Transracial Adoptees: Racialized Adoption Discourse Implications for Adoptees

• In Event: 2166 - Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 5: The Subjectivity of Racial Identity

Abstract

This paper will analyze the processes of how transracially adopted people negotiate their racialized identity within white adopting families. It focuses on transracial adoptee’s experiences of racialization as they are adopted by white families. Drawing on theories of groupness and group identity, whiteness, and double-consciousness, I argue that transracially adopted people undergo unique processes of racialization unlike other racialized groups and face uniquely complex and nuanced barriers in negotiating identity and personhood. Transracially adopted people experience a unique racialized identity and experience assimilation into white culture; this is indicative of hegemony of white culture. This raises interesting questions which challenge how whiteness is conceptualized and who is allowed the agency and autonomy to classify themselves as white. Furthermore, transracial adoptees provide a unique case study into examining how group categories and concepts of identity are formed and conceptualized; transracial adoptees’ racialized identity challenged notions of racialized group identity as being bound by geography and such discussions of racialized personhood permit further examination. They have been on the margins of discussion within race and ethnicity discourse and analyzation of their conception of identity will provide insight that places them within the broader discourse of categories and race. I conclude with suggestions for parents of transracial adoptees and argue for more education on race issues to be implemented both in the adoption process and throughout their lives. Few articles if any, explore how transracially adopted people negotiate kinship ties to perceived cultural origins. Further research should be conducted in order to address these research gaps. More research in this area should be conducted in order to provide meaningful insights that could lead to real world applications that have the potential to deconstruct whiteness within transracial adoptee families. Ideally future research will help transracially adopted people navigate their identity in more positive ways.

Author

• Jennifer Peruniak, University of Toronto