‘In my heart, I am Cambodian’: Symbolic Ethnicity among Parents who Adopt Transracially

• In Event: 4346 - Producing Race: The Everyday Makings of Racial Distinctions and Inequality

Abstract

Research argues that various racial groups have different constraints or opportunities for claiming an ethnic identity. In particular, some researchers posit that white Americans have more ethnic options. In other words, whites are able to claim ethnic identification in white racialized ethnic groups with little penalty even though that ethnicity may be devoid of specific meaning or participation in ethnic organizations and/or communities. While research finds that white Americans primarily draw upon ancestral ties to assert this symbolic ethnicity, in our research we find a new avenue through which whites may exercise their ethnic options: transnational and/or transracial adoption. Drawing on 47 in-depth semi-structured interviews with white adoptive parents of transnationally and/or transracially adopted children, we find that some adoptive parents claim identification as members of their adopted children’s ethnic groups. In explaining their newly acquired ethnicity, we find that adoptive parents deploy three strategies - racial diffusion, transformative inclusion, and cultural centrality. We conceptualize racial diffusion as beliefs in the flexibility and fluidity of race, transformative inclusion as the transformative properties of family-making, and cultural centrality as the idea that acknowledging and incorporating cultural elements is sufficient for asserting ethnic options. While adoption of their child’s ethnic group identification may seem unexpected, it reifies ideas of family as “shared blood.” Though white parents claim their child’s racial and/or ethnic identity, they do so without the consequences of embodying that racialized identity (structural barriers, discrimination, etc.). Furthermore, adopted children are not able to claim their parents’ white racial group membership. These findings have implications for contemporary understandings of symbolic ethnicity.

Authors

• SunAh Marie Laybourn, University of Memphis

• Carla Goar, Kent State University