"Your first non-white friend shouldn't be your child" this right here should be part of screening for transracial adoption.

@Mariathinking

2 жыл бұрын

How do you feel about the statement 'your first non black friend shouldn't be your child' in regards to a black person adopting a white kid?

@JayLew91

2 жыл бұрын

@@Mariathinking I feel the same way, except one is less likely to spew racism and mircro-agressions. This isn't a "what about..." situation.

@phightinphils13

2 жыл бұрын

@@Mariathinking "what about.... ?" Come on Maria, deep down, you know the difference.

@cool_sword

2 жыл бұрын

@@Mariathinking I feel like you don't have any black friends, and you feel called out.

@Mariathinking

2 жыл бұрын

@@cool_sword hahahah. I'm mixed race and I have friends from all over the world. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they are from a different demographic. I've seen rascism on both sides it needs to stop.

My uncle John is black and was adopted by my grandparents. With my uncle, he grew up in suburban Maryland. It was brutal for him, my mom and him were very close, and he and she both faced extreme bullying because of his race. On multiple occasions my uncle had to use force to defend my mom from physical assault, luckily he's huge (like 6ft 4 and naturally muscular, meanwhile the rest of my family is tiny lol). He eventually fell in with a bad crowd, became addicted to crack and is now in prison for the rest of his life because of 3 strikes laws. I believe my uncle is a good man dealt a terrible hand. I think he's better off for being adopted, and my grandparents did the best they could have. My family now supports my uncle's family however we can, we are nearly the only family they have while not being "related by blood". It's rare I even think about this though. They are my family, and so we support them however we can unconditionally. The suburbs my mom and uncle and their siblings grew up in was very low income and so my uncle had plenty of exposure to other black families, and honestly I don't think he ever had any major problems with his identity. This isn't super related but I feel the need to say this for the sake of informing anyone reading: my uncle is a slave. He is in prison and works without pay. He is in a Texas prison with a disgusting lack of AC. He has been wrongfully put in solitary for over a week at least once. All this because of substance abuse. He should have been given healthcare, instead he is brutalized daily. His family suffered financially because of this too. This is systemic racism, and its heartbreaking. Probably the longest comment I've ever left, just wanted to throw out my own limited perspective, thanks for the great video.

@imanelsafy

2 жыл бұрын

Reading your comment is honestly quite heartbreaking. Our criminal justice system is truly one of the most disgusting and racist in the ‘developed’ world.

@heidifink991

2 жыл бұрын

Breaks my heart to read this.

@alexandreocadiz9967

2 жыл бұрын

@@imanelsafy i'm pretty sure the American prison system is the one of the worst in the entire world, not just the so called "developed" world. It has been pinned by Amnesty international and I think the list of comparable country is comprised of a dozen or so countries :/

@imanelsafy

2 жыл бұрын

@@alexandreocadiz9967 you’re probably right. I just didn’t want to say the entire world and have someone come along to call me an idiot and tell me about all of the ‘third world’ countries with worse prison systems.

@majorhoolahan

2 жыл бұрын

I'm glad you were careful about making blanket statements when you didn't have enough information to back it up. I'm not here to defend American prison systems, just wanted to encourage good practice. Even if it stems from truths or "good intentions," people are often extremely quick to get caught up in radical statements that don't help anyone learn, they just default into petty arguing. In any case, you don't need to know about most prison conditions worldwide to understand how flawed the average U.S. prisons are.

I think its worth mentioning that international adoption can be a very corrupt business, with everything from coercing parents to give up their children to abduction.

@TheMister123

2 жыл бұрын

That's one of the reasons that I'm glad my wife and I ended up with an in-state domestic adoption process with a lot of checks and balances. Our daughter's birth mother approached the agency, not the other way around. And she chose us to adopt her baby. We had started with an international adoption, and we frequently questioned the process (we felt it was our duty to at least ask). Ethiopia (where we were initially adopting from) frankly lacks the infrastructure to make the process as transparent as we would have liked it to be, so questions like, "How much more can we learn about this child's background?" were all too frequently met with, "We just don't know. And it would be next to impossible to find out under the circumstances. Sorry." The child we would have adopted was a foundling from near the border with South Sudan, and we just had to trust that that's what she was, as opposed to a smuggled child. When that adoption fell through, at first we were devastated. But once we went through the domestic adoption process, we realized how much more comfortable we were with how much more ethical it could be just by nature of having a single, robust regulatory framework that everyone was doing their best to follow, in contrast to the hodgepodge of underfunded and underdeveloped agencies worlds apart from each other for the international process.

@gogetyourgun1490

2 жыл бұрын

Korea was involved in sketchy adoption over the past decades

@Vhlathanosh

2 жыл бұрын

@@gogetyourgun1490 Ethiopia too

@ladydontekno

2 жыл бұрын

A friend of mine was adopted from Colombia around 1977-1978. The agency told her parents that her biological parents had died in a car accident. When she was around 22 her biological sister (who was adopted by a different family) contacted her. Her sister had gone to Colombia to do research on her family, and it turned out that not only had their parents not died in a car accident, they were still very much alive.

@gogetyourgun1490

2 жыл бұрын

@@ladydontekno I heard sketchy stories of Colombian kids getting stolen from their parents through adoption. Did you know why she was technically "kidnapped"?

Huge coincidence! I was just talking about this online. I’m a black transracial adoptee raised by two white parents and in nearly all white surroundings. I was adopted as an infant and had a somewhat rocky time growing up with my other adopted and nonadopted siblings. I personally find this experience alienating, isolating, and deeply traumatic. My parents no matter their intentions did not interrogate their ideals and allowed white saviorism and racism to affect their views, as they believed in the curse of Cain. They were unequipped to assist me with racism as one of the most enduring and painful challenges of my life. And because they didn’t associate with any people of color in any meaningful way I’ve had to deal with this without any guidance from living beings (So thanks for making this it feels great to be seen!) Any attempt to help them understand and overcome is taken as a personal slight due to white fragility I guess. :(

@Bellz179

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing your story - I was browsing the comments to see whether there were any transracial adoptees who related to this video. I’ve watched other KZreadrs who are also transracial adoptees who share their similar experiences. It is heartbreaking to hear and I wish adoption agencies took this seriously and implemented it when white people want to adopt non-white children.

@travcollier

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah... Not good. I do want to note that the essence of your story is shared by a lot of people who aren't transracial adoptees... Any sort of "different" is enough. Am I right in guessing your parents and community were rather religious? FWIW: A few of my friends growing up were adoptees "saved" from "poor countries" by "good Christians". Lots of scare quotes there... My kid is biracial but passes as white (or Hawaiian when we lived there) until someone talks with him and realizes his brain works a bit differently... Then they tend to forget about race and just see "weird" :(

@seanmatthewking

2 жыл бұрын

Is it white fragility if I think the term “white fragility” is a disrespectful term? It sounds like you’re assigning an entire group a negative psychological characteristic. And no doubt racial dynamics affect the psychology of groups in different ways, so I don’t think it’s a preposterous idea or something wrong to talk about. I just think it’s a bad term.

@travcollier

2 жыл бұрын

@@seanmatthewking I think most everyone understands the term "white fragility" describes a trait of *some* white people. So, yeah, misconstruing it as a blanket description of the whole non-race race is sort of an example of it ;) I'm more concerned about folks mistakenly thinking certain problems/challenges are due to race issues when they really cut across races. Can't fix (or mitigate) a problem if you think it is caused by the wrong thing. Systemic racism is real and very prevalent, but it isn't everything.

@jcspoon573

2 жыл бұрын

Damn, I am sorry for your experience. A college friend was a transracial adoptee. His family fell to the trope of becoming pregnant while going through the adoption process (when they had previously had no luck conceiving). However, his childhood was quite different. His parents (Italian, father 2nd generation) tried everything they could to accommodate and adapt for him. It worked pretty well, he and his brother were very close friends, and the black kid often teasing he was the favorite child, after all, he was named for his adoptive father (literally, he was a Junior). Also (as this was university) they joked that they looked alike ... from the waist down at least.

As a white lady who has always known that I would be adopting and not birthing my own children, I appreciate anyone adding to this conversation. I am getting near to the stability I feel is required to enter the process, and am just trying to prepare myself (as much as I can) for all directions this path might take me. Thank you!

@stoodmuffinpersonal3144

2 жыл бұрын

I am glad you are watching something like this, before considering adoption, too!

@halallen9195

2 жыл бұрын

Be prepared for the racism you will face, especially if you adopt children of color. People who you didn't think were racist might surprise you. Also, be mindful of your own biases

@doktormabuse4794

2 жыл бұрын

@@halallen9195 Also don't take orders from guys named Hal.

@colinhobbs7265

2 жыл бұрын

@@doktormabuse4794 Guys named Hal usually aren't a problem, but computers named Hal are something you should really be watching out for.

@weetdoog

2 жыл бұрын

same here haha

As a transracial adoptee (I’m Chinese, parents are white) who has been trying to grapple with issues related to this recently I was curious what you had to say. It’s funny that my personal experiences are almost the opposite to the common ones - my parents, and mom in particular, definitely made an effort to acknowledge the role my race would play in my life. However as I have grown older, and especially over the last year, she has come to think of herself ‘culturally’ asian (in fact she believes that parents can ‘become’ whatever culture their adopted child is). To be honest I’ve always felt she’s desperate to disassociate herself from her whiteness and I'm still figuring out how to feel about that. It’s a topic that affects each transracial adoptee differently for sure and I appreciate seeing more people talk about it!

@T1J

2 жыл бұрын

That's an interesting perspective, I don't think I've heard of that kind of thing before

@seanmatthewking

2 жыл бұрын

That’s pretty strange, and it actually brings the conversation back to the Rachel Dolezal kind of transracialism. In general I think it’s a mistake for any white personal to try to disassociate from their whiteness. I don’t see my whiteness as attached to any particular characteristics. I’m white purely because of where my ancestors are from, and because that’s the term our culture uses for people who look like me. If I’m more like your average Chinese person than your average white person, I’m still white. Perhaps your adopting mom is just trying to be closer to you in some way. Like she feels the racial identity differences create some sort of distance between you. I don’t know, just spit-balling. This conversation can definitely be more complicated for biracial people. And in a way, your parents/kids are a part of you, even in the case of adoption. So maybe there’s a part of you, however small, that always identifies with the race of your parents or kids.

@austensg9596

2 жыл бұрын

Oh wow, that sounds complicated. I hope that, if you want to, you can talk to your mother about that viewpoint and how it makes you feel (and also how it plays into white supremacy, if ya want to go there).

@killerfoxes2909

2 жыл бұрын

On one hand, I immedietely feel offput, and I do not, think thatsomeone can become another group culturally, and YET… I’ve lived in South Korea for 11 years. I have absorbed much of the culture. I do find myself hovering somewhere between being American and being Korean sometimes, and I’ve even had Americans accuse me of being too Korean (those Americans were usually prejudice against Korean culture). Hmm, so it, as usual, bothers me. If an Asian person can move to a Western country and eventually be accepted as a member of that Western country’s culture, why can’t the same happen to a Western person moving to an Asian culture. In fact the primary reason I haven’t dived MORE into Korean culture is I long ago realized I would always be Waegookin (a foreigner) even if I lived here for 40 years. So the question is, how do we seperate ethnicity from culture, in particular in countries that still has one ethnicity that is almost completely representative of tbat country’s identity. For example, if I moved to Singapore, this would not be an issue. Singaporean is an identity not associated with one ethnicity, so it doesn’t have the same issues I am discussing here. Hmm sorry if this was ramballing snd off topic, it just touched on one of my biggest insecurities. My partner and I are planning to leave Korea and try outliving in Canada, and I realisd if I lived in Canada even as short as 5 years, both my partner (who is Korean) and myself could probably start calling ourselves “Canadian”. It also makes me really frustrated that I willhave 0 connection to Korea. As soon as I leave people will no longer associate me with Korea. That makes me really sad. I consider Seoul my hometown (ive lived there longer than any other place in my life). I found my identity in Seoul, and I grew up in Seoul. That part of me feels unfairly taken once I leave. Anyways, I am done.

@sarahisaacs6738

2 жыл бұрын

@@killerfoxes2909 that's really tough. I think a lot of purple are worried about transracialism and cultural appropriation and they fail to remember that humans are literally built on culture and that culture changes over time. Human cultures are constantly shifting. They have to, in order to survive. Some change faster than others but that's besides the point. Humans adapt to the culture they're in. It's natural. I think it's really interesting that you're white Korean. I see where you're coming from though, that you're "forever foreign." A lot of Asian people get this in the U.S., too (e.g., "Where are you REALLY from?"). I hope that someday others will accept you as Korean. I don't know if this counts for anything, but I'm a grad student in sociology so I literally study this stuff. And I would acknowledge you as Korean.

It must be so heartbreaking for parents of any skin color to tell their little innocent child who happens to be non-white that their race matters bc some people in this world are just bad.

@TheBiggestMoronYouKnow

2 жыл бұрын

It must be worse to see them experience it. Or even more common is white parents don’t engage it at all and become white supremacists

There was an elderly white couple who adopted a Korean boy who played with my son a lot. He had a Korean flag in his room and a Korean name but that was the only thing his adopted parents did to acquaint him with his culture. Recently I saw on Instagram that he traveled to Korea and met his birth family. He has four brothers!!!! Unfortunately he was kidnapped and that is how he became an adoptee. My daughter has a friend from Central America who was adopted by a white family who recently learned he was kidnapped too. This is way too common.

@michiel1162

2 жыл бұрын

i thought adopting kids was free of charge, what the hell do the kidnappers earn by doing this

@Jo-tv6sj

2 жыл бұрын

@@michiel1162 You're aware of child trafficking.. right? The bastards that kidnapped them likely sold them off to orphanages. edit: Adoption isn't free in many countries. In mine, it can range roughly from $0 for public to $30,000 for foreign.

@leanysealvarado7499

2 жыл бұрын

@@michiel1162 don’t know. I don’t kidnap children 🤷🏾‍♀️

@michiel1162

2 жыл бұрын

@@leanysealvarado7499 solid response haha

@morley364

2 жыл бұрын

My partner is a Korean adoptee, and for the most part he says he tries to ignore that part of himself, as while he was always aware he wasn't white, he thought it never seemed relevant to his identity. He also doesn't feel truly 'Asian', so he feels like an imposter in Asian-American/Korean-American oriented discussions or spaces. He has no strong feelings about meeting his bio family, saying he wouldn't mind meeting them if they reached out. He also takes longer to realize when he's experiencing micro aggressions- when he's asked what his country is like, when he moved here, jokes about driving, etc., the people around him will realize what the person means, but at the beginning he tends to assume they're asking about the US, or when we moved to a particular city/neighborhood, or just general jokes about driving. He's genuinely shocked when he realizes what they mean, and sometimes at the end of the interaction he still isn't aware if someone said something rude or assumed he was a foreigner. However, over the years, his thoughts about his identity have slowly been changing. When we were discussing places we'd like to travel to someday, he said Korea instantly, and was more excited about it than any other option. He's also started slowly exploring Korean media, food, and language more as well, in part in expectation of our possible future trip. He has older siblings who were in the orphanage as well, and he recently mentioned being actively interested in reaching out to them, and the recent rise in Asian hate crimes also sparked a desire to know more about the Asian-American community. I think how someone forms/relates to their identity is definitely a process, and for some people it may take their entire lives.

Thank you for this conversation! I’m a Chinese adoptee by white parents. My parents specifically adopted my older sister (also from China, not bio) had my brother biologically and then adopted me. While I’ve been raised in a very white area, I’ve still been able to make meaningful connections with other Asian adoptees. It also greatly helped having my sister, someone who has gone through similar and unique struggles of transracial adoption. My parents always acknowledged our heritage, telling us our “adoption” story, helping out at Chinese heritage camp, celebrating lunar new year, etc. Even with that though, there are stills struggles of experiencing the racism/stereotyping for looking Chinese without having the cultural backup; a big part of my identity and struggle to understand myself, among coming of age. A wonderful experience was going to China with my family for a few weeks. We actually visited both my orphanage and my sister’s. It was an odd feeling standing in the spot I was left. This comment is too long, but I just wanted to give my two cents

@Setsunako6587

Жыл бұрын

Your comment is extremely valuable and not at ALL too long, Love. TAKE UP SPACE 🙌🏾🥳

"Your child should not be your first black friend" is such an interesting quote

I think another thing is that more children from non-adopted families should be made more aware of adoption and its legitimacy. The lack of this is especially harmful with interracial adoption, since the adoption is often more obvious. My sister is adopted from China, and I'm a biological (white) child, and as a young kid I'd hear things like, "that's not your real sister though." I imagine she got all sorts of weird/insensitive comments too, before even being old enough to know what to do about them. Adults probably tend to be more mindful when confronted with adoption directly, but I don't think are always mindful enough to explain these things to their children. Doesn't mean they're bad parents, it's just something that doesn't cross their minds to educate on if all of their kids are biological.

@ladydontekno

2 жыл бұрын

I was a child in the 80s which was easily the BEST time to be an adoptee. So much of kid culture back then focused on adoptees (tv shows like Diff’rent Strokes and Punky Brewster, Cabbage Patch Kids, etc). And yet we all *still* got the intrusive and rude questions (“why didn’t your real parents want you?”).

@anitrahooper5031

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for sharing your experience. It reminded me of my half siblings, one of which was white(I'm mixed black & white). So many people to this day don't believe we are real siblings. Even if we didn't come from the same womb kwhich we did) we all grew up together. My two half brothers are step siblings to each other. Still siblings raised in the same home. The "real" child/parent language is so damaging to relationships. It creates its own trauma & separation instead of the additional support & expansion of family it should be!

@richardbond258

2 жыл бұрын

@@anitrahooper5031 Same here. I don't look like any of my half siblings but my sister who is brown gets mistaken as not being related more than the others. It is difficult at times. We are really close.

@thevoid8948

2 жыл бұрын

Bruh. This was my WHOLE. CHILDHOOD. “that ain’t your aunt” “that ain’t your uncle” mind your white business

@jordanmintz5811

2 жыл бұрын

as an adoptee, one of my biggest pet peeves is being asked "do you know who your ✨real parents✨ are?", even though it's usually well-intentioned... i always answer that i know who my *biological* parents are since it was an open adoption, but my *real* parents are the ones who raised me. also, when will writers stop including romantic subplots between adoptive siblings that get dismissed as okay because they're "not really related"??

Personally my concerns about transracial adoption feel pretty similar to people who seems to have bio-kids as some kind of accessory, or a mini version of them. There's nothing wrong with the act itself, but if you are doing it for yourself and not the child, that must have a negative impact on the kid's upbringing.

@roguechevelle

2 жыл бұрын

completely agree about the issues even with biological children, if the parent choses to have children to have someone to love them instead of someone to love instead or to have a version of themselves or frankly they think that's just what your suppose to do in society is have kids, it's not healthy for the child. I often became upset with the pressure I've faced with people not understand why as a female I have chosen not to have children or raise them. I've had all kinds of things thrown at me even someone tell me that I was "being selfish by not having them" or continuing the population, like how? How if I don't want to raise children is it selfish for me to choose not to have them? I think it's more selfish to have children when I don't want the responsibility of raising them. People also assume I just don't like kids in general which isn't the case. With all the mental health issues I have as well and rough upbringing I had I would never want that to carry over to a child whether biologically or through my parenting. I don't know if many people can understand this belief that I don't usually talk openly about but I love my child enough to not have them. Of course later in life I might regret it because I'm lonely or no ones there to take care of me in my old age but again that's not a real reason to have children either. I think people don't think of children as people with their own personality, wants, and autonomy. My mom loves me I know but she only seems to love me because she gave birth to me, she only views me as her baby even though I'm 35 yrs old now. And don't get me wrong I understand that mothers view their children as their babies but the problem is she doesn't also see me as my own person separate from her. She doesn't seem to know anything about me as a person or as I've become an adult. She doesn't know my likes my dislikes, my sense of humor, how I view things and it's not for lack of trying on my part. I've recently had to move back in with her after moving out at age 20 because of a very bad divorce, I lost my house and the life I built. I'm very grateful to everything she has done for me during this difficult time, she was there for me when I needed it most. But at the same time after a few months of being here she reverted back to her old ways of being extremely overbearing and controlling, she only sees me as a child. I remembered why I moved out in the first place not just that I was a grown adult but me living with her put a real strain on our relationship in general. I'm still working out some things trying to put my life together again but as soon as I'm on my feet I will have to leave or it's going to cause our relationship more issues.

@user-od4zo1ow6d

Жыл бұрын

I just can't understand why any white person would want a black kid. There are plenty of beautiful white babies who need homes. Stick with your own kind in breeding and adopting. Crows don't adopt Sparrows. Chickens don't mate with hawks. Love your own race.

I’m not adopted, but I’m mixed race and I feel like I’ve got some similar experiences as transracial adoptees. My father is Afro-Cuban and my mother is white, but my dad still to this day insists that he is not black, and has always distanced us from that part of our heritage. The way he sees it, he has very little culturally in common with the black community in the US; he grew up speaking Spanish, eating rice/beans/platano and absolutely never traditional soul foods at home, they listened to Spanish music and watched telenovellas. But our ancestors were literally slaves brought to Cuba by the Spanish. We ARE black. And I was assumed to be black most of my life. But my parents told me that I was not black my entire life, I didn’t learn the truth until I was 17 or 18. And it made a lot more sense when I learned the truth. I’ve got very big, puffy textured hair, I’ve got a wide set nose, things people have always looked at and seen as black. I feel like I would have understood more about myself and why I looked so different if my parents had been honest with me. But instead they raised me in a raceblind home in a majority white neighbourhood and never taught me Spanish or gave me any connection to any of my cultures.

@hm.7959

2 жыл бұрын

Does he think black only applies to black Americans

@shells500tutubo

2 жыл бұрын

@@hm.7959 Unfortunately many people from Spanish-speaking countries and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean, Central and South America do. Some feel superior to US Black people, , some are afraid they will not have the same opportunities as white Americans if they are perceived as regular Black Americans. I am whiter than most white people, but definitely Black American, and it is always amusing in a not funny way when one of those people, ten shades darker than I am, insists that they are not "Black". I tell them that the test for whether you are Black or not is how that cop perceives you, with your brown skin and kinky hair. That cop is not interested in the nuances of nationality. I have found that they also conflate nationality with race and think that somehow insisting they are Puerto Rican or Dominican or Cuban will somehow make them white.

@jonutsthedanklordpayton

2 жыл бұрын

If you have no connection to your cultures than they're not your cultures. Cultures are not related by heritage, instead of culture is a set of social ideas and social practices. It takes more than just being the related to the people who practice that culture to be part of that culture. And I speak from experience here I'm Ashkenazi a Jew yet I have absolutely no connection to the Jewish people in any way shape or form.

@safs3098

2 жыл бұрын

If he insists he's not "black" then he's not. Black is only an American ethnic classification, not the rest of the world, he's Afro-Caribbean and that's the end of it.

@Py687

2 жыл бұрын

I'm Chinese. I have whitewashed friends whose families have been in the US for generations. If you want to reclaim your heritage I think it's entirely your right to do so, and great that you do! At the same time personally I would respect that your father does not feel the same. Edited for tone. I don't want this taken the wrong way!

Touchy subject about the heroism aspect. Even though the adopting parent is technically saving them (from growing up in a group home), its also that the kid is in a way saving the parent too. They don't have a child of their own, they feel a void, and the adopted kids "saves" them from this void feeling.

@T1J

2 жыл бұрын

I like this take

@grutarg2938

2 жыл бұрын

This reminds me of remarks I often get about my wife (who has a disability). People say to me "She's so lucky you found her. She's so lucky you put up with her disability." We're lucky to have found each other. She has to put up with my nonsense too. I bet there's a place in this conversation for parents who adopt kids - of all races - with known disabilities too.

I am white and adopted my two black sons from foster care as infants. For a white person, I'm pretty "woke," but even so when my older son was first placed in my home, it's like the scales fell from my eyes and I became aware of racism in myself as well as society on a whole other level. I did a TON of research, about adoption in general, and transracial adoption in particular, and have taken those lessons to heart. For anyone considering transracial adoption, PLEASE read up about it from the experience of adoptees, not only adoptive parents. Be aware of the obligation you have to your child - that YOU cannot raise them with a sense of their racial/ethnic identity, and therefore it is your responsibility to form meaningful relationships with your child's community. Find Black/Latinx/Asian people who can mentor your child, because there are things we as white people CANNOT teach. NEVER deny your child's racial/ethnic identity. You may think you're colorblind, but the world sure isn't. Honesty really is the best policy when it comes to adoption.

@devonmunn5728

2 жыл бұрын

I want to have kids myself, both biological and adoptive. And when I do make adopt a kid if they are from another country I want to make sure they know who they are, An example having access to people from said community as well as being fluent in their mother tongues and get to be apart of that and not have it erased from them EDIT: After watching a bit more of this video it does remind me why i don't want to do closed adoptions because I want that option to contact the kids bio parents

@ritawilbur7343

2 жыл бұрын

@@devonmunn5728 I am totally in favor of open adoption! We've had a relationship with my older son's biological family since day 1, and it's such a blessing, because it means if he ever has any questions, he knows where to go for answers. The relationship with my younger son's family is mainly a contact, not an active relationship. But if he ever did want to pursue it, we do at least have that contact. I think open adoption is a very, very good thing.

@devonmunn5728

2 жыл бұрын

@@ritawilbur7343 Yeah I hate the idea of closed adoption where the kid would have to go through a tough time tracking down their parents

@sadem1045

2 жыл бұрын

@@devonmunn5728 Sometimes it's necessary for the child's sake. I know that from watching my sister meet her birth family. It was really upsetting to watch and I'm sure much harder to experience.

@devonmunn5728

2 жыл бұрын

@@sadem1045 I do know that it is up to the child. I just like to have that option in case the kid wants to as well as to maybe update the family on how they are doing

I'm a transracial adoptee and so much in this video resonated with me. My white mother raised my siblings and me with a colorblind approach. Honestly, it was so harmful. I truly believe it's dangerous to do this. In doing so, you are not teaching your kids the tools they need to recognize, communicate, and deescalate racism and racist encounters. It was so confusing to feel upset after someone said a racist joke or statement to me, then not be able to identify and explain what happened. Also, I feel too many transracial adoptive parents don't understand you have to continue choosing your children. This is reflected in your political decisions and advocating for them. So many people don't understand that parents' love won't fix or override oppression. If you truly love your kids, this affects who and what you vote for, recognizing internalized bigotry, and trying to create a better world for your kid. Also, this last part doesn't just apply to transracial adoption.

@AnbaLen

2 жыл бұрын

I especially resonate with the part about ‘continuing choosing your children in political decisions, etc.’ As per example, my parents are great people but their visions on immigrants f*cked me up for a big time in my life and I never had the words to really understand why until I recently, for the last few years, really sat down and faced my identity as an adoptee which I had been subconsciously avoiding on a deeper level. That’s when I realised that some of their ideas about immigrants hurt me a lot. I consider immigrants ‘my people’ in that I see myself in those who came over, often not by choice, to this country and then had to fit in but likely never would be accepted just because of their language/culture/looks. Because nobody takes the effort to learn about them. Because they immediately assume that this process is a one-way street and we (the people who were born somewhere else or in another culture/ethnicity. etc.) only need to fit into their square hole without any real look at what shape we have and what we could contribute. Note that my parents are pretty progressive people and certainly not your classic stereotype American redneck racist individual. But there are such small things like these that have hurt me continuously and made me lose confidence in myself. It made me feel very alone in it. It felt I wouldn’t be heard if I did try to communicate my issues since they kept sharing and affirming these views, which I felt rejected by. Surely, I knew [what they meant], but in their way of thinking I’d be one of the rejected ones And when they make these choices even politically or hold up in those circles, then where do I fit in? I might never fit in there. It feels as if I’m just being ‘tolerated’ in these circles because those views do not include me. It just happened that I was adopted by them, their choice, that they made an exception for me. But if I hadn’t been adopted by them, they might’ve considered me exactly the same way and all those choices would impact me even worse than they do now. Which they do, despite me having the privilege of having a caucasian European family. As a kid, I never saw the ‘wrong’ in that. Their visions were only ‘logical and practical’ and I was just not doing my best to be part of it. Even if I now know it’s a losing game for me. I kept blaming myself for not fitting in or not being enough to live up to their vision of what ‘is acceptable behaviour as a foreigner’. It was to the point that I felt I had to prove myself 5 times as much as others that I indeed fit in and that I am allowed to exist. This caused me a number of recurring issues growing up. I would dislike people of my origin ethnicity because they were not ‘behaving’ and the reason why people looked weird at me,. But at the same time I felt I wanted to know more about that group because they looked like me and I felt that was also a part of me. Even as an adult, I’m still working through these things. It is only harder the longer you live with it because it starts to tie in with other problems as well or evolve into what it hadn’t need to become. My parents are doing their best right now. But if they had gone deeper into it before, then they could’ve avoided some harsh conversations which I’ve kept in for a while. They understand more now, because I do not mean to hurt or blame them continuously. But I am also honest to say that because of who I am, I cannot align with their views completely. It’s like playing a game of which the rules are discriminating you. I’ve grown up smart enough, thanks to them, to understand that, that is stupid. So there is some ultimatum that if they don’t even take the effort to learn, then I don’t think I can stay with them. It’s like mixing water and oil then. It will never work out because of who I simply [am] and who they [choose] to be. 🤷🏻‍♀️ But what can-ya-do. I have to add to this some understanding for the poor parents, as if parenting isn’t hard enough by itself: Those organisations back in my day mis/underinformed parents like crazy. My parents are swell people, but what they prepared for was certainly not enough for what landed on their doorstep 😂. Still, considering the times and the information at the time, they did a good job. Parents these days, however, have little to no excuse. I do hope they’ll educate themselves properly. I don’t wish some of my issues on anybody, especially not when they can be avoided by a good google and ASKING adoptees and other people involved in the process. It’s 2021, let’s get it right~!

@AnimusBehemoth

2 жыл бұрын

Literally started clapping as I finished your last paragraph. Well damn said, and I'm sorry you had to navigate such trauma.

@shinobi-no-bueno

2 жыл бұрын

Sounds like she tried to raise you to be above racism but you felt compelled to drag yourself down into the muck. Racism is ridiculous, anti scientific and vile. Why take someone like that seriously?

@jhonklan3794

Жыл бұрын

i feel bad for your parents.

I am a transracial adoptee and let me tell you it was hard. I was adopted back in 1994 even back then such uncomfortable topics such as racism, systemic racism, were brought up to help future adoptive parents (in particular White ones) to consider the implications of adopting a child who was a person of colour. Despite my adoptive mother's best efforts, she couldn't fully prepare me, herself or my extended family about the microaggressions I would receive on a daily basis. For many White people, conversations about race simply don't occur as often at they would for people of colour. Having brutally honest conversations about races with their school-age child is not at the forefront of their mind. Racism is often perceived/portrayed as being an isolated incidence in a post-civil rights society or it does exist but conversations about its insidious impact on people of colours communities are barely addressed. Sadly, my adoptive mother applies a "colour blinded" perspective when it came to adopt me. I don't think she was honest with herself about potential subconscious biases she may have harboured towards Black people. Sadly, at a young age, I knew that I was starkly different from everyone else in my adoptive family. From the moment I was 4 o5 I just knew that I was seen as other in both my family and the predominately White city, I grew up in. I can recall being called the N-word when I was only 7 years of age and thought-out my childhood there were microaggressions coming from extended family members and racist remarks from people in the community. I struggled with my racial identity in my teens and finally, at the age of 31, I am finally comfortable being Black. A part does wish I was adopted by a different person. However, a part of me wished I had grown up in Haiti. Being adopted can be difficult because there are persistent feelings of abandonment, feelings of being displaced and worse of all feeling unwelcomed in your adoptive family. My adoptive mother tried her best to surround me with other Haitian adopted children and take me to various African cultural events, yet it was not enough. I wish my aunts and uncles took be introspective enough to realize it is damn hard living in a White family when you're Black and people otherize you in society simply for existing.

@MelancholicRobot42

2 жыл бұрын

Who the hell says that to a child? It’s bad enough when it happens to adults.

@jacksparrowismydaddy

2 жыл бұрын

mid seventies for me. I feel ya on the bully front. sometimes I wonder if I was bullied because of ADHD/APD symptoms or my skin color. as a kid I didn't think it was my skin color because there were 3 minorities in the school besides me and they were popular but now I'm not so sure. maybe it was both. teachers pretty much gave them permission to pick on me.

@DimaRakesah

2 жыл бұрын

It's so sad that people will treat a child in their family poorly if they are not the same color as them >.< I come from a white family, and I honestly cannot say that mine wouldn't do this too.

@Mayflower-xo8ew

2 жыл бұрын

@@MelancholicRobot42 happens more often than ppl think. I was called the n word before I could even form coherent thoughts according to my mother. Sad world we live in :/

I'm a white man living in Brazil, where most kids up for adoption are black, and adoptive parents generally prefer white kids, which has a real life negative impact on the black children who end up in the system. I've known I'm infertile since I was 16, and since then, I've wanted to adopt. So I've always known I'd end up adopting black children, because I couldn't see any reason not to. That said, when I first started thinking about this, I DEFINITELY carried a lot of white savior ideas. Since I was interested in the topic of transracial adoption, I was fortunate enough to be exposed to a lot of viewpoints about that, and I've had a lot of time to re-educate myself. But it's a lifelong process. I imagine, once I become a dad, I'll still spend my entire life learning how to better deal with racism and how best to support my kids through adverse experiences I've never had. I think conversation about adoption as a "noble" or "selfless" act contributes to the issues faced by transracial adoptees. You can be a shitty adoptive parent just as easily as you can be a shitty biological one - even more easily, if you approach it like your new child is a charity case. Like you said, there's a "rescue" narrative at play, and it does a lot of harm. Adoption in general requires a lot of respect for the child's background and experiences. And you don't become an adoptive parent because you want to do charity work (or at least you should't!), but because you want to experience parenthood. It's not a sacrifice you do out of the goodness of your heart, just something you do because that's what you want out of your life.

As someone who hopes to adopt one day, I really appreciated the insights in this video. Thanks as always, T1J!

@MissDanaSophia

2 жыл бұрын

Same!

@c12486

2 жыл бұрын

I was also hoping to adopt when I was ready, my thoughts are in flux after listening to Angela Tucker's work, which asks a lot of the same questions as T1J here. It's very informative and insightful!

@Suzanne4415

2 жыл бұрын

In Sweden we are going through this thing where our whole international adoption industry is blown wide open - turns out we've basically (mostly not knowingly, but w/ minimal oversight) been buying and stealing children in way too many cases for half a century. I always thought if I wanted kids I'd adopt - now I know I'm not gonna have kids, but if I did I'd go the foster kid route. But I'd be super hesitant about that too simply because there are too many cases where the authorities prioritize reuniting the child w/ their birth parents over the child staying with parents they've 100% attached to as their real parents for years. (I was adopted by relatives, and my biodad is fine and my foster parents... we didn't have a perfect relationship, but it would've been fucking devastating to be told after a few years that my parents aren't my parents any more.) This is again in Sweden - the US seems to be able to go the other way, esp w/ white parents & black kids, at least judging from that "Broken Harts" podcast. (Tho it seems those moms also got away with it by changing states a lot. Still, not only. Kinda recommend, tho it's rough and very extreme situation.)

@abolishpolice5232

2 жыл бұрын

For fucks sake do not adopt. Adoption is an industry that is driven by demand, and is an engine for family separation. There is not and have never been enough parentless children to meet the demand for adoptable children.

@HS-cf8em

2 жыл бұрын

@@abolishpolice5232 I am not denying it’s prevalence, but this is not a blanket statement that should be made over every adoption.

In Canada our relationship with interracial adoption is a little more complicated due to the sixties scoop. A policy where by indigenous children were taken from their communities and placed specifically in white families in order to integrate them. The policy persisted well into the 80s. In the community where I grew up those kids were almost never exposed to their own culture, and oftentimes treated like unpaid farmhands.

@kate2late91

2 жыл бұрын

Same in Australia, in general indegnous children are not supposed to be adopted by non-indigenous parents now, but means generally they don't get adopted at all, and bounce around in foster care instead.

@TheBiggestMoronYouKnow

2 жыл бұрын

That’s white people

@FeyPax

2 жыл бұрын

This was also very common in America. I feel like where there were indigenous communities, children were stolen and relocated by colonizers. This is what happened in my family and made tracing ancestors really hard.

@joobcave

2 жыл бұрын

If anyone wants to learn more about how legal protections against the systematic/problematic adoption of Native American children are currently being undermined in the U.S., I highly recommend listening to season 2 of the This Land podcast!

@Munchkin.Of.Pern09

2 жыл бұрын

My grandfather was one of the sixties scoop kids and is the only POC in my otherwise very white family. I never questioned it as a kid… I still remember what it felt like when it finally clicked. I was 15, and had been studying Canadian History in highschool. We were allowed to choose from a wide range of topics for our “deeper study” projects, and I ended up looking into the history of relations between white settlers and native communities. And I felt horrible, because it was horrible things that were done to those communities, but it felt distant - then, maybe two months later, I was sitting in my grandpa’s car waiting for him to come back out of the convenience store and it all just *hit me.* That all of those stories I’d read about weren’t stories that had happened to other people, they’d happened in my own family. When he came back to the car after that was the only time I felt like I didn’t know how to talk to him. It was like the ground had opened up between us and suddenly we were a mile apart on opposite sides of a canyon. When I finally managed to get the words out of my mouth, he told me about his childhood. I’m frankly amazed that I didn’t realize sooner - his surname is literally *Ward,* as in a ward of the state. As an adult he managed to reconnect with his community to some extent, but a lot of his biological family and their friends didn’t accept him back. It was a lot to take in, but I’m infinitely grateful I found the words to ask.

People talk about third-culture children. That is, children who grow up with two different cultures actually have a third culture; they share the cultural trait of living between two cultures with others who live between two cultures regardless of what those two cultures are. It seems to me that transracial adoptees are also their own cultural group in the same manner. I don't really see how a Korean child adopted as a baby by Non-Korean American parents is in any way culturally Korean, nor that any Korean culture needs to be fastened to the child due to race. I don't think having Korean friends is a formula for forging a personal identity here. It may just be more confusing as the child sees nothing in common with them other than physical characteristics. Having a connection with other transracial adopters, however, may provide a bond of shared experience.

@athenarocks7657

2 жыл бұрын

I've never heard of that but I love it. I've always felt that way though. I'm a Transracial adoptee and I feel like I've always related to groups where there was no specific culture (with the expectations that you know certain things about the culture) but more that we all had something in common feeling "between" cultures.

@joeketa6352

2 жыл бұрын

@@athenarocks7657 The travel writer Pico Iyer talks about third-culture children, as well as global souls, who are people who are so international that they can best relate to other internationalist. He has a TED talk that you might relate to. I would find it interesting to see if transracial adoptees have similar feelings to other people of multicultures.

@loune3799

2 жыл бұрын

That is crazy. I grew up between two cultures (born in one country,over to another at a young age and bounced between the two countries growing up) and have always felt separated from others. I’m not totally French, but I’m also not totally American. It was always hard to explain to people. Then one day I met a friends dad who was born in Colombia and grew up in the US, spent time back and forth just like me. Immediately me and this 50 yr old dude hit it off and he nods understandably at my feelings of being stuck between two worlds. It was the first time I met someone who understood.

@yumaikas94

2 жыл бұрын

As someone who is a third cultural kid, I would not be surprised if this is more helpful. I'm not exactly of my host country, or the one that my parents did their missionary work in. I'm something else, someone in between. Maybe we're Liminal People

@lkriticos7619

2 жыл бұрын

May be it's just me but I *hate* the term 'third culture kid'. It sounds so American and seems so linked to the US military. My parents are from opposite ends of Europe and really different cultures. I grew up in Al Khobar. I don't have the same experiences as my peers in either of my parents countries or the country I was raised in. They're all still part of me, they've all influenced me. But I'm in my 30s. I'm not a child. And after seeing the effect of American imperialism on my country (one of them anyway) I don't want to be labelled from an American perspective. What's the benefit in that anyway? It seems like a term, an approach, that's designed to benefit a cultural majority not us.

As a white person who is currently pregnant with a biracial child, I feel like some of the points in this discussion can apply to my situation too. I live in a homogeneously Asian country where being mixed-race can mean not being accepted in the community, so my child is going to go through experiences that neither me nor my husband will fully understand. He/she will probably experience discrimination from both white people and the people in the country where we live. I’ve been really worried about this and I’m still not fully sure how to deal with it. But I think getting in touch with other mixed-racial families in the area and exposing my child to other children who look like them is a good first step.

@tyckeri

2 жыл бұрын

Make sure they have friends that look like them and very close family friends in their age that a not biracial it creates a good balans. So they know the are just a person not their race!

@PumpkinMozie

2 жыл бұрын

@@tyckeri thanks for the advice :)

@appleslions4934

2 жыл бұрын

Hello! This comment speaks to me because I’m half white, half Japanese. Growing up, I attended weekly Saturday school with other half kids, to learn Japanese. While I didn’t appreciate it at the time, I think it was crucial for my development. And yes, your child will experience discrimination from both their white and Asian sides. This happens to me - it’s exhausting, but ultimately I’m proud of my bicultural heritage, so I know it’s not me that wrong, but them. Another piece of advice: make sure they have strong connections to both cultures. This is so important. Language, especially so! Best of luck - I’m sure you’ll be a great mother❤️

@fairycat23

2 жыл бұрын

(Hi, I feel qualified to say anything because I'm biracial--my mom is white, my dad is Filipino, and I've grown up in the States.) I think you have the right idea about getting in touch with other mixed-race families and mixed-race children. I lucked out because the part of the U.S. where I live is very racially diverse, so I went to school with kids who all looked different from one another and sometimes were biracial like me. Heck, in 10th grade, my AP Government teacher was wasian! Having this support system is important so that even when people are being jerks, your kid will know they're not alone. You may also be interested in learning about specific mixed-race and mixed-heritage public figures, especially wasian ones like your child, so when your child looks up at the screen/stage, they see they could be there, too, one day. (Get ready to think to yourself "wait, Philippa Soo's part white?" "wait, Charlie XCX is part Indian?" etc., lol)

I’m a transracial adoptee (Chinese with white parents), and my parents definitely followed the “color-blind” model. It’s funny because they still don’t understand why I didn’t really enjoy growing up in a town that is literally 98% white. I’m always surprised by how pervasive the “white savior” myth is when I tell anyone (usually white people) that I’m adopted-people take on an almost McCarthyist stance about how my parents rescued me from an evil regime without knowing any context of how I grew up or what my parents were like. I still meet up with some members of my original adoption group, and that is definitely what kept me centered when pondering my identity as I grew up. While I definitely feel like a fraudulent Asian in many spaces, I never have to worry about it with my adoption group.

@megelizabeth9492

2 жыл бұрын

Another potential resource could be connecting with multiracial asian people, since many also struggle with simular concerns about cultural and ethnic identities.

So I'm half latina and was adopted by a white family. I remember watching them feel really crushed when people would accuse them of racism for it. But I was adopted at 15. I had a really terrible childhood and they were close friends by that point. I literally *begged them* to adopt me because they were basically already raising me at that point.

@realpainediaz7473

10 ай бұрын

Wow great story! Hope life is good.

I'm coming at this from a the perspective of a white guy who wasn't adopted and isn't a parent looking to adopt, and like you mentioned I wouldn't ever doubt a parents genuine love for their child, but that being said I sometimes I get the impression white parents choose to adopt POC kids over other white kids as a some kind of racial acceptence lesson for their other biological white kids, which seems like it would be quite patronizing for the adopted kid.

@bestaqua23

2 жыл бұрын

As fare as I know most of the time you don't get to chose you're kid . Not with non - internetional adoption

@FullmoonPhantom-dn2sr

2 жыл бұрын

What would give you that idea? That seems far fetched to me. If anything I think it’s just because international adoption can sometimes let you skip red tape from what I’ve heard.

@AGPCV

2 жыл бұрын

@@bestaqua23 In private adoption, you defintely do. In the foster care system, you have the right to restrict what you get calls for and can ultimately decline any placement for any reason.

@AGPCV

2 жыл бұрын

@@FullmoonPhantom-dn2sr private adoption and international adoption have a lot of features of human trafficking. I'm not saying it is in all cases, but it would be important to do a lot of research into the organizations you are adopting from.

@bestaqua23

2 жыл бұрын

@@FullmoonPhantom-dn2sr I just menat thet if say white person adopets from a place with a majority black population you kind of can " choose " the race . And my information is second hand from research so I might be wrong

Wow, "forced gratitude" is a phrase I never knew I needed to describe certain experiences

@eliscanfield3913

2 жыл бұрын

yeah, it works for a lot of things, too.

I hate the notion that children should be thankful to their parents at all. Adopted or not. A child never decides where or how it's born. And even after that they never decide where they are given to. Meanwhile the parents (almost) always make a conscious decision to have or adopt children. The child is there because someone wanted to be a parent not the other way around. Speaking as someone who was treated not very well by my partents but has a good relationship with them now. There is no gratitude involved. Just the love and care you have for people you have known for a very long time.

@PsionicNoMad

2 жыл бұрын

Amen to that. I also grew up being taught that kids have to respect and appreciate their parents, and I could never shake the thought of, what if the parents are bad? Seen way too many bad parents to ever be on the side of unconditional respect and appreciation, like you said, kids never choose their life, the adults in their lives choose their lives.

@CatBarefield

2 жыл бұрын

Yep

@zachanikwano

2 жыл бұрын

I mean. Decent and good parents also work hard to provide for their kids’ needs. If they are actively trying to be good moms and dads, I’d say that’s something a kid (either as a kid or as an adult) should look back on and be thankful for. I mean, I believe teaching a kid to be grateful in general for the good they do have is also an important thing. A parent shouldn’t glare their kid down and expect them to worship them just for existing. But I think it’d be unhealthy for a child to take their (good) caregivers for granted. My mom was abusive, but she did cook for us. I appreciate that, but I’m still critical of her abuse. My dad wasn’t my emotional rock growing up (when us kids needed it most) but - He’s the kind of person who’s lived his life serving other people, and the kind of person to stick by his beliefs even if it costs him dearly (he’s lost three jobs because he wouldn’t compromise on what he believed was right).

@quark4911

2 жыл бұрын

I wish I could like this comment a million times

@quark4911

2 жыл бұрын

@@zachanikwano that's grooming you dummy

As a black transracial adoptee I'm really grateful that you made this video to highlight our experiences. It's such a complex mindfuck of an existence, so many layers to navigate, and so many simultaneous truths to balance.

I am a transracial adoptee and my parents have an interesting story. I was fostered for a good amount of time and my parents were never initially offered me as an option to adopt bc the agency decided that they wouldnt want a black child. When they found out about that they were horrified and very upset bc experiencing fertility issues and being rather older....they just wanted a family and to them they werent looking for a poc child or a white child. They were looking for a child who needed their own family who wanted to adopt them.

I'm not sure how common this is, but when I was a kid, there was a white foster parent at church who was downright racist to her black and Hispanic foster kids. I can only imagine how frustrating and scary it must be to live with someone who uses slurs against you when you're like 9. I think that because of seeing that experience, I've always been of the mind that there should probably be some kind of like, critical race theory or cultural sensitivity training for prospective parents.

@BlackyChan2.0

2 жыл бұрын

Oh damn, what did they do specifically to their foster kids?

I really hope to foster some teenagers / older kids when I'm more of a grown up (still a teenager myself). it's important even then, when they already have a sense of identity, to understand where they come from and what they face. colorblindness hurts them more than it benefits you and your comfort

@seanmatthewking

2 жыл бұрын

I believe more than half of foster kids become homeless at some point shortly after turning 18 and aging out of the system. So good luck with that, seems like a difficult role.

I'm a transracial adoptee (I'm black and my parents are white and Jewish). I really thought this video was great. Though my parents are great and they really try in whatever way they can, it was kind of difficult growing up since they didn't understand so many experiences. I was born and adopted in 2001 so in my early childhood my parents didn't really think of the internet as a resource for learning about African American culture. By the time I'd gotten older they kind of forgot to put much emphasis on it, and since I was so desperate to assimilate I never asked to be introduced to my culture. In the last few years it has become more important to me and I'm teaching my parents a lot about it, but it's still frustrating to me since sometimes I resent that I have to teach them.

@bigjohn.2489

2 жыл бұрын

That's crazy bro. You resent havin to teach them about stuff. I bet they resented you $hit yourself everyday for a few years. I bet they resented teaching you stuff when you didn't know nothin as a baby. I bet they resented giving years of their life raising an loving you. But they don't. They love you bro. Even when no one wanted you. At least they wanted you. That's more then what alot people get.

@burningbronze7555

2 жыл бұрын

Question why would it be your culture if you where never raised in it?

@arthurkassabian2528

2 жыл бұрын

I'm intrigued, were you raised in accordance with Jewish culture and tradition.

@saffodils

2 жыл бұрын

thanks for sharing your story! it can be hard to talk to parents about needs you have that they don't understand. glad to hear that you're finding ways to connect with your culture!

@athenarocks7657

2 жыл бұрын

@@burningbronze7555 That's a great question! It's kind of hard to explain by I think some of it is societal assumptions and some of it is the shared experiences I have with other black Americans even though I grew up in a different house hold. Being black is an important part of my identity, as it is for many other black people/Americans, so I identify with the history of black Americans and understand black history as my cultural history (from the little I know of my birth mother, I know she was African American). Secondly, growing up people made a lot of assumptions about me because of my race and that is a common experience for people who look like me. That being said, I still claim Judaism as my culture and the different parts of my adoptive parents cultures as my own as well.

I feel like this topic gets even more complicated when you add a religion aspect into it. The only transracial adoptees I know have been adopted into extremely religious Christian/Catholic families, which I can only imagine makes it even more confusing and isolating. or if they are adopted into extremely conservative families..

We foster LGBT+ kids. My wife is trans, and we feel like most of them seem comfortable with us. Usually these kids are kicked out of their homes as teenagers, so they usually age out of the system with us. It really doesn’t matter to us what race they are. We give them support after they age out, because they’re our kids. We have very diverse Christmas and Thanksgiving celebrations. Our oldest is now 33 and has kids of her own. Do we feel like saviors? No. We just feel that no one should be without parents because of their gender or sexuality.

@CanelaAguila

2 жыл бұрын

I'd be interested in doing this too at some point! Where are you based? Did you specify it to the organization ? And do you have any tips beyond being able to relate well as a fellow queer person?

@chandranelson2772

2 жыл бұрын

@@CanelaAguila , we’re in Tucson. We found a foster organization at a queer fair at a local school, but I’m sure that you could google a queer friendly foster care near you. Basically, these kids are traumatized. They are in the system because their parents got rid of them because of who they are. The first thing that we do is show them to their room, get them unpacked, give them a suitcase if they came with their stuff in a freaking trash bag. Then we let them pick a restaurant they want to go to, and we just talk. We find out what they like to do and then, of course, we facilitate.We take them to a store and let them get hygiene stuff that they want, and some snacks that they like. We give them privacy, for sure, but engage with them and include them in our lives. Most of them bond with my wife, who is just better with kids than anyone I’ve ever known, and she’s trans, so the trans kids look up to her. And of course, except for the pandemic, we always march at Pride and spend the day watching the shows and things. Basically, treat them like any kid, with just a few more things going on in their lives. We do put the appropriate pride flag up in their room, and that helps them to feel seen. This is all over the place because I haven’t slept recently. Oh, some foster kids won’t take showers, so we offer them a bath with bubbles, salts, or bathbombs, their choice. And we ask them a lot of questions. Like favorite colors, favorite things to do, favorite ice cream, etc. I mean, they’re our kid, for however long. Most kids are already in therapy, and if they aren’t, we usually get them into it. Anyway, maybe something here is helpful.

@CanelaAguila

2 жыл бұрын

@@chandranelson2772 Thank you for all the great tips! I don't know what else to say, but I'll remember this :)

@mightymeatymech

2 жыл бұрын

@@chandranelson2772 as someone who probably could have used the love your wife and you share when I was a teen, just thank you. This comment made me tear up a lot, just thinking about how safe they must feel with you and how thoughtful you two are about making sure they feel safe. Sorry sometimes I just need to be reminded that People Like You and Your Wife Exist :))) Much blessings to you both, and any kids you foster:)

@chandranelson2772

2 жыл бұрын

@ibis are not bin chickens! , If you think parenting kids is the same as grooming them, I really hope that you never have children. But the pun is cute.

As The Grand Archpriest of The Church of the Algorithm, I bless this video with a comment.

@PsionicNoMad

2 жыл бұрын

Adding an extra blessing.

@CreatureNamedGrace

2 жыл бұрын

amen

@mountainharpie

2 жыл бұрын

OM NOM NOM ALGORITHMANTRA!!!!!

This is an interesting topic I should look more into. I'm my white (literally blonde and blue eyed) mother's birth child but I look extremely like my Mexican father. While my mom always pushed me to be connected to my culture and my dad's side of the family, I lived in a different state, never learned Spanish that my paternal family spoke and had difficulties emotionally connecting with my dad. As such I feel a lot of that trans racial baggage of feeling separated from my culture and like a fraud if I engage with it as anything but an outsider. Growing up in very segregated Oregon I could "pass" as white but I learned quickly that cops knew I wasn't at a glance. Which is scary when you're locked into a race all at once. I'm still trying to learn how to connect with my culture and not associate it purely with my father who has his own relationship struggles with me.

@younghoneybadger2339

2 жыл бұрын

Bro I feel you it's kind of weird and scary that they know you're not fully white my dad's Mexican my mom is Italian and Spanish I don't have blonde hair blue eyes but I do got brown hair reddish-brown beard white and tall

@Flamefire124

2 жыл бұрын

@@younghoneybadger2339 exactly! and it's very much a cop based fear. Because when people who just know people like your family it's never fear but cops just say it different. They know they're putting you lower.

@thevoid8948

2 жыл бұрын

Same here! I’m Irish-Mexican and my mother shoved my Mexican heritage to the side as soon my father died. I’m trying to heal as an adult and it’s hard.

@gentlemandemon

2 жыл бұрын

That's interesting because I'm almost on the exact opposite side of the paradigm. I'm half Guatemalan on my mom's side and spent a lot of my formative years along Latino family/family friends, but I look very much like my white dad. I grew up speaking Spanish, but it wasn't well practiced once we moved to a very white area and didn't get better until I started speaking a lot more Spanish as an adult. I'm very proud of my heritage, but I'm also very aware of how much I stick out. I know that even if I go to bodega, I'll probably get spoken to in English if I make a mistake with my Spanish. I make people know that I'm Latino, but I'm never totally sure if it's an acknowledgement of my heritage or if I'm compensating for my own insecurities. I know who am I, but I still feel to assert my Latino-ness because I'm worried that I'll be seen as just the white guy that I look like.

As far as the culture thing goes, I think that your culture isn't your race. And conflaiting the two just doesn't work. You have whatever culture your parents expose you too. This is seen a lot in 3rd or 4th generation americans that dont have a connection with "their" culture because they are so ingraned into the American culture. Your culture isn't your race, your culture is your family, so if you are adopted into a family you share that family's culture and no other. Culture isn't passed by DNA, its passed through families, traditions, and worldviews

@moon-pw1bi

2 жыл бұрын

i agree

@callmeacutekitten8106

2 жыл бұрын

I find it weird people put extreme emphasis on you're race and the culture you're supposed to have

As a white person who was adopted by brown Cuban household, it’s definitely alienating at family reunions and when it comes to learning about my blood heritage

I am white but grew up in a mixed race household (my mum’s side of the family is black British) and I genuinely see a lot of crossover with these discussions and my own experiences growing up.

As the single white mom of an interracial child, I tried to make sure that my son had connection with people of color around him. I wanted him to feel connected to both sides and have experiences from both cultures. I can’t say it was perfect but I tried to give him everything he needed to be accepting and proud of his two cultures.

My problem with this concept is the implication of racial essentialism, that is to say there's some intrinsic biological part of me that's "culturally black". when no such thing has ever been proven to exist empirically.

@T1J

2 жыл бұрын

the very use of the word "culturally" implies that this has nothing to do with biology. if you're arguing that there's no such thing as "black culture" I really don't know what to say to something like that

@AkaiKnight

2 жыл бұрын

@@T1Jclearly it doesn’t imply that, as one big criticism of transracial adoption is the risk of erasing the culture from the adopted child, as if one’s race is tied to a culture intrinsically. And you can see such sentiment in the comments of this very video Heck we just had the president say if you don’t vote for him you ain’t black this past election. So optically people clearly associate race to culture. I’m saying that’s wrong and is a form of racism .

@STARK0181

2 жыл бұрын

@@AkaiKnight You nailed it. That's the most alarming thing I've noticed in the discourse surrounding this topic. They imply black culture is inherently a part of a black child like it's in their DNA. This is hardcore race realism and essentialism

My family and I are from Texas. I have two younger sisters Meskerem (Remy) and Tarikwa Amira (Tara), and both are transracial adoptees. We adopted them when Remy was 9 and Tara was about to turn 6. They are half-sisters and my parents adopted them when I was in the 5th grade and my brother was in Sophomore year (high school). My sisters were born and spent their first few years in the south of Ethiopia. My father decided he wanted to adopt someone from Ethiopia after he had gone and participated in the reforestation efforts of Eden Reforestation Projects. He discussed it with my mother; they had tried to have more children (besides my brother and I) twice but neither effort made it to birth. They agreed that they wanted to adopt, and my father's interest in the country of Ethiopia caused them to adopt from there. They tried to adopt a young girl (who I can't remember her name, this was around 10 years ago) but the girl's mother decided to take her back from the orphanage to raise as her own. They tried again and adopted my sisters about a year later. I can't speak much on my sisters' experiences, either in Ethiopia or in the states, but it seemed like a difficult transition. My parents hadn't learned much Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia), nor did they know any Wolaitta (my sisters native "tribal" language), so the language barrier was intense. So intense that after learning English, my sisters today can't remember a lick of either Wolaitta or Amharic. They had to be vaccinated and their bodies had to acclimate to the new allergies and diseases of North America. Not to mention that we had a dog (a sweet old pooch), but my youngest sister, Tara, had had at least one traumatic event in her past involving what are called African Painted Hounds, and as such could hardly be in the same room as our dog for many months. The older of my sisters, Remy, and I butted heads constantly, loudly, and angrily. I learned later that it wasn't just because of how close we were in age (around 2.5 years), but because she was essentially, in practice, Tara's mother for years in Ethiopia, so here I come acting as if I'm above her on the food chain just cuz I'm a little older, when she was literally working and feeding Tara like a whole adult for years. They challenged many of my preconceived notions about the world. I learned that while I may not have had any hate for people of other races, I absolutely had many (incorrect) assumptions in my head about how people of other races acted and what they liked and didn't like. I think, strangely, the biggest shock to my young, (mostly) white, Texan mind was that black people can absolutely enjoy country songs, as it has become Remy's favorite genre of music. I still don't know all of my parents' initial intentions or motivations for transracial adoption, but I know two things for sure: 1.) I'm happy they did, I love my sisters to death, even if they can get on my nerves like no one else, but also; 2.) my parents could've and should've learned more about the culture and backgrounds my sisters come from, and at the very least learning more than just 'hello' and 'goodbye' in Amharic.

The whole "white saviour" thing hits close to home for me cause of my family history. There's a whole complex and really sad story, but basically, my Grandma was stolen from her tribe up in Canada while in the US, probably because she was life-threateningly sick and the hospital refused to treat her unless her parents signed away their parental rights cause they're First Nation, and she ended up getting put in the foster system until she was adopted by a white Hispanic family in New Mexico. The family that adopted her kind of had the mentality that they were saving a poor indian child, and expected her to be grateful to them, which is just not the dynamic parents and children are supposed to have, and later, there was a whole falling out between them because they were REALLY, REALLY devout Catholic, and she had become atheist. Her foster dad later said he forgave her, which is good, but it should be her forgiving him, and not the other way round. I don't hate my Grandma's foster dad; I never even met the guy, and my Dad says he was a pretty good guy, though really extremely catholic, but there were a lot of problems with the way he thought he was saving my Grandma and she ought to be grateful.

As an older adoptee from South Korea, I can say the culture of transracial adoptions has shifted from unintentional color blindness to true intersectional consciousness and understanding. Color blindness was well-intentioned, as it was based on what was viewed as ultimate acceptance and rejection of prejudice, but I’m really glad for the culture shift because it provides a healthier, more relevant framework for such families and adoptees.

I’m not adopted, but mixed. My parents divorced when I was three, my dad returned to his home country, and I was raised by my white mother and her family. Early on, we lived with her parents, who were pretty right wing and had an “i don’t see color” attitude. when we moved out, my mom adopted more liberal beliefs. I was always very aware that I wasn’t white, and that all the other children around me. I experienced microagressions which I was taught to view as normal and totally harmless. I used the internet to self educate about racial issues, through channels like yours, blogs, etc. so I ended up being the one to initiate conversations about race with my mom. She’s a very open person, and she believes in making an effort to be anti-racist. However, what I’ve come to realize is that when it comes to discussions about race, she and I are on a completely different wavelength. Every day it becomes clearer and clearer to me how much her stances/rhetoric are rooted in white fragility and unconscious racism. Maybe it’s because she’s my mom and I love her, but it feels so impossible to communicate that. Because every time I bring up systemic issues, she will somehow make it about individuals, and some talk about how we should all just try and get along. That’s only one slice of the Nadal’s Racial Identity Crisis Pie, but one i felt was relevant. Great video, as always!

As someone who might transracially adopt, I appreciated this video. I already plan into heavily investing into my child knowing about their culture, whatever it may be if I adopt a non-white or non-Korean child (my wife is Korean). Parts of this video felt like things I’ve already considered, but I am still worried. I don’t want to leave my child with any, issues because I did not properly prepare them or didn’t help them get in touch with their culture or identity. One note : You said white children don’t need to have the race conversation. I think they do. My mom taught me about racism when I was about 4. She taught me about inequality. She taught me about white privilege. All of this made sense even at that young age, and it helped me to understand the world better. When confronted with racism, rather than not understand it or even believe the racist things other white children told me, I was ready to contradict them with the things I had learned. My mom was far from perfect, but her realistic preparation for me into the world, I think stopped me looking for easy solutions (which i think is what a lot of conservative white poeple do when confronted with their advantages). Anyways, das jus me doe

I really liked this video! I plan on adopting in the future and since I'm white I want to make sure that I'm being as conscious as possible. That's a long way away but this is really helpful and informing

@devonmunn5728

2 жыл бұрын

Same here. I do want to have bio kids but i don't mind adopting

Love you talking about this, because I definitely think it should be a thing, but I love learning and listening to more opinions!

Very good video, as a parent of 4 (none adopted, but one step) I really appreciated the comment you showed where the interviewee said, "your kid should not be your first black friend" that makes so much sense. I'm a firm believer that kids are best raised by people who can understand them, if possible a family member is usually best, but if not possible it should be someone who can at least relate in some way, even if through third party explanations (such as having friends of that race). Love the videos. Keep up the good work.

So I have a bit of a different situation, I’m half Iranian and look mostly white. I am a former foster child who ended up in kinship care with my white mother’s family… so I fit in better than most, and I was surrounded by relatives. But I still got “where did that big nose come from?” / “how did you break your nose” Or “you must look like *other parent*”, or “it’s a good thing you look white, or people would know you come from terrorists” and of course “you better be GRATEFUL to your parents, you’d be on the streets doing drugs if it weren’t for them” (at like 14 years old lol). I finally met my birth father at 27, and finally got to learn some Persian culture and start learning Farsi…. But it’s hard to pick up a culture as an adult. You feel like an imposter on both sides. I don’t feel like a real Persian because I haven’t had the same experiences as other Persian Canadians. I don’t know the language, I literally didn’t eat Persian food until I was almost 30. And I’m half while. I pass as white, but the older I get the more I know that I’m not entirely perceived as white. Like they know or something lol. One of my kids came out looking twice as Persian as me, and I see how people look at him vs my other kids… and it’s hard to have to explain to him why he’ll have a harder time navigating this world than his siblings. So, in my case it was necessary that I grew up in the family that I did. But I’ll advocate forever for children of colour to be matched with families of their same race if at all possible.

Broke: white-saviourism by adoptive parents is morally problematic Woke: white-saviourism by adoptive parents is cringe

This video really hits home for me. I am in a transracial (Latino/white) relationship and we are planning to adopt in a couple of years ❤️.

Thank you thank you for discussing this! There are so many types of adoption scenarios, I am one scenario: Korean and family is white. It can be difficult when the family doesn’t recognize that there are racial discriminations just because they don’t see us differently. I had a beautiful experience growing up and even though my family knows I’m Asian, they’ve always thought of me as their daughter or niece or sister. The problem with this type of racial blindness though is not recognizing that other people see me as “different”. Growing up in a very homogenous area, I was fetishized or looked at as a danger. People ask me if I’m from North Korea ALL the time. Microaggressions have always been brushed off as “jokes”. A family member has actually done this several times to my face in the last two years. It wasn’t until blatant acts of racism happened that I felt like I could talk to them about it and they could fathom to understand. If I were to talk to them about being a woman in a male dominated industry, most of them would understand because they could relate. But when it comes to race, a lot of times my extended family thinks I’m calling them racist if I use my voice to talk about their biases. I’m tired.

Thank you so much for talking about this! Being a transracial adoptee myself, I've always found that racial advocacy groups almost never talk or include transracial adoptees in their discussions. I finally feel heard!

This was a really insightful video! I've wanted to adopt since I was a teen but there are so many aspects of it that you need to sit down and think about, to know what you're comfortable with and what you can provide for your child

I’m a transracial adoptee! I still identify as Asian because race is ultimately aesthetic but it did cause me to be ignorant about my culture until adulthood and I’m still not an expert. Having said that, my parent are very supportive and while other adoptees have more negative feelings, I’m overall close to my family and have no feelings of loss or sadness.

@burningbronze7555

2 жыл бұрын

Question why is it your culture if you where never raised in it? As I am trying to understand how people have cultures at all?

As usual, really thoughtful take. One thing that sometime gets left out of the discussion is that plenty of children from mixed-race relationships grow up in households where only one side of their background is represented due to the absence or death of one parent, so there's potentially a larger pool of people out there with some relevant life experience than just transracial adoptees. This is another topic that's affected me personally as I'm a white lone parent to a mixed race child. Although his mother died, he still has contact with the black side of his family and we live in a fairly diverse community, but I'll admit I'm still not really in the best position to advise my son on what it's like to grow up black. I try to be frank about racism, and the fact he's likely to encounter it in his life (and already has done), but at the same time I don't want to make him paranoid about his interactions with others or risk making him feel like an outsider by stressing the differences between us over the similarities. I often worry about whether I'm getting the balance right.

Glad you say some thoughts. It makes this an honest conversation. Thank you for your work.

My family history has some odd spots in it where my indigenous heritage was hidden due to racism, adoption, and stereotypes. I'm sure it's difficult, and I'm really glad that in my university has had many courses that talk about diversity, the local indigenous culture, and the challenges other minorities face (like race/colourism, gender descrimination, and how to be an ally), which has been really insightful.

T1J, thank you for your combination of insight and empathy. It is everything I have come to expect from your channel. As the parent of two black children this hits so squarely on my doorstep I might as well bring you inside the house and serve you a meal...so here goes. My wife and I did not originally intend to be parents...adoptive or otherwise. But we hit our mid twenties and something changed. We still weren't sure we wanted to be "actual permanent" parents, but we lived a comfortable life, and my wife, being adopted by blood relatives at one point had the idea that we should foster some children. We signed up for classes and found the composition of the other potential parents very interesting. The white people by and large were looking for foster to adopt of babies (with a few exceptions) and the black people were looking to get their certification to foster or adopt a blood relative. I'm not passing judgement on either case, but it leaves a very wide segment of the foster population unserved....so we thought, lets not check any preference box and just see who gets placed with us. To make a long story shorter, we had two children, a girl who was 8 and boy who was a newborn in the NICU, placed with us. One mixed race, one black. My wife and I are white. We were conscientiously prepared by the foster classes to be wary of any thoughts of saviorism, but we weren't prepared for the reactions of those around us, who wanted to make us into saviors. Its something we try to correct when we hear, but well-meaning people still persist in those patterns of thinking. People like to say we are blessed to have two awesome kids (and we do) and our kids are blessed to live an awesome life...but here's the thing. I can't help but think that they were dealt a real bad hand at life and my wife and I just helped them make the best of it. The foster to adopt process is brutal for a parent hoping for adoption and its confusing and traumatic for children wondering what the heck is going on with their life. To any white person considering raising children of another race...you aren't ready. You will never be ready until you have to be ready. Don't ever assume you know what you will say, that you know how to handle the situations that come up. The best thing you can tell yourself is, we live in a society that has woefully under prepared you, and know there there are going to be situations you don't know how to handle. Do the best you can and be prepared to admit when you don't get it right. And speaking of not getting things right...Our son never had any other children of color in his elementary school, but both of our children went to larger high schools with more diversity. So in 7th grade, my son has his first black friend. I'm pretty ashamed of that, but I like to think the past few years have been eyeopening, as our mindset transformed from a post-racial, colorblind bubble to one that is more grounded in reality. And three years ago, when our son wanted to walk the four blocks from the bus-stop to our house on his own, and our daughter got her driver's license...we had the talk. That was rough to navigate as a white person...especially a white person whose father was a cop. I'm sure it was probably twice as rough for children to realize that the interactions they have always had with our friends family and community were not going to be the same everywhere they went, and that the people they had to be wary of were people who looked like my wife and me. It made me F%^&ing angry...it still does, to think about how my children's humanity can be stripped away, and how I as a parent in the 21st century still have to explain that to my children. The BS we were all fed about Dr. King essentially putting an end to racism and the land of equal opportunity, etc is just something they teach kids so the black ones will think there is nothing legitimate to complain about and the white ones never have to think about race again. And current events (the murders of Floyd, Aubrey, Taylor and so many others) have only served to reinforce the idea that while we have raised them to feel safe and loved at home and among friends, outside these walls they must remain vigilant. I can feel myself going into rant mode so I will switch back to something more constructive. Consider another meaning for trans-racial that my lay somewhere between a person's identity and the home that was imposed on them. The lives of the four members of our family exist in a trans-racial dialog. Our black children cross racial lines to get a measure of privilege that comes from belonging to a white family in america, and my wife and I gain a greater understanding and awareness of what it is like to raise black children. I am conscious of the differences in ways I could have never conceivably been otherwise. At the end of the day my wife and I can't undo the generations of inequality and poverty, we can't undo the neglect and trauma, but we can love these two kids and give them every opportunity within our means. Hopefully,we have prepared them for the world around them.

as a black* american raised by my single white birth-mother, and as someone who has conferred w folks in a similar situation to my own, i feel upsettingly comfortable that this issue goes far beyond adoption. my mother loved my father and loves me, but that doesn't change the fact that she was woefully unprepared to raise children of a different race than herself [even in the most "liberal and diverse" of american environments] *bi-racial but black coded by appearance, trevor noah's bit about checking the "black" and "white" boxes on a bank form and the reaction from the teller brought me right back to standardized testing in school.

I thought this was a very interesting video. It made me think of my brother's partner. She's a korean transracial adoptee. Me and my brother are both 1/4 korean. And it was so cool/sad when my brother was the one who introduced his partner to korean cooking. Like culturally my family is definitely pretty removed from korean culture, but we have maintained the connection through my dad's efforts to really bring korean cooking into our lives. So it was a pretty weird story to hear how he was the one making korean food for her because it really highlighted the fact that her parents hadn't really exposed her much to korean cooking/food or culture for that matter. (she also grew up in minnesota in the 90s/00s and there weren't many korean restaurants and the access to korean cookbooks and food culture was not what it is today, but still). I think you did a really good job of highlighting how truly complex the issues around transracial adoption can be. Like obviously people do their best with the resources they have, but it's weird to think about how my dad worked really hard to keep his kids connected to the food culture of part of their heritage because it meant a lot to him. But to see the flip side of a white family raising a korean kid and not doing the same is kinda odd to me. Just a lot of food for thought in this video.....

I was adopted by white parents as a Taiwanese baby. They tried hard to allow me to connect with Chinese culture when I was younger but it was pretty clearly a version of Chinese culture that had been filtered through a white lens. I have no sense of my own culture: I don't connect with my parents French-American history but I also feel like an outsider when I look at Taiwanese culture. Chinese and Taiwanese immigrant culture is also closed off to me. I was brought over at 7 months old, I don't have any ties to Taiwan besides my birth and I never had the experience of adjusting to a new way of life that immigrants share. We had a "families with children from China" adoption playgroup when I was younger, but every adult there was white. It was more of a place for the adults to hang out than a place for the kids to connect. Something that stuck with me was a friend describing me as a twinkie: yellow on the outside and white on the inside. I was surprised by how much I hated that term. Even if I was raised by white people I still have a unique experience. They didn't have to worry about getting beat up for "bringing the china virus over." I guess I just don't know what I am.

My family is trans racial through adoption. German, Jewish, African American, Asian, and Indigenous-Latino. Race was not a specific trait my family sought out, but after adopting my sister who was black (the first trans-racial adoption), we immediately became aware of many racial issues. The town where we lived was a safe haven for many white supremacist types, which contributed to our decision to leave that town. For school, my family is lucky enough to afford a private school that can micro-manage the other kids there. From my experience, the best thing to do is keep an open mind and to be patient with your extended family who may have a less tolerant mindset. But be ready to make sacrifices you wouldn’t expect because race is still a major issue.

"it's not the colorblindess (that's an issue) it's the parents not wanting to prepare their children for the world" As someone who works heavily in adoptions this is extremely true. Most transracial adoptions I deal with the parents are prepared because they are coming out of the foster system but whenever we get new parents I always have to confront the idea is the white savior. One thing to note, even though many white family's adopt non-white kids, many non-white families are foster parents for kids who may not stay with them until they are 18 as they can be reunited with family. Idk the nationwide numbers but in my locale that is much more prevalent. There are subtle issues with culture and communication that this brings about but most of them doing a really good job and take some of our most difficult kids. With the idea of a "white savior" I think it's good to remember all these people of color doing the really hard and less glamorized work.

I want to foster to adopt and I'm in a few groups about adoption to prepare for it. The amount of people who want to specifically adopt a child of a certain race is strange. I want to be clear that it is very much a minority, but it is still more than you would think. Or at least more than I thought. Its much less prevalent among the foster to adopt crowd, presumably because we chose the more uncomfortable route that puts more pressure on the parents to be, for lack of a better term, excellent. Its something a lot of us talk about. If we end up being offered to adopt a foster child or children of a different race then its on us to properly accomodate and prepare that child and what that man said is right, it isn't unreasonable to expect parents to move to provide a better environment that the child wpuld have more peers in. Its something I only realized that a lot of white people don't think about when I joined these groups. I had the incredible benefit of my grandma being Filipino and my aunt, who ended up being born around the same time as me, being my best friend. It gave me a perspective I took for granted and now realize many white people didnt have. Its good to see a video that is so compassionate towards all angles. I truly dont. Think most transracial adoptions are done out of any narcissistic need to look good, but I do think there's a lot of internal biases that white parents have never had to confront and their child, no matter how loved they are, is the one that suffers for it.

As an adoptee with Caucasian parents, I’ll be one of the few to say I’m glad I was adopted. I love my parents, my birth parents probably didn’t want a girl and for that reason alone it could’ve ended up a lot worse for me than it did (I’m glad I got out of there!!). Yeah, China is in my roots, but I don’t understand why people make a big deal out of being connected to your heritage. Other than being ethnically Chinese, china means next to nothing to me. And regarding racism, I mostly get discriminated by other asians, to be honest, who start talking to me in some East Asian language when they first meet me (dude, we’re in North America, speaking English is your best bet). Not to ramble, but i also know there are people out there who are against adoption for the superficial reason that they want their kids to look like themselves. I get it, but at the same time, my parents were lovely enough to not feel that way and now I get to live in a good country with people who actually want me. Sorry I’m heated 😂😂🤣

@cometrudolph

2 жыл бұрын

I’m confused, how is asian people speaking to you in their own language racist? It’s wrong for them to assume, but a lot of times the situation is that they don’t speak fluent English and are looking for others who understand their situation, I don’t see how that implies they‘re tryna make you feel racially inferior or how that’s discriminatory against you

@michiel1162

2 жыл бұрын

you're the comment i'm looking for. Everbody here makes adaption seem like hell.

Great video. You answered so many questions I didn't even know I had.

tbh one thing that worries me kinda in general is if the adoption services check if the parents are safe for the child. There's this one show about covering up tattoos of ex nazis and one episode had a guy in it who adopted a black kid and then went to cover up his tattoos a few years after. And sure it's great he changed and all that but the child was in danger in that situation. Nobody can see into the future and decide whether or not someone will change or treat the child well despite their political beliefs. Also kinda relevant here a family vloggers that see adoptive children as a way to boost views, there was a case with one family that adopted a toddler from china, knew he was autistic and then just kinda sent the kid back after a few years because he was "just too stressful to handle". So idk maybe some tests or background checks should be run.

As a transracial adoptee, a lot of the points made here are things that I had to deal with growing up. I never got any race talk. I was raised color blind and thought and saw myself as white. I still wanted to know about my heritage and found it an integral part to myself, but bc of my parents’ racist views on China, acknowledging my culture was brought up very little. The times that it was was told very vaguely. When race did have to come into the picture, they held a very colorblind approach. Even now, I feel like I have to walk on eggshells to not set them off about something important to me. If you do continue a discussion with this video and include an interview portion, I’d love to talk about my adoption and what it was like.

This was super informative, thank u! Especially after I read "luster" and had some curiosities about the adoption dynamic in the book.

Thank you for your video, Adopting is such a complex process and it really helps when someone breaks it down :)

I'm finding this an interesting conversation, and I do think there's a lot of nuance that gets missed because people tend to view the issue through their own experience. Me included, LOL, because in my family and circle of friends there are white kids adopted by Asian parents and black kids adopted by white parents, and all were a result of existing relationships. In the first case, the children were (unwanted) offspring of a distant relative in a mixed-race family, and adopted to keep them in the family and together. (And because the adoptive parents wanted them, it should be noted). Both kids are now grown, one with kids of her own, and I think the adoption was overall a positive experience. I will say it's always been interesting when people meet the blond, blue-eyed kids with French first names and Chinese surnames for the first time. :-D In the second case, the white parents had been spending a lot of time in Nigeria for work related reasons over some years and became good friends with a colleague and his wife, enough that the two families spent a lot of time together. When their friends died in an accident and no biological family came to claim the very young children, the white parents adopted them. Those kids are now teens and have grown up splitting their time between US, Canada, Mexico, and Nigeria, with the express purpose of making sure everyone in the family is comfortable with the home culture of everyone else in the family while still supporting the travel needs of the parents. So far it seems to be a successfully blended family. I have the idea that neither is a common scenario, but my point is that it can a mistake to make blanket assumptions about all international adoptions. Also? I know mixed race families where there is so much variation in the (biological) kids that outsiders assume adoption. That gets weird.

@eklectiktoni

2 жыл бұрын

It's too bad all adoption can't be like this - where the children already know the potential parents and have a healthy existing relationship.

@eliscanfield3913

2 жыл бұрын

That's pretty awesome. :) And what Eklectiktoni said.

I'm a transracial (and transnational) adoptee (Chinese, adopted by white Americans). I think there's a lot of complexity around this topic which you bring up, so thank you for making this video! The way I think about it is there are a lot of moving parts to adoption, some of which is unique to adoption and some of which is fundamental to all parent-child relationships but is more exacerbated or highlighted by adoption. I don't want to write a tl;dr comment but mainly my pov boils down to: - Adoption is often very touchy because it's (rightly) a personal topic for many, such as the adoptees, the natal parents, the adoptive parents, and any relatives+loved ones of these parties. However, that doesn't erase systemic issues around the adoption systems like trauma, race, class, intercountry dynamics, and transparency issues. In particular, talking about these issues should not be taken as personal attacks on adoption as a whole. - While there are many issues unique to adoption (both transracial and not), I think often the questions and problems brought up regarding adoption are not fundamentally exclusive to it. That is, I think adoption makes people scrutinize and reconsider what we think of parenthood and caring for children in general. Another way to put it is reflecting what obligation do we owe to children in our families and communities? What does it mean to be a good and ethical parent? What are our systems that do and don't nurture children, even if they're theoretically supposed to? How does our society determine "ideal" parents?

Goddamn. Videos like this are exactly why I'm a channel member. You provide a SERVICE to the world through your videos, thank you so much.

You done a great job handling a topic like this which usually get talked about that much. Nice video!

I have not yet watched the whole video, so you might bring this up later, but as you started to outline the topic, the first name that popped into my mind: Myka Stauffer. Obviously most adoptive parents love and nurture their child, but there are cases like hers. Vile.

From the perspective of a current foster parent (white-appearing, but of Hispanic culture) of a child (black-appearing, but mixed) that no longer has a legal attachment to their biological parents, it is difficult not to see the challenges brought up by this video given the enormous stigma that foster children experience as a result of their background. Foster children are put into the system as a result of abuse, neglect, and exploitation, through no fault of their own, and when no suitable family member is found, they are placed with an unrelated family for the duration of their case. The stigma is created not so much by their experience or the care they receive but by the lack of support they receive from ANY community (including their parents, in many cases), much less their own. Receiving your primary support from people who do not share your racial background and failing to receive proper support from your immediate or extended family group, will necessarily change the way your experience as a human is. In any event, my estimation at the moment is that if my partner and I do not adopt our foster child, it is unlikely anyone will ever adopt them and will spend their life going from one foster home to the next until they age out of the system. Most people outside of the foster care system, don't generally understand the challenges of foster parents (the stigma is that they "do it for the money") or the children in care and contribute to the "white savior" perception. White people contribute to this because they view themselves as superior and either wittingly or unwittingly communicate this ("oh, your so lucky" statements). My partner and I have also fostered white children and did not experience the same (mixed) reactions from others, of any race, that we do with our current foster child. In addition, there is this perception from outside of adoptive families (my experience anyway) that the only reason someone would transracially adopt would be to obtain some type of fashionable accessory (there is almost always some reference to Angelina Jolie). I think this notion is more prevalent in the private adoption space than in the foster system. Foster parents are generally a tight-knit group that forms strong bonds with other foster families to support each other with children and foster parents of a variety of backgrounds. People get into foster care for many reasons (it does not pay well enough to do it for the money), but almost all that I've met do it with sincere and good intentions to support family reunification, when possible. The foster system can be difficult to navigate and is quite a bit of work administratively on top of the normal demands of being a parent. One angle you did not explore in your video (but could have) is the experience of non-white individuals adopting white children. You really don't see white fragility or the feelings of white supremacy come out quite like their stories. Apparently, it truly shakes white people to their core to see a non-white person caring for a white child.

Very interesting and, no doubt, complicated topic. Hope some future adoptive parents see this video and are encouraged to educate themselves. Great vid as always! Ps...the sound clip of Abe saying "follow me" gets me everytime. Love the Oddworld games.

This is definitely a topic that is not talked about enough, and I love how it wasn't an attack on anything but simply an observation of how our society affects the relationships between these types of families. And how the parents should learn to communicate these societal dynamics. Great video

I had two aunts that adopted, one adopted two children from China and one adopted two children from Haiti As far as I remember, they were both raised just as another member of the family, and one of the ones from Haiti even grew up to join the police force in my home town (real cool). Idk, I just think those aunts were pretty cool people. They did have to deal with the usual race bullshit outside of the house, but I'm pretty sure they grew up relatively capable and happy.

What is the culture of an adopted child? The adoptive parent's culture or the culture of the parents of giving them up for adoption. I think the answer is pretty obvious. I agree that children adopted that are in some sense of otherness, they will have multicultural confusion due to being intersectional.

Thank you for having subtitles available!

My wife and I are hoping to foster to adopt in the next year or two. We took a foster parent class and it spent a fair amount of time talking about the many issues covered here. I always appreciate your perspective and am glad that most of what you covered was already on our minds.

@deathsecretary2055

2 жыл бұрын

What was your experience with the foster parent class like? My soon-to-be wife and I have discussed foster adoption in the next five years.

Somewhat related, growing up as a white Latino guy my conservative father explained racism to me initially in an unsurprisingly inadequate way. When I was like seven, I was watching some cop drama with him and racism came up, I asked him why someone would be racist. My best friend from age 3 to still now is mixed race, my father is dark skinned enough people think he's Middle Eastern, and my closest school friends were black and vietnamese respectively. So yeah, racism confused me initially because although the differences were obvious, I was privileged enough to have never seen anything I understood as racist. My dad said "it happens when a father teaches his son that a black person isn't a human but more like an animal" when I asked why, he said "because of slavery". And that was like ...about as deep as it got for me until I was an adult. Only barely getting more context from shows and other students as time went on. Race wasn't discussed until racism was by something external, and when it was discussed it was less systems and beliefs and more the past and personal family responsibilities. To this day I wish it had been explained to me how unjust the world is. I felt so betrayed when I started learning more about intersectionality, worker's rights, and the faults of capitalism

@PsionicNoMad

2 жыл бұрын

Playing devil's advocate, I have a friend whose father taught him that other races are inferior, full on Bell Curve addict, so to at least get that racism is bad and stupid, I think it counts for something. That said, I go deep with my kids, I teach them about systemic issues whenever the topic comes up. My oldest at home is 8 though, so I can only get so deep into it, but it's for sure deeper than "some people dehumanize races because of slavery" which totally begs the question... then why slavery? As someone who experienced that lack of depth yourself, what tips and advice would you give to a parent that wants to make sure they do not carry that ignorance onwards through the generations?

@Primalintent

2 жыл бұрын

@@PsionicNoMad A big part of it comes down to exposure, not just personal and political (I wouldn't say it's necessary to bring your children to specific movements or protests or anything) but especially with media. Making an effort to watch things by people with different experiences then you as a parent and then what your child would be accustomed to will make them a lot more empathetic. Fiction always makes us empathetic for the perspective character even when they do terrible things. That's why I think it's more important to not show shows and movies that focus on racist or bigoted protagonists (even if it acknowledges that) but to instead spotlight more shows about people who suffer from that treatment. Watching International Movies with subtitles, watching co-productions between multinational groups about immigration, watching local films made by people from different spectrums and perspectives besides the dominant. I hadn't even heard of Sikh people before Bend It Like Beckham, for instance. Exposure matters just as much as lectures, in my opinion. It's great to answer questions, it can be even greater when the person affected by the question gets to give the answer.

@PsionicNoMad

2 жыл бұрын

@@Primalintent Awesome advice, I appreciate you taking the time to respond. We do this to an extent already, but it's good information to hear. Your final point especially hits it home for me, that we should do what we can to get the answers to those questions from the people impacted by them.

@seanmatthewking

2 жыл бұрын

Racism is a concept conservatives refuse to understand beyond a surface level. The same is true for any identity politics or social justice issue. They prefer black and white thinking. Hence the whole “only 2 genders” thing. I don’t think what I’m saying is unfair, it’s just how their minds work. That’s not to say conservatives don’t think in depth about any topic.

There was a transracial adoptee that I went to highschool with. He dressed like a cowboy, was soft spoken, but totally had an exaggerated southern accent whenever you caught him talking. My friends and I (we're all black/mixed/multicultural) would shout out to him, smile and try to at least share some camaraderie with him (as we minorities tend to be raised to do) and he always avoided contact with black people exclusively. Went to school with this dude for 4 years, didn't find out until after graduation that he was adopted. Also found out from several mutual friends that he not only was a very loud and fun person when he was just around white people, but he had been heard on multiple occasions saying the he hated "N words" and that he said it with a hard "R"... and it's not like he was abandoned or abused by his black family, to my knowledge. His birth parents apparently died in a car crash and his adopted was his godfather... So, from our collective perspective, he was just an uncle Tom that hated his own race mostly likely in order to over correct and fit in with the aggie kids he lived closest to. I think back on that dude from time to time whenever things like this pop up.

@mysticwizard1943

2 жыл бұрын

Wonder if that dude ever saw that Chappelle skit about the blind, secretly black, klan member.... like other than being blind that dude you described was a step away from living that. But in all seriousness that guy sounded like he had some deep seated issues... low self esteem, no sense of identity (or at least a warped one). It just seems like a depressing existence tbh. Makes you wonder what his home-life was like, and how he got put in that situation. It'd be hard to believe that his birth parents would have made a racist their child's godparent, and if they didn't then it'd be even harder to believe that they would encourage him to act the way he did. If he wanted to fit in and started to dress more like the white kids around him that's one thing, and not inherently harmful as his adoptive parents probably just wanted to see him happy, making friends, fitting in, etc., but as he got older and more vocal about his opinions (as teenagers tend to do) they had to see some signs that he was going down a weird path.

Thank you for being so understanding of such a complex issue.

Great video, especially impressed you found a use for "child threatening to touch juice" stock footage

I really think us in the black community need to step up. All children deserve to be in a loving home. And for some it’s not possible. The cost of adopting a child in the foster care system is hard. But it’s important if you feel called to it.

This was great! I may end up adopting one day and it's always good to learn more about what I can do to help my future child to have the best life experience possible

Great video, thank you for sharing your thoughts!

As a bonus mom of a child who was in foster care for 2 years (12 homes from age 5-7), I can attest to the challenge of helping the child heal through early trauma. AND I can attest to the deep love that comes from a child finally feeling safe & protected! Sadly there are many parents who approach child rearing from the perspective of how the child will add to their life, not what they are meant to give the child. Its the idea of having a doll to form into an avatar of idealized humanity. Children are their own being. Children are here to challenge our ideas of what life is (by making us explain why we do things). Children are not mini versions of the adults who will act out the adults dreams for them. One other component many parents try to avoid or deny at all costs (which can be very detrimental) is that they can avoid trauma in a child's life. Various types of trauma (or shifts from understood self concepts) are what help us grow & build skills for life with other humans. How we communicate & work with children matters. Listening to their feelings & thoughts. What they love & dislike. What future they dream of for themselves. Being a parent means having uncomfortable & challenging discussions (age appropriate). Modeling healthier behavior (not repeating harm from our parents). Learning new ways of engagement to build a better world & inspire change for the next generation. These are ways we as adults (with or without children) can cultivate a healthier world every day. I loved this video & thank you for letting me share my 2 cents!💜🙌🏾💜

@anitrahooper5031

2 жыл бұрын

Adding, I grew up in a blended (2 half brothers) & mixed race (dad & brother black with a white mom & other brother). We had unofficial foster siblings, cousins, & friends who became like family. My mom also ran a daycare in the home & both parents were active in community activism. Diversity of community was a big focus early & throughout my life!

Thanks. That was pretty good for a guy who has no direct experience with adoption. :-) My wife and I adopted our mixed-race daughter. We also have a biological son who is five years older. We actually started out attempting to adopt internationally, via a program in Ethiopia. But that fell through, and we ended up adopting domestically instead. In retrospect, I found more reasons to trust the domestic process than the international one but "das jus me doe". Our daughter has some black in her, but is mostly Hispanic. So, in the summer, she's more like Halle Berry, but in the winter, she's closer to Selena Gomez. As an adult, I predict most people will just think of her as Hispanic. She can identify however she wishes. We did have to make a conscious effort not to fall for the idea that my wife and I are "white saviors". We genuinely wanted to adopt because (1) we wanted more children in our family, (2) it would have been medically dangerous for my wife, and (3) we knew there were children out there waiting to be adopted, of whatever race, and we wanted to be part of that solution. Does #3 make us white saviors? Only if taken in isolation to the other two reasons, IMO. Despite both of us being raised very conservative, we've never seriously entertained the idea of being "color blind". I mean, OK, when I was a teenager, and maybe a bit in college, but it didn't take terribly long for me to figure out how wrong that is. We certainly weren't going to raise our daughter in a racially colorblind, sheltered way and expect the world to just be better by the time she reaches adulthood. She's aware that she's different, but loved equally to our son regardless. For a variety of reasons, my wife and I homeschool our children. One of those reasons is the whitewashed education system in our state, which is getting more whitewashed every time the legislature meets. Seriously, it's been in the news a lot, in case you hadn't noticed. :-( But we've found a U.S. history curriculum that is overtly race-conscious, and will be starting it this coming school year.

Transracial adoptive parent here. I appreciate your measured thoughts.

My fiance and I are strongly considering the foster to adopt pathway in the near future. We've been grappling with this exact challenge and how we plan to grapple with it. Our conclusion was pretty similar to yours. It's going to take a ton of work and we need to have a robust plan in place _before_ taking this on to make sure we are providing the environment and community for them

When my parents fostered, they didn't care about the color. They cared about the kids.

I'm a transracial adoptee, and my parents raised me with a colorblind approach. They never taught me that I could be oppressed because of my race, and so I always think that having the conversation about racism is gonna be hard and unwelcome, especially since my parents have issues with deeply rooted racism themselves. Edit: My parents raised me like a white kid, but they never hid the fact that I was adopted or anything about the circumstances my birth mom was in when she gave me up. They almost encouraged that I know about my culture, but they still raised me as a white kid, which I think really wasn't a good choice on their part. I'm honestly afraid to talk about race with them in a very meaningful way, especially when it comes to my adoption, because they would never *say* they saved me, but how they taught about Guatemala comes off as cynical looking back on it.

Very weird how we’re more angry at the people trying to give kids a better chance at life than we are at the communities that have in fact failed them…

I am teaching race and ethnicity at a public university, and I'm super happy to have discovered T1J. Thanks for the insightful videos.

Hey T1J, great vid! I wanted to make another quick point on the topic that also rarely touched on. It came up in a conversation with my parents, I want to preface, I'm white, but I'm engaged to an amazing Caribbean woman. My fiance and I were talking about this very topic with my parents, they are usually very progressive people, they got defensive however when we echoed ideas from the video about how hard interactions can be for trans-racial adoptees, especially if they are not given proper prospective on the systemic racism they will face. My parents argued that they knew people growing up who were black, adopted into white families and their were never any issues like we were voicing, however they did not understand since we live in a small town (less than 4,000 people) where everyone knows everyone, those kids may not face the same level of outward discrimination most black kids receive from institutions. My parents though have no way of knowing since those same institutions looked upon them favorably. My parents also did not understand that while they did not "see" racism towards their peers, they no doubt experienced it, from their peers, the institutions around them, and more than likely their parents. They simply did not understand what racism looked like on an interpersonal level. I also want to confirm your earlier point in the video, when you're white race is a non-factor when growing up, my parents tried to raise me colorblind to my peers, I feel though that this approach can also be damaging to white kids, especially when they grow up and interact with Black people as adults. For example, when I went to college and had a more racially diverse friend group I was unable to at first understand why certain situations would make them uncomfortable and the concept of microaggressions was completely foreign to me. My fiance and I have had long talks on all these topics and I am trying to arm myself so I can one day raise my biracial kids to the best of my abilities, I am now aware that there are problems they will face in their life that I will have no personal frame of reference for and that's okay. I need to be mindful of things that never crossed my mind before and ready to have conversations that I never had with my parents as a kid. I feel that can be a powerful first step for these parents to remove the white savior complex a lot of white adoptive parents feel towards their trans-racial children and better prepare their adoptive kids for the harsh world.