I Wasn’t Supposed to Notice It: Transracial Adoption and Color-Blind Racism

• In Event: 050 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Paper Session. The Mechanisms of Color-Blind Racism

Abstract

Transracial adoption in the United States has increased significantly in recent years, due in part to a rise in international adoption, as well as what scholars have argued has been a shift in racial relations in the United States. This paper explores the practice of transracial adoption and the racial ideologies and boundaries that undergird transracial families. If families utilize color-blind racist ideology as a strategy for raising transracial children, are racial boundaries actually being challenged, as scholars posit? This study shows that the mechanisms of color-blind racism that family members employ often leave transracial adoptees with few options to cope with encounters of everyday racism. Specifically, this study adds nuance to the ability of families to cross the color line without reproducing inequalities, and questions how transracial adoption challenges the idea of kinship in the United States today. To achieve this end, qualitative approaches, including in-depth life story interviews with both transracial adoptees and their white siblings, are employed.

Author

• Devon R. Goss, University of Connecticut