That’s what I asked my daughter this morning, after reading about Kim Eun Mi Young in the New York Times. In a story highlighting the release of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute study on the challenges of trans-racial adoptees, Beyond Culture Camp, there was this paragraph:
“At no time did I consider myself anything other than white,” said Ms. Young, 48, who lives in San Antonio. “I had no sense of any identity as a Korean woman. Dating an Asian man would have forced me to accept who I was.”
And according to the Institute, about 78% of the other adoptees they interviewed had the same attitude she did. Many of them felt free to explore their identity and heritage only after moving away from their parents to more diverse neighbourhoods.
“So . . . did you ever think you were white?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because there was this story where a Korean adoptee who is in her 40s said she thought of herself as white while she was growing up in the US.”
Pause, pinching arm.
“Do you mean white skin?”
“No, I mean, did you ever think of yourself as anything other than Asian?”
“Nope. Isn’t it obvious?”
Ok, I thought—good check. We live in a place where white kids are now the minority at school (29%) and her friends are mostly non-white, but you never know what a child is thinking just because it is the most protective thing to think.
“Is there such a thing as yellow skin?” she asked abruptly, pulling the post-shower towel off her head.
“No, why?”
“Because when we were doing our film study yesterday, we were talking about skin colour and someone said some people are supposed to have yellow skin and C. looked at him and said, ‘Dude, Lisa on the Simpsons has yellow skin. Nobody human does.’”
“Well, she’s right. That is a stereotype. It used to be said that there were four skin tones—black, white, red, and yellow. That’s . . . uh, very passé now. (Thank goodness for smart kids who can talk about this stuff.)
Anyway, I had to wince at one of the anecdotes related in the Times piece that had to do with identity and reunion. One of the male adoptees from Korea, Joel Ballantyne, was talking about tracking down his relatives in Korea:
. . . Mr. Ballantyne said that while traveling to South Korea was an eye-opening experience in many ways, it was also disheartening.
Many Koreans, they said, did not consider them to be “real Koreans” because they did not speak the language or seem to understand the culture.
Mr. Ballantyne tracked down his maternal grandmother, but when he met her, he said, she scolded him for not learning Korean before he came.
“She was the one who had put me up for adoption,” he said. “So that just created tension between us. Even as I was leaving, she continued to say I needed to learn Korean before I came by again.”
Wonder if he did.
Filed under: adoption, kids, life, solo life , New York Times, Evan B. Donaldson Institute, race, transracial adoption, adoptee, Beyond Culture Camp, minority, Korea, language
My mom is Asian my dad is white….I always considered myself white, although I loved and celebrated my Asian family ties. It wasn’t until I was TWENTY-FIVE when speaking with an African American co-worker about my family heritage that she pointed out that I wasn’t white. My response was “really???” I Never thought about it just checked the “white” box I guess because I looked white. Now when I hold my Chinese daughter people will say…Oh now I can see you “Asian” features.
Weird…..
Yes.
I wonder about this with my five-year-old. Right now I watch her artwork to see how she draws our family. And – at the moment – her artwork shows our family looking exactly as it does in real life: one balding, Caucasian old guy; one glasses-wearing, frumpy, Caucasian woman; and a cute Asian-American girl wearing over-the-top frilly dresses and pigtails.
I would say that’s a good thing!