For some reason, I’ve been reading a lot of stories lately by people who were adopted by parents of a different race or culture. In the United States, it seems to be particularly trendy right now to go overseas to buy* children of different colors, and I’m not really sure I want to delve into that right now, but I do think it’s interesting to read stories by adoptees who have struggled with racial or cultural identity, and with the fundamental issue of not “matching.” One of the most heartbreaking essays I read in the last year was about a transracial adoption. It was by an American black professional who adopted an American white baby. She wrote about being constantly accosted by people on the street who either thought that she was a nanny, or that she had stolen her little girl.
I can kind of relate, because my mother is Chinese. My Chinese mother isn’t my biological mother, but she basically is my mother in every other sense, and I love her as ferociously and intensely as I imagine that other people love their birth mothers (or adoptive mothers, as the case may be). My biological mother may have donated genetic material, but the connection ends there.
I call my Chinese mother my mother both because she is, and because the term “stepmother” has some very loaded connotations in Chinese culture. (And, legally, she isn’t my stepmother anyway, because she and my father are not married.) So when I talk about my “mother” on this website, rest assured that it is her to whom I am referring, except in very rare cases.
When my father and my mother and I go out as a group, I very much get the “not matching” vibe from the people around us. They can’t figure out how the three of us go together, and I can almost see the gears turning in their heads as they try to cope with the idea of the three of us as a family unit. It’s not like I can pass as half-Chinese; if you were going to say I was half-anything, you’d probably think I was half German or Scandinavian.
It’s an interesting experience, and it’s also interesting to see how people relate to my mother. My mother has quite a life story, which I won’t get into here, but one of the things about her is that her English is not impeccable. (Although I bet her Chinese is better than yours!) And I think that people believe that because her English isn’t perfect, she must be slow, or stupid, or easy to take advantage of, and it makes me seethe when people treat her without the same respect they use with my father and I, since she is definitely the one who wears the pants around here, as they say.
I have heard people say pretty hateful things about my mother, and I have dutifully jumped to her defense, although she doesn’t usually need my assistance. One of the more intriguing assumptions that people make about her is that because she doesn’t speak perfect English, she must not be an American citizen. Maybe she’s…illegal. You never know. So, to be on the safe side, they are jerks to her.
In fact, my mother is an American citizen (and voter, thanks to our steady pleas). And it’s funny to see how people change when they realize that. It’s like “oh, you’re an American, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” As though citizenship status somehow dictates the way in which you should be treated. As though in a mixed-race family, the whites obviously deserve more respect.
You’d think that Americans would be used to multiracial families at this point, along with “nonconventional” families, but apparently they aren’t. No matter where we go, from the streets of Fort Bragg to the stores of Chinatown, people clearly have trouble grasping and categorizing us. Here, they exclude her, while in Chinatown, my father and I are adrift in a sea of Chinese and rapid bargaining. We defy expectations, which is not actually all that unusual these days, but apparently we stick out enough to be the targets of confusion and, yes, hatred.
My experiences are not analagous to those of people who are raised by parents of a different ethnicity. My mother came into the picture after I went to college, and I was raised by my father, so it’s not like I somehow missed out on the culture that “goes with” my skin color. But I do, in a sense, know what it’s like to straddle the racial divide. I know what it’s like to be constantly on edge in social situations because I never know when I am going to need to defend my family.
And I know what it’s like to experience fundamental cultural disconnects from within my own family. We’re like a little microcosm of the American dream sometimes, and at other times, we display all of the reasons America has failed to cope with its diversity.
*I use “buy” with care in this sense. I have some deep misgivings about transcultural adoption, not least of which is that there are some fundamental equality issues when you’re talking about white American parents adopting Asian or Latin American babies, and some transcultural adoptions are basically financial transactions in which children instead of goods or services are being purchased. Do those kids need homes? You bet. Are we doing them a disservice? Maybe. I don’t know. I am really ambiguous on this issue. I would really like to actually talk to parents and children involved in transcultural adoptions to get a better handle on this, although I have read a lot of essays discussing many sides of the issue. Right now I don’t know enough to feel confident coming down on either side of the divide.