees go on to say:

You’re seeing someone that you could have been…

But it makes you feel really isolated, too. I don’t fit in anywhere… I can’t fit in at home, and I can’t fit in here. It’s sad, because I had this picture of “I’m going to get over there and I’m going to feel like I’m part of something again… and you get here and you’re still isolated… you’re still treated different(ly).

…there’s some stuff mentioned about belief… but I think that’s worthy of a whole blog post on its own…

The cutest thing about the featured adoptees on this documentary is the friendship they make with one another. They even say:

We need to go make our own country of adopted Indian kids…!

It’s kind of testament to what I said here about wanting to start my own adoptee country: because we have identity experiences and understandings in common the way people of their nations have: that Koreans have with one another. They have common understandings of their culture, language, heritage… things we adoptees can’t share. But that absence is shared with other adoptees… I, too, wish I could start my own country with other adoptees and have others that have some deep, inherent understanding of my identity and my life.

Truthfully, there is probably a lot more I could say about this little documentary. And I probably will make that post about cultural beliefs and their place with me and adoptees. But I haven’t got the time right now. Ultimately, yes, I think adoptees have similarities, no matter what country we come from. We especially have the similarity of just wanting to belong and be with people that are like us: the main thing many of us grow up without. But I also feel that this is one of quite a few of these documentaries that seem to get made quite a lot, nowadays. There weren’t any real surprises or anything unexpected, and the main thing I saw was the differences between India and Korea. So although I can relate to what the girls go through as adoptees, I can’t really relate to who they are, racially when they go back to their country of birth. Yes, I’m sure I’ll go to Korea and feel just as isolated as I am here (maybe even more so), but I also think there are things (understandings and beliefs) that come from individual cultures… just another complexity that comes with the adoption cycle and experience.

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Aliens

Transracial adoptees—and some of their white non-adopted siblings—often talk about feeling hyper-visible, always on display whenever they go out as a family unit. Members of transracial families know that the stares, the curious questions, the offhand remarks that get directed at our families are legion. Many of us as transracial adoptees wanted nothing less than to become invisible, to fade into the woodwork so people would stop staring and asking about why we don’t look like our parents or our siblings. We wanted people to stop quizzing us about where we’re from.

My adoptee idol (if you will), John Raible, recently hit the nail on the head with the above quote. I think I have the tendency to grossly over-complicate things, when really, they’re not always that complex (well… they are, but sometimes… they’re not). Although his original post focused on the issue of same-sex couples adopting, this quote to me stood out and highlighted the very reason I believe that my life as an adoptee has made me more insecure than I (assume I) would have been, had I remained in Korea.

I have a confession: I hate aliens. In fact, I’m terrified of them. Yes, that includes ET, Men in Black… you name it, if it has aliens in it, chances are, I’m afraid of it. Although my phobia originally began from watching Coneheads as a child (yes, it’s meant to be a comedy), what scarred me even more was walking in on my sister watching Species. Although she’s two years younger than me, she’s never really been scared of stuff in movies, whereas I’m just afraid of everything. Anyway, I walked in as she was up to this part where these… things just burst out of this girl in the movie. I was so afraid. My body went all numb and I think it gave me nightmares for a couple of weeks, along with some complex that just seems to have hung around forever!

Simply put: I hate aliens. They look scary, they do scary things, they just are scary. And they stick out. You can tell when something is a space alien in movies. They just have a particular look about them. And it freaks me out.

Sometimes I feel like an alien. It’s not a nice feeling. Like the aliens in movies, it feels slimy and icky. I used to tell people that I didn’t like being the odd one out. I couldn’t put it in words at the time, but it was because I was always the odd one out, and it attracted looks from people that made me stand out even more. It wasn’t so much that I was Asian, but it was because I was the only Asian person in a family of Caucasian people. I mean, that’s not really, well… normal. Genetics doesn’t allow for an Asian person to be born from people of European backgrounds! Many adoptive parents think this isn’t really a big deal. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard/seen them say things like: “we don’t mind having an Asian child”; “we’re open to all different races”; “race doesn’t matter to us, we just want a child” etc etc. But the fact of the matter is that race does matter. Maybe not to them, but to the outside world and even the child they’re adopting. The “simple” fact that we look different from our families causes more problems and issues than people like to think. I would have been much more comfortable being Asian if I was living in an Asian family. Yes, I love my family, but that’s not enough to stop the stares, the questions and the assumptions by people outside of my family unit.

When I was in early primary school, there was a kid in my class that (I think) was adopted. I can’t remember all the details, but I remember feeling that he had less “issues” than I did. He was Caucasian and had been adopted by a Caucasian family. I remember thinking all the time: ‘he’s so lucky. He’s not Asian. People can’t really tell that he was adopted’. And it was true. I never saw other kids ask him where he was from or why he didn’t look like his parents. People simply saw him with his parents and assumed he was their biological child, I guess, based on the fact that he was just as Caucasian as they were.

I think that not looking like your family is something that’s unique to adoptees. Although we share experiences with others who aren’t adopted (like racism and such), I think the experiences we go through simply from not looking like our families is unique. If you’re someone’s biological child, even if you don’t precisely resemble your family, physically, they’re still your family and you can shrug it off and simply say “I have no idea where that came from”. But when you’re the only Asian person in a family of Caucasian people, things are a bit different, and you can’t easily brush them aside when the topic’s brought up (which is often). What’s more, is that when people (children or adults) hear that you’re adopted, it doesn’t end things at all. Just the word “adoption” opens a whole different can of worms. Although I’m OK with answering people’s questions now, it was very difficult as a child to answer questions like: “oh, where did you really come from?”; “do you speak Korean/Chinese/Asian?”; “have you met your real parents?”; “were you an orphan?”; “did you know your real parents before you came to Australia?”; “have you been back to Korea?” and the list goes on. Think back to when you were a child: how do you think you would have answered these questions/felt if you’d been their target? As a child, you don’t have the experiences that an adult has, behind them. So questions like these are an afront. They come as a shock, regardless of how much your parents may have tried to talk to you about these sorts of things.

It may sound awful, but being adopted is sometimes, well… being an alien. Although I don’t have a thousand tentacles that burst out of others, and I don’t have slimy skin and other gross features, I have often felt as though I’ve stood out just as much as they do in movies. Adoptive parents seem to think that this isn’t really a big deal, and that it can be dealt with if they love their child enough, or if they talk to them enough. But it is a big deal, and no amount of talking can really change the things we feel when confronted with the reactions of people and the world outside of our little havens of our families. Although I don’t care as much now, as a child, there’s nothing I would have loved to have more than Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, because as John Raible says:

at times, we wanted nothing more than to be invisible.

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Is Adoption “Inhumane”?

My experience as an adoptee has been that all my life I’ve faked my existence. I pretend to be whole and happy in order to function. My lack of identity is invisible. I look like any other person. I could be anyone. I have no identity of my own, so I learn to act, learn to live as a chameleon. There is nothing inside–no roots, no foundation, no continuity, no trust. Empty Cereal Box.

This Friday, Robert and I will be attending my work’s corporate Christmas party. Held at the Shangri-La Hotel, it’s a masquerade: everyone will be wearing different types of masks, and there are even prizes for the best masks on the night. A few months ago, I was asked to write the copy for the poster that’s been hanging around our offices, since. I attempted to make the whole thing sound a little… magical. I don’t remember everything I wrote, but the end went something like: “come and enjoy a magical end to the year!”. In other words: “escape the mediocrity of everyday life, and spend the evening in a very different context”. (Of course, that wasn’t exactly my line of thought while I was writing, but when you think about it, that’s sort of what’s being said!) Last week Robert and I purchased our masks for the event. My mask is this big red and gold thing, complete with a couple of bells and velvety material – not exactly your everyday get-up.

*****

There are many things in this world I don’t know. I hardly know basic mathematics. Adoptees, generally, don’t know the people we were born from. We don’t know the people we look like. We don’t know our mother tongues (for transracial adoptees, anyway.) We don’t know the ins and outs of our birth cultures. We don’t know our medical histories – the things that run in our veins – things that could have been passed down to us thousands of years prior to our births. We don’t know whose eyes we have; whose senses of humour we have (or may not have, in my case); whose hair we have, whose height we have… and the list just goes on.

However, inherently, we do all know one thing.

The lives we have been living as adoptees, are not the lives we were born into. On some level, they’re not our “real” lives.

So what? you say. Many people seem to have that reaction. So what? Just be happy with what you’ve got. Many people’s lives change. Just get on with things the way they are. Right?

As a child, and throughout my development, I tried to agree with this viewpoint. I mean, I had a loving family; a roof over my head; dinner every night… what more could I need?

Throughout this past week, I’ve found myself thinking about adoption on a biological level. Funnily enough, this was never something I’d really thought about before. Which, now, seems a little strange to me. But I was brought up so much to believe that biological links didn’t really matter, that I never really questioned it. For a while, I think I really did believe that it didn’t matter. Who cares whether cancer runs in my veins. Right? I mean… isn’t that, really… all there is to the biological side? I never really needed my birth mother… did I? Hmm…

Early psychological studies, dating back to 1940, are clear about the affects of separating the infant from its mother. It is clear that a baby only feels safe in the loving, nurturing presence of the human being who created it. In fact, we do not need psychological studies to tell us this. Each one of us knows it, instinctively. If we know this, why do we ignore our natural instincts? Why do we continue to ignore sound psychological advice, when we become aware of the destruction that ensues when this knowledge is not heeded? If you look at a baby who is hungry, who needs his nappy changing, who becomes enraged when separated from his mother in those crucial early months, during which time this sacred bond teaches him that the world is a safe place to be, it is clear that this tiny infant has an awareness of what is happening around him, that he can already distinguish his mother from other people. And yet, conventional ‘wisdom’ preaches that the baby will not know the difference. The rage, that is the natural way for this infant to express its unfulfilled needs will be suppressed, and at some point, in order to heal, the adoptee will have to live it out, either in a healthy way, or as is sadly often the case, in a violent way. It is not unknown for this rage to be targeted towards adoptive parents, who are at times confronted with children who threaten their lives, and cannot understand why children they have loved and raised can suddenly become vengeful and hateful. Stephen Fitzpatrick.

In referring back to the quote at the top of this post, I really do feel that “faking it” is a perfect way of explaining how I’ve always felt as an adoptee. I have different masks for different situations, but inside, deep down… I’m empty. Empty because there’s something missing from me as individual – certain things that everyone around me seems to just… inherently have. And empty because I just don’t know – I don’t know what’s within me… what my biology holds; what my history contains. Instead, I feel as though I’m constantly wearing a mask – a mask that looks like what everyone else has naturally. But I’m afraid to take that mask off – afraid that everyone will see what’s underneath… even I don’t know what’s underneath… in learning Korean, I feel as though perhaps I’m trying to form some sort of more solid identity – a firmer foundation… something I’m OK with. Yet it’s still so far out of my reach…

 

Furthermore… is it “unnatural” for me to be living the only life I’ve known? When you think about it… we’re all animals… and when it comes down to our biology… is adoption inhumane? Is it, at its most basic level, taking a baby away from what it really needs? Not just in the first few months of life, but in the first few years? Do I have particular personality traits that have come as a result of being abandoned? Of having been taken away from what was “natural” for me?

 

I don’t really have answers to these questions… but they’re questions which I hope to explore further in the future. Because I think it will help me develop a more solid stance in adoption, therefore helping me to find what else I really want from living in my body. When I think about adoption from a purely biological standpoint, it looks very different. It almost totally annihilates the position adoptive parents have – it means that they’ve done something against basic human nature, and although I don’t always consider myself to be an “angry adoptee”, this does make me a little mad – to think that I was denied what human beings need as infants, in order for them to grow up happy, healthy and secure.

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