“Triple Consciousness: Transracial Adoptees’ Racial Identity Formation in White Canadian Families”

• In Event: Centering Body, Mind, and Spirit for Radical Transformation in Racial and Ethnic Sociology

Abstract

Drawing on scholarship from DuBois and his legacy of theorizing racialization, this article examines how Canadian transracial adoptees navigate and understand their racial identity within white adopting families. It uses 43 semi-structured interviews with transracial adoptees across Canada, I argue that insights from double consciousness can be expanded to triple consciousness. First, transracial adoptees view themselves through a white racial lens, influenced by their white parents. White parents project their ideas of their children as lacking race, despite the child’s expressing instances of racism or being recognized as racialized by others. Second, adoptees experience negative racializing experiences in the form of racism and rejection from both white and BIPOC groups. Third, they lack belonging to communities of people with shared lived experiences, which causes further alienation. This negatively affects transracial adoptees’ ability to understand their experience as racialized people. Therefore, through encountering alienation on both sides of the colourline, transracial adoptees develop triple consciousness and an “in-between” sense of racial identity.

Author

• Jennifer Peruniak, University of Toronto