Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. Hey, welcome to Beyond the Scenes,
Speaker 1: the podcast that goes deeper into segments and topics that
Speaker 1: originally aired on the Daily Show with Trevor Noa. This
Speaker 1: is what you gotta think about this podcast as all right,
Speaker 1: you have to be a little angry, all right. You
Speaker 1: go to the snack machine, and then you put a
Speaker 1: dollar bill in that vending machine and you push that
Speaker 1: button B twenty seven, and them hot cheetos star that
Speaker 1: little thing, the thing, them Cheetos fall down, and then
Speaker 1: two bags of Cheetos come out to vending machine. Now
Speaker 1: you got an extra snack, and you got extra hot
Speaker 1: Cheeto dust on your fingers, and you didn't even have
Speaker 1: to shake the damn vending machine. That's what this podcast is.
Speaker 1: I'm Roy Wood Jr. Today we're talking about a topic
Speaker 1: that has come up quite a bit on the show,
Speaker 1: transracial adoption and the experience of being raised by adoptive
Speaker 1: parents of a different race. Trevis covered this issue and
Speaker 1: interview my next two guests on the show. So I'm
Speaker 1: excited to welcome them back to the Daily Show universe
Speaker 1: and have a more in depth conversation with them about
Speaker 1: their first hand experience. First up, i'd like to welcome
Speaker 1: the author of the book All You Can Ever Know,
Speaker 1: Nicole Chung. Nicole, how you doing okay?
Speaker 2: Roy, thank you for having me here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry for getting a little excited about Cheetos.
Speaker 2: It's totally understandable. That was great.
Speaker 1: Also joining us on the program is the author of
Speaker 1: Surviving the White Gays, Rebecca Carol. Rebecca, good day to
Speaker 1: you as well, and to you Roy.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me. And hey, Nicole, it's
Speaker 3: great to see you always, always lovely to see you
Speaker 3: to Rebecca.
Speaker 1: Now, for those of you listening and watching who were
Speaker 1: not familiar with these two wonderful people stories, now, both
Speaker 1: of you were adopted and raised by white parents. Nicole
Speaker 1: will start with you. Tell us about your experience growing
Speaker 1: up in a trance racial household and what were some
Speaker 1: of the challenges you faced growing up in a predominantly
Speaker 1: white town.
Speaker 4: Sure, so, I grew up in a very small community
Speaker 4: in southern Oregon.
Speaker 2: I usually tell.
Speaker 4: People it's like not the part of Oregon you've heard of,
Speaker 4: which is Portland, and we were very far from like
Speaker 4: major urban centers. It was an extremely white area. Like
Speaker 4: I was probably the only Asian kid at my elementary school,
Speaker 4: just to give you a sense. And I did not
Speaker 4: meet another Korean American or become close to them until
Speaker 4: after I left home, So it was kind of this
Speaker 4: extreme racial isolation. I grew up in a really loving family,
Speaker 4: loving white working class family, and you know, I think
Speaker 4: until I started school, right, I was aware of being different,
Speaker 4: of being Asian.
Speaker 2: Not like the rest of my family. I had words
Speaker 2: like Asian and Korean.
Speaker 4: I knew my birth parents had been immigrants to this
Speaker 4: country when I was born and then placed, but it
Speaker 4: wasn't something I thought about much in my day to
Speaker 4: day life, you know. And it wasn't until I started
Speaker 4: going out into the world, out to school, you know,
Speaker 4: seeing hey, like I'm really the only person like me
Speaker 4: in these rooms, you know that I really began.
Speaker 2: To feel like sort of out of place.
Speaker 4: And then, you know, with school came experiences of racism,
Speaker 4: like I started hearing anti Asian slurs and being bullied
Speaker 4: by that at a fairly young age, like seven eight
Speaker 4: years old. And again, the complication of this, right is
Speaker 4: that I had been raised by really well meaning, loving
Speaker 4: white people who had been specifically instructed not to talk
Speaker 4: to me about my racial identity, who'd been told to
Speaker 4: essentially assimilate her.
Speaker 2: Don't talk about race, It'll.
Speaker 1: All be by who.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: So like the judge who finalized my adoption as an example,
Speaker 4: who my adoptive parents really did look to as an expert,
Speaker 4: was literally the word he used was assimilate her. They
Speaker 4: asked social workers that they worked with. They asked the
Speaker 4: adoption agency who did their home study.
Speaker 1: How you going to right? You can take this Korean baby,
Speaker 1: but don't you teach them none of that Korean stuff.
Speaker 4: My mother was like, I thought they'd at least recommend
Speaker 4: a book or something, and no one did. I mean,
Speaker 4: so they were doing what they were told, but of
Speaker 4: course they weren't prepared for the possibility and that I'd
Speaker 4: encounter prejudice in our community.
Speaker 1: I'm forgive me for a second. My Alabama brain is
Speaker 1: just trying to process everything you just said to me. Now,
Speaker 1: what you're saying is that they were How do you
Speaker 1: legislate it? What happens if they catch you eating some
Speaker 1: kimchi or some Korean barbecue? Do they take you back
Speaker 1: and reclaim you as a ward of the state?
Speaker 3: Like, how could they write not to get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 3: But I just want to say because because it needs
Speaker 3: to be said, and it's such an integral part of
Speaker 3: what a transracial adoption is is that this country was
Speaker 3: founded on the premise of white people deciding what constitutes family,
Speaker 3: when families can be made, how much they are worth, literally,
Speaker 3: when they can be torn apart or kept together. And
Speaker 3: so given that that is what this country is founded on,
Speaker 3: any kind of social construct, racism, sexismsogony, adoption, which is
Speaker 3: a process of taking somebody else's child, it's going to
Speaker 3: have remnants of that history.
Speaker 1: Okay, So then then let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: your experience, Rebecca, because you essentially came up in Oregon.
Speaker 3: East That's right, That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: You know, now New Hampshire, you know, I've only gone
Speaker 1: there for the primaries, which is also very white as well.
Speaker 1: But what was that like for you? You know, how
Speaker 1: similar was your experience growing up you know, over there
Speaker 1: on the East Coast.
Speaker 3: Very similar in that my family was quite loving and
Speaker 3: very very idealistic, artists, bohemian, but I was the state
Speaker 3: was itself ninety nine point one percent white. When I wouldn't,
Speaker 3: my family moved there with me, so I became the
Speaker 3: first black person in the town as an infant, and
Speaker 3: you know, the only black kid through all of my schooling,
Speaker 3: and like Nicole, you know, started to experience you know,
Speaker 3: it was sort of a it was sort of a paradox,
Speaker 3: right because in my family, I was quite loved and
Speaker 3: quite you know, I was a very outgoing child, and
Speaker 3: I love to dance and be creative and a sort
Speaker 3: of a little bit of a star in my family.
Speaker 3: But then when I went outside of my family into
Speaker 3: schools and the real world outside of the bubble, you know,
Speaker 3: I was not prepared. I simply was not prepared. And
Speaker 3: like you know, Nicole's parents, although my adoption was open
Speaker 3: and kind of a handshake deal which ended up, as
Speaker 3: you can imagine, disastrously, they were very well meaning, but
Speaker 3: they just didn't think about it. They just didn't think
Speaker 3: about it. And that again is a real problem with
Speaker 3: language around adoption and the way that we talk about adoption.
Speaker 3: We're still using words like lucky and gift and grateful
Speaker 3: and gratitude and love is the only answer and all
Speaker 3: these kinds of things that we as adoptees know just
Speaker 3: isn't true.
Speaker 1: How did your family process racism when you came home
Speaker 1: and said, today, the girl called my hair this, so
Speaker 1: they called me a black ass this, or I'm sure
Speaker 1: teachers were saying some slick stuff that they shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been saying to black kids at their time and a
Speaker 1: place like that. When you brought those issues home to
Speaker 1: your parents, how did they handle that?
Speaker 3: They didn't. They did not handle that. And actually at
Speaker 3: a certain point I stopped telling them because they didn't.
Speaker 3: There was, you know, unintentional gas lighting, right, Are you
Speaker 3: sure that's what you heard? Are you sure he called
Speaker 3: you a nigger? Are you sure somebody tried to pet
Speaker 3: your hair?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 3: And I think that they again, unintentional gas lighting. I
Speaker 3: think that that for them, it was like I can't
Speaker 3: imagine that you know nice, you are nice neighbors or
Speaker 3: or whomever, or even our teachers would say something like that.
Speaker 3: And then even if they did, there was no language
Speaker 3: to process it, no, no contextualization, no all. Their their
Speaker 3: reference point was Martin Luther King, as so many white
Speaker 3: parents of black children at a cert of color.
Speaker 1: So you just jump in there and Nicole like, how
Speaker 1: does that color blind approach do a disservice to children
Speaker 1: that are in their transracial home.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, if I could just answer your last
Speaker 4: question first, Like, like Rebecca, I didn't really talk about
Speaker 4: it at home, like even at seven and eight, I
Speaker 4: knew I just felt it really wouldn't be understood. I
Speaker 4: did once try to tell my family that I'd been
Speaker 4: made fun of for being adopted. You know, I didn't
Speaker 4: mention like the slurs, but I said, this kid was
Speaker 4: like your parents didn't want you, and like kind of
Speaker 4: their response was, well, everybody gets teased for something, right,
Speaker 4: And you know, they gave me examples, and I'm sure
Speaker 4: they were trying to empathize they were, but what that
Speaker 4: conversation kind of told me at a young age was like,
Speaker 4: as well meaning as they were, they expected these were
Speaker 4: going to be safe environments for me because they were
Speaker 4: safe for them. And they thought there were few actual
Speaker 4: racists or bigots in our town because they were not
Speaker 4: among their targets ever, And so you know, they're sending
Speaker 4: me to these places and expecting them to be like
Speaker 4: safe environments and supportive, and you know it wasn't the case.
Speaker 4: And I did not know how to shatter that illusion
Speaker 4: for them. I really didn't even at that age. I
Speaker 4: was like it's my job here to like protect you
Speaker 4: in a way, like you've always told me, what really
Speaker 4: matters is the kind of people.
Speaker 2: That we are.
Speaker 4: And I was learning slowly that that was not true
Speaker 4: to everybody, right, But I didn't how was I supposed
Speaker 4: to educate adults in my life about that at the
Speaker 4: age of eight and nine, And so I do think
Speaker 4: it did me a disservice. But I will say I
Speaker 4: don't think my adoptive family was especially warped, you know,
Speaker 4: by those experts quote unquote experts who told them to
Speaker 4: essentially ignore my racial identity either because it did it
Speaker 4: made these conversations a lot harder.
Speaker 2: We had them a lot later.
Speaker 4: There could have been like a lot more openness and
Speaker 4: trust and just support. I think they loved me, and
Speaker 4: they would have wanted to know how to better support
Speaker 4: raising a child of color.
Speaker 2: In our town.
Speaker 4: And the fact is like they were kind of failed
Speaker 4: by that system too. Even though the whole system, as
Speaker 4: Rebecca was saying, was essentially set up to cater to
Speaker 4: their needs as white adopters, they were still not well
Speaker 4: served by it.
Speaker 2: And I think about that a lot.
Speaker 1: So if these families aren't given the tools that they need,
Speaker 1: And they also possess a blind spot to some of
Speaker 1: the horrors in the world because they just straight up
Speaker 1: happened and witness them or haven't had conversations about them.
Speaker 1: How much of a responsibility to do adoptive families that
Speaker 1: are creating a trans racial home, how much of a
Speaker 1: responsibility do they have to learning and educating and then
Speaker 1: trying to take down some of these systems of oppression?
Speaker 1: Or it's just being a good parent. Shouldn't that be enough?
Speaker 1: I adopted, you ask what the hell else you want
Speaker 1: me to do? Every day?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: I mean, that's unfortunately very commonly.
Speaker 1: I hope they don't say it like that with an
Speaker 1: Alabama accent, but ye, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, I really feel like if if your reference point
Speaker 3: is your only reference point for black folks is Martin
Speaker 3: Luther King, or if you don't have any black folks
Speaker 3: in your community, or if you don't have any black
Speaker 3: art on your wall, you should not be raising black
Speaker 3: children who become black adults. And that's the other thing, right,
Speaker 3: is that when we're when we're little, it's like, you know,
Speaker 3: everybody's cute, and everybody's it's playtime, and it's fun, and
Speaker 3: it's so on and so forth. But when I got
Speaker 3: grown and came out into the world as a black woman,
Speaker 3: my parents didn't recognize me really, and they didn't really
Speaker 3: know how to talk to me or how to interact
Speaker 3: with me and my child and my world. So you know,
Speaker 3: I feel very very strongly that it cannot be intentional
Speaker 3: about good intentions. It has to be about a real
Speaker 3: commitment to community and culture in a way that is
Speaker 3: not you know, exploitative or that feels like appropriation. But
Speaker 3: that's work, right, and for the most part, which is
Speaker 3: why we have systemic racism, is that it takes work.
Speaker 3: You got to get out of your self and your
Speaker 3: privilege and your power. Who wants to get out of
Speaker 3: their privilege and power? I mean, it's got to be
Speaker 3: it's got to feel great, m's worth.
Speaker 4: I mean, you hear so much in adoption these days especially,
Speaker 4: and much more so than we were growing up, Rebecca,
Speaker 4: about like celebrating a child's birth culture making sure they're
Speaker 4: connected to that.
Speaker 2: And you know, honestly that I think of that.
Speaker 4: I call it the fun part, right, because it is
Speaker 4: it's something the family can do together.
Speaker 2: It feels very affirming.
Speaker 4: It is a lot harder to do what you're talking
Speaker 4: about to really like center that child's experience, to really
Speaker 4: take a good hard look at your neighborhood, your community,
Speaker 4: the schools your kids will go to, maybe like the
Speaker 4: religious community that you're part of, and ask yourself.
Speaker 2: What would it be like to be a.
Speaker 4: Child of color, a black child, an Asian child in
Speaker 4: this environment. I mean, it really needs to start from
Speaker 4: that very basic place. And I think I think that's
Speaker 4: just the hard part. It's a real stumbling block for
Speaker 4: a lot of people because I mean, again, like one
Speaker 4: of the things about being white in this country is
Speaker 4: if you don't want to think about race in a way,
Speaker 4: you don't have to. The problem is it shouldn't become
Speaker 4: your child's burden to make that evident to you, you know,
Speaker 4: So that's something to consider.
Speaker 2: Like, I really agree with a lot of what you're saying.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: We talk about your relationship with you and your parents
Speaker 1: and you in society, but what about your relationship with yourself?
Speaker 1: You know, when you come up as something you're essentially
Speaker 1: both black swans to a degree within your environments, you know,
Speaker 1: as a child and as an adult, Like, was there
Speaker 1: ever a time that you didn't feel black enough? Or
Speaker 1: Asian enough, like once you got outside of the white,
Speaker 1: pleasant vial bubbles that you were raised in and you
Speaker 1: went to that first family function out of town, or
Speaker 1: you went to that one trip to the mall and
Speaker 1: you saw someone who looked like you. Walk me through
Speaker 1: those moments where you didn't feel like, well, you felt
Speaker 1: a legitimate disassociation with your own culture.
Speaker 3: Again, It's like it is like a paradox or an
Speaker 3: oxymoronic feeling, which is that every time I saw a
Speaker 3: black image easy Reader on Electric Company, my first dance
Speaker 3: teacher was black, it was I was drawn, But I
Speaker 3: also it was such a disconnect because I didn't have
Speaker 3: any sense of why I would belong to that person
Speaker 3: or that culture or that race. And I do want
Speaker 3: to also say that no matter how much we reintegrate,
Speaker 3: you know, even as adults in college, you know, I
Speaker 3: founded the first black student union. You know, I found
Speaker 3: my people. I mean, being in black community has been
Speaker 3: so enormously important to me. As much as we try.
Speaker 3: Those formative years were white. Those formative years centered the perception,
Speaker 3: the morals, the customs, everything white. I mean I sat
Speaker 3: at a table, a dinner table, and everybody was white.
Speaker 3: I went to school and everybody was white. So I
Speaker 3: feel like we've all had those experiences of not being
Speaker 3: enough or not being whatever it is, Asian enough, for
Speaker 3: black enough, or whatever, and really trying to grapple with
Speaker 3: that kind of grief because it is it's a loss,
Speaker 3: but also having to reconcile with the fact that we
Speaker 3: were in our formative years raised by and within a
Speaker 3: white centered environment.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I've one of the wildest questions actually that
Speaker 2: I get.
Speaker 4: A lot as an adoptee author is like, so, did
Speaker 4: you basically think that you were white for most of
Speaker 4: your life?
Speaker 2: And like the answer is no, I think, right, all
Speaker 2: I have to do is open my eyes.
Speaker 4: Right, I always knew, but because like Rebecca's saying, white
Speaker 4: was the default. It was like the world that I
Speaker 4: swam in, all I am really understood was that, oh
Speaker 4: I am like not like this, Like it's like I
Speaker 4: was defining myself in terms of a negative I didn't
Speaker 4: know what I was.
Speaker 2: I knew what I was.
Speaker 4: I knew I existed beyond the bounds of what a
Speaker 4: normal accepted like okay, welcome in my community. And yeah,
Speaker 4: that definitely it definitely left, you know, scars not to
Speaker 4: be dramatic that I think we're hard to grapple with until,
Speaker 4: as you said, Roy, you sort of take your first
Speaker 4: steps out into the world, you see what the rest
Speaker 4: of the world is like, and then you're trying to reconcile,
Speaker 4: like the distance between how you were raised and how
Speaker 4: the world is.
Speaker 1: And I think what's also interesting about your experience Newicle
Speaker 1: is that to a degree, you had even less representation
Speaker 1: on television. I don't know how much you were allowed
Speaker 1: to watch TV and peruse the Internet as a child,
Speaker 1: but like even the imagery of Asians on television was limited.
Speaker 1: There were Yeah, I would argue there were more black
Speaker 1: people on TV than Asians in varied roles. It wasn't
Speaker 1: as diverse as it is now. It wasn't as boxed
Speaker 1: and stereotypically as it is now for black people. But
Speaker 1: I would imagine that's have been an issue as well.
Speaker 1: So we have to take a break. But let me
Speaker 1: ask you all this real quick. When you got older
Speaker 1: and you started making the realizations and the connections of okay, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I missed a lot of stuff about
Speaker 1: me growing up. How did you all you know? In
Speaker 1: what ways have you tried to reconnect with your heritage
Speaker 1: over the years. You know, I know that there is
Speaker 1: a lot, Rebecca that is lost because the base level
Speaker 1: foundation software was never installed on the desktop. But when
Speaker 1: you look back at your life, are there any milestones
Speaker 1: that really hit home for how you felt disconnected and
Speaker 1: you know, and what ways have you all tried to
Speaker 1: reconnect with your heritage.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's definitely the work of a lifetime. I'll
Speaker 4: never feel like it's done. The biggest, most obvious way
Speaker 4: for me was when I became an adult and I
Speaker 4: was pregnant with my first child, I decided to search
Speaker 4: for my birth family.
Speaker 2: So, as I mentioned, they were Korean immigrants.
Speaker 4: They had just moved to this country like a year
Speaker 4: or two before I was born and adopted, so they
Speaker 4: were here. It was a long, convoluted, bureaucratic process to
Speaker 4: search for them, but I ended up finding them and
Speaker 4: reconnecting like the same month my child was born. So
Speaker 4: it's like weirder than fiction in essence.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't say it's been easy.
Speaker 4: Nothing about reunion or like open adoption, I think, is
Speaker 4: without its massive complications. But it was really important to
Speaker 4: me to be able to ask these questions I'd had
Speaker 4: for a lifetime, and here like just to think about
Speaker 4: what my life would have been like if I hadn't
Speaker 4: been adopted, if I'd grown up in this family, if
Speaker 4: I'd been raised in a Korean family. And I've become
Speaker 4: really close to my biological sister who was raised in
Speaker 4: our Korean family, it's almost like seeing what like an
Speaker 4: alternate version of my life would have been like. In
Speaker 4: a way, I've joked that I never feel less Korean
Speaker 4: than when I'm with my birth family.
Speaker 2: Because there's just so many things that they know and
Speaker 2: I don't. But it has been really important.
Speaker 4: To me, obviously to regain that little bit of connection
Speaker 4: and understand where I came from.
Speaker 1: Rebecca, how did you reconnect with your culture? Did? Because
Speaker 1: you know, BT only going to give you so much.
Speaker 3: I leaned in, I mean every opportunity I had in
Speaker 3: terms of you know, black student union, black student groups
Speaker 3: in college. After college, I worked for I work with
Speaker 3: the production company black Side, which is known for Eyes
Speaker 3: on the Prize. I you know, I leaned it. My
Speaker 3: first five books are interviews with black writers and public intellectuals.
Speaker 3: I just I inserted myself and took the hits because
Speaker 3: there were definitely hits of like you're not black enough,
Speaker 3: or what are you trying to do? Or are you
Speaker 3: trying to I was trying to reintegrate, so so it
Speaker 3: was trial by fire a lot of a lot of
Speaker 3: the time. But I guess I would say the main
Speaker 3: thing is was giving birth to my kid and and
Speaker 3: seeing him now be as as black as he wants
Speaker 3: to be, and it's, you know, I finally have that community.
Speaker 3: And that's just it's mind blowing, and it's that is
Speaker 3: what I for. You know, when he was when he
Speaker 3: was about four or five years old, he saw a
Speaker 3: picture of me at four or five years old holding
Speaker 3: a frog, and he said, Mommy, why am I holding
Speaker 3: a frog? And there it was right, that was the
Speaker 3: moment that I had been waiting for.
Speaker 1: Well, this is beautiful. After the break, I want to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about your books that you wrote
Speaker 1: about these experiences, what inspired them, and some of the
Speaker 1: feedback slash backlash that you may have gotten from people
Speaker 1: from writing these books. This is a wonderful conversation about
Speaker 1: transracial adoption. This is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the books. I'll start
Speaker 1: with you now, your memoir Surviving the White Gaze. Let's
Speaker 1: just start off the top. Why you choose that title?
Speaker 1: R what the other titles that? What were some of
Speaker 1: the other white folks stopped looking at me? What's all
Speaker 1: staring at Stop looking before I come over there?
Speaker 3: There's never another title. The first time I heard Tony
Speaker 3: Morrison explain what the white Gaze was, I was in
Speaker 3: my early twenties, and I was like, Okay, that's it.
Speaker 3: That is what I have been grappling with my entire life.
Speaker 3: And I didn't have words for it. And I knew
Speaker 3: that I wanted the title to be ongoing surviving, because
Speaker 3: I will be surviving the white gaze for my entire life.
Speaker 3: But that white gaze, as we've talked about earlier, is
Speaker 3: the default. It is the lens through which the world,
Speaker 3: our world in America, is established. It is the way
Speaker 3: that systems are built, and the way that laws are made,
Speaker 3: and the ways that you know, decisions on the spot,
Speaker 3: decisions are made. All of it is the white gaze.
Speaker 3: And so it's very real for me to have survived it,
Speaker 3: not just within my upbringing but in the society in
Speaker 3: which I live.
Speaker 1: You know, what's interesting your upbringing, you know, because for me,
Speaker 1: I am, to a large part the polar opposite of you.
Speaker 1: You know, I came up in Birmingham City schools, predominantly
Speaker 1: black school systems, black teachers. I never had more than
Speaker 1: one white classmate until high school. I did not meet
Speaker 1: my first Latino until the seventh grade. Black church, black community,
Speaker 1: black and the black black. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people in that regard that I know who when
Speaker 1: I went to the black college, I went to Florida
Speaker 1: and m There are a lot of black people that
Speaker 1: I know who their first interactions in a corporate or
Speaker 1: employed capacity was after college with white people and taking
Speaker 1: in all of this new information and stimuli about what
Speaker 1: it's like to be seen and perceived a certain way
Speaker 1: in an odd way. I feel like your upbringing, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: because it was from day one just white, that you
Speaker 1: are hyper qualified to speak because you understand what it's
Speaker 1: like for adolescence to look at you versus an adult
Speaker 1: in a c suite or somebody who's being passive aggressive.
Speaker 1: And you know, we talk about passive aggressive workplace harassment
Speaker 1: as well. So how much did that upbringing help you
Speaker 1: write this book? You know, as uncomfortable as that was.
Speaker 1: How much of an education on whiteness did you get
Speaker 1: from your childhood.
Speaker 3: I'm very conversant in white people. I'm very I am
Speaker 3: very well poised to be a white person whisper, although
Speaker 3: I declined that offered time and time again. I think
Speaker 3: a lot about that and the numerous times that I've
Speaker 3: experienced micro macroaggression racism in the workplace, and one which
Speaker 3: was so egregious that I went to a lawyer and
Speaker 3: explained the situation and she said to me, you definitely
Speaker 3: have a case of racial discrimination. And my feeling was
Speaker 3: not victory. There's no victory in being right about racism.
Speaker 3: And so in the same way that I can be
Speaker 3: converse in white spaces, it's not really it doesn't really
Speaker 3: feel great.
Speaker 1: So Nicole, your book all you can ever know walk
Speaker 1: me through the day that you sat and you decided, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what what I went through was in cool.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the solutions are completely, but we
Speaker 1: have to talk about where we are at least today
Speaker 1: with this issue, what inspired the book, and also talk
Speaker 1: to us a little bit about the response you yet when.
Speaker 4: The book came out, I'll say that like the book
Speaker 4: was not the first time I'd written about adoption. I
Speaker 4: still remember the very first piece I ever wrote about it.
Speaker 4: It was never published, like years ago. I showed it
Speaker 4: to like three people. I stuck it in a jore.
Speaker 4: It was terrifying to me to be it wasn't even
Speaker 4: just the vulnerability.
Speaker 2: It was facing this like.
Speaker 4: Wall of half truths and of comforting things that I've
Speaker 4: told myself and that other people had told me for
Speaker 4: a lifetime. So writing about adoption did not come easily
Speaker 4: to me, and I sort of practiced for years before
Speaker 4: the book happened, because.
Speaker 1: You had to undo your own the own I don't
Speaker 1: want to say wall of lies, but the comforts that
Speaker 1: you had built up for yourself about your existence within
Speaker 1: that system.
Speaker 4: Just the disclaimers, right, like the whole Let me reassure
Speaker 4: you that my family loved me. Let me reassure you
Speaker 4: that like I was basically like a happy, like well
Speaker 4: adjusted child.
Speaker 2: I don't even know.
Speaker 4: That's true, by the way, right, but like that's it was,
Speaker 4: like these are things, they're they're the way of expectations
Speaker 4: on adoptees starting as children is something that I don't
Speaker 4: think we talk about enough, Like from a very young age,
Speaker 4: especially if you're a different race than your parents. People notice,
Speaker 4: people ask questions, and like sort of lurking behind some
Speaker 4: of the questions apart from nosiness, is like are you okay?
Speaker 2: Like are you really okay? Is your family okay?
Speaker 4: You know, just tell me all about this because I
Speaker 4: don't understand, especially maybe growing up in a super way area,
Speaker 4: like like Rebecca and I both did, so I was
Speaker 4: like this spokesperson for adoption from childhood that I never
Speaker 4: asked to.
Speaker 2: Be, but was always telling this story.
Speaker 4: And so yeah, to try to like reclaim that story,
Speaker 4: to tell a different, much more complicated version of it,
Speaker 4: you know, one that doesn't shy away from talking about
Speaker 4: race and the impact of racial isolation.
Speaker 2: That was a scary thing for me, and I.
Speaker 4: Don't know that I was worried about being attacked for
Speaker 4: it or backlash because I know you want to talk
Speaker 4: about that. I was just like, I've been telling myself
Speaker 4: this comforting story. I've been telling other people this comforting story.
Speaker 4: Like actually going deeper into the truth. It was actually
Speaker 4: very difficult, but I wanted to because I had started
Speaker 4: to see and honestly was inspired by lots of other
Speaker 4: adoptees within the community like their stories.
Speaker 2: I knew the truth was more complicated.
Speaker 4: I knew there were feelings and questions and like racism
Speaker 4: that I've been grappling with for a lifetime, and I
Speaker 4: just wanted there to be, like more stories. I'm always
Speaker 4: going to want more adoptee stories. And understanding my adoptee
Speaker 4: story and the fact that I don't have to choose.
Speaker 2: Between being Korean and an adoptee like I am. Both
Speaker 2: those are very very important to me and very affirming.
Speaker 2: So that was kind of where the story came from.
Speaker 1: Did your family, well, Nicole, first to you and then
Speaker 1: to Rebecca, did your families read your books?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 4: So my adoptive parents, my birth father, and my biological
Speaker 4: sister all read the book before.
Speaker 1: Did they read it? Or did one person read it
Speaker 1: and then gossip to the others and get it all
Speaker 1: wrong in a terrible game with telephone like that. One
Speaker 1: time I talked about my daddy on the podcast and
Speaker 1: then everybody was checking a, yeah, sorry, I'm bringing up
Speaker 1: personal stuff, Rebecca, what about your family?
Speaker 3: Did your family It was more like that. I sent
Speaker 3: a galley to my mom and she read it and
Speaker 3: said it was a gift, and then told my dad
Speaker 3: about some of the things I've written in it, and
Speaker 3: he felt that it was an affront, and so she
Speaker 3: changed her mind about it. And my siblings, who are
Speaker 3: their biological children, for the most part, have been protective
Speaker 3: of them. So it has not gone well.
Speaker 1: Okay, so how much well, I guess it didn't matter
Speaker 1: if you were even taking that into account when you
Speaker 1: wrote the book, how your family might react to it.
Speaker 1: But what about the regular real world reactions to it?
Speaker 1: Was it as harsh as you know some of the
Speaker 1: people in your family.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: And let me also add that I waited a very
Speaker 3: very long time. I am not a young gal. I
Speaker 3: waited a very long time to write this book. And
Speaker 3: I was seized by a moment to write this book,
Speaker 3: which was and Mike Brown was shot, and my son,
Speaker 3: who was seven or eight years old, asked if we
Speaker 3: were going to get shot. And I suddenly was so
Speaker 3: enraged by the way in which I had not been protected,
Speaker 3: by the way in which I had not been given
Speaker 3: tools to be a black parent, the way that I
Speaker 3: had to figure this out with my child and protect
Speaker 3: my child. So I wrote it in part for them,
Speaker 3: right wouldn't you like to know what it was like
Speaker 3: for your black family member to grow up in this
Speaker 3: white family and have these experiences? Not the case that said,
Speaker 3: the response from the adoption community, adoptees, transracial adoptees. I'm
Speaker 3: sure Nicole has been ferociously i mean just so hungry
Speaker 3: for this, her stories about transracial adoptees and representation, and
Speaker 3: that has been i mean just deeply, deeply moving and
Speaker 3: so critically important and makes up to some degree for
Speaker 3: the the rift with my family. But you know, that's
Speaker 3: also just dealing day and day out as a black
Speaker 3: woman on in these streets, you know. So it's there
Speaker 3: have been, there have been some some less than kind
Speaker 3: things said. Uh, it's a you know, it's like a
Speaker 3: double helix. It's like you're an adoptee and you're not
Speaker 3: being grateful, and you're a black woman and you're being
Speaker 3: too loud.
Speaker 1: Now Nicole has already mentioned this to us, but Rebecca
Speaker 1: to the whole Mike Brown point and we talk about
Speaker 1: trying to have a base of knowledge to pull from,
Speaker 1: to to be a vessel to pour into our children.
Speaker 1: Why was it important for you to find out who
Speaker 1: your biological parents were did you here's a better question,
Speaker 1: did it go to where you thought it was gonna go?
Speaker 1: You know, in terms of that journey, what did you
Speaker 1: expect and how did it and how did it play out?
Speaker 3: Well, it's two parts. I didn't really have time to
Speaker 3: expect with my birth mother because I was eleven when
Speaker 3: I'm reunited with her, which was way too early, and
Speaker 3: I was deeply emotionally manipulated by her. She's white and
Speaker 3: has a lot of has a lot of caring qualities,
Speaker 3: but also a lot of appropriation, black appropriation license that
Speaker 3: she takes and has taken. We are estranged. I met
Speaker 3: my birth father when I was in my early twenties,
Speaker 3: and it was very, very overwhelming. His story was that
Speaker 3: I had been taken. He didn't have any say in
Speaker 3: the matter. He wanted me. He had grown up himself
Speaker 3: in orphanages and foster system, and so he felt, you know,
Speaker 3: like I feel about my kid, my kid. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I have black family, now I would like to keep you.
Speaker 3: But his claim is that, you know, my white birth
Speaker 3: mother and her family cut him out because he's black.
Speaker 1: Did the question of why didn't you fight for me
Speaker 1: ever come up and forgive me if I'm if.
Speaker 3: I'm no, no, going. Absolutely, he was you know, he
Speaker 3: didn't really have the tools to fight, you know, he
Speaker 3: wasn't he was not gainfully employed. He was all by himself.
Speaker 3: He didn't have any squad or family, and my white
Speaker 3: birth mother and her family were quite able to cut
Speaker 3: him out of the picture.
Speaker 1: Either with the money or through the courts. And being
Speaker 1: a black man and going against a white woman and right, yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: after the break, I want to dive into the way
Speaker 1: adoption is portrayed in Hollywood. I'm very curious to get
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that, because as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: what adoption it's like, it's like different strokes, or the
Speaker 1: adopted kids gonna murder You. Don't you bring home that
Speaker 1: weird child, the child these murder babies. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that and also some solutions that families that are either
Speaker 1: thinking or have already created transracial homes can do.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear that advice about that. This
Speaker 1: is beyond the scenes. We'll be right back beyond the scenes.
Speaker 1: We're talking transracial adoption, and two wonderful authors have been
Speaker 1: ushering us through their experience the cause and effects the
Speaker 1: positives and negatives of this, and now we need to
Speaker 1: talk about you know, the fact that you all wrote
Speaker 1: these books, which means that you also avoid in the
Speaker 1: literary system where people are not being properly educated about
Speaker 1: the issues that you've faced your entire lives, when the
Speaker 1: truth is that more often than not, we just regular folks.
Speaker 1: We get our r get our education from TV and movies.
Speaker 1: You know, like I'm gonna tell I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 1: what I know about adoption. I know Different Strokes. I
Speaker 1: know if a white man come save you. Now you
Speaker 1: know what's hilarious in the Different Strokes intro, the white
Speaker 1: dude is riding around the hood and he sees the
Speaker 1: two dudes shooting basketball and he just goes getting a limo.
Speaker 3: He just snatches him right.
Speaker 1: I no paperwork, no nothing, just come get your black kid.
Speaker 1: What do y'all think about the way medium pop culture
Speaker 1: portray adoption and what's missing from the mainstream conversation around adoption.
Speaker 4: I think so often the portrayal of adoption is like
Speaker 4: when they have it, they use it as a as
Speaker 4: a plot point. It's usually like an obvious point of
Speaker 4: conflict and it's gonna end with someone saying, but you're
Speaker 4: my real family, and.
Speaker 2: That's what matters. My real parents are the ones who
Speaker 2: raised me.
Speaker 4: And that's like it like that's how like the episode
Speaker 4: of whatever growing pain or whatever's tocome ever we're watching
Speaker 4: as a kid.
Speaker 2: That was the resolution of the adopted kid's storyline.
Speaker 4: And I think like it's starting maybe to move away
Speaker 4: from that a little bit, but there is still media
Speaker 4: and I think media portrayals are partly responsible for the
Speaker 4: fact that, Yeah, what everyday people without connection to adoption
Speaker 4: know about it is basically that you're happy and grateful, right,
Speaker 4: and your family is your real family, and you don't
Speaker 4: feel confused about that, right, And I don't think people
Speaker 4: realize the pressures that that creates.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I really admire about Nicole
Speaker 3: and her work and approach to the issue, and what
Speaker 3: I try to emulate as well, is that, you know,
Speaker 3: we're bigger than our adoption stories. We actually are much
Speaker 3: more nuanced and multifaceted. So there's a million stories in
Speaker 3: our adoption stories. And I think that what happens in
Speaker 3: film and television or in whatever representation is that it
Speaker 3: is it's one note. It's very boring and predictable. And
Speaker 3: it's not just that it lacks nuance, but then the
Speaker 3: conversations around it lack nuance. And so I feel like
Speaker 3: we have to be willing to not just create stories
Speaker 3: of representation, but to talk about them with transracial adoptees.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the whole thing, is that for the
Speaker 3: most part, adoption, transracial adoption, we hear from we hear
Speaker 3: from the social workers, the white social workers, the white parents,
Speaker 3: you know, the people who are facilitating these adoptions, and
Speaker 3: not the adoptees. We are the experts, period, full stop.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a difference to between it being like
Speaker 4: a story that Hollywood wants to tell, like a great story,
Speaker 4: and it being someone's lived experience. And so yeah, I
Speaker 4: would agree, like, if you're making adoption media, like you
Speaker 4: should have adoptees in the room. If it's about transracial adoption,
Speaker 4: you should have transracial adoptees in the room. Not because horemonoliths,
Speaker 4: not because we all have the same experiences, but because
Speaker 4: Rebecca's right, were the experts on that? And then you know,
Speaker 4: either either it's often like a very you know, that
Speaker 4: sort of one note portrayal of It's fine everything's fine,
Speaker 4: it's not complicated, or they go completely the u A
Speaker 4: direction and it's something sensationalistic, like you know you were
Speaker 4: joking before the break Roy, But like I think about
Speaker 4: the number of times an adopted person comes back to
Speaker 4: like murder their parents in Agatha Christie adaptations, and like,
Speaker 4: you know, it's always it's just it's like either wor
Speaker 4: suspect I can't quite be trusted have all this baggage,
Speaker 4: or like it's completely fine and like the adoption.
Speaker 2: Doesn't matter and there isn't enough middle ground.
Speaker 3: I did not know that about Agatha Christie.
Speaker 2: I don't think she wrote them that way.
Speaker 4: I would have to go back and like check. But
Speaker 4: like some of the adaptations update things, and yeah they'll
Speaker 4: have someone's like you know, child that they gave they
Speaker 4: gave up or gave away or abandoned, like come back
Speaker 4: and like be murderous and like, okay, you know that's
Speaker 4: that's one take.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a choice.
Speaker 1: That's interesting is that it both pulled ends of the
Speaker 1: portrayal of the adopted child. The parent is still the
Speaker 1: hero because they didn't deserve to be murdered or look
Speaker 1: at this good thing I did and and the and
Speaker 1: and it's the foster care system, and it's like they
Speaker 1: got to I went into the foster care and they
Speaker 1: were fighting in the hallway, and I pulled you out
Speaker 1: of that and I brushed your hand. I gave you
Speaker 1: a haircut. Not look at you use a good acceptable
Speaker 1: negro to be in society.
Speaker 3: You didn't brush my hair, my parents, you didn't.
Speaker 4: No one had told my parents about Asian baby hair,
Speaker 4: and you know, they kept trying to make a life lap.
Speaker 2: For like the first two years of my life.
Speaker 3: It was just like whoa, I know.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, it just it's going to stick straight up. Sorry.
Speaker 1: So, then to that point, Rebecca, when we talk about
Speaker 1: the story and the portrayal of the adoptee never being told,
Speaker 1: what are some of the challenges that adoptees face, especially
Speaker 1: when we talk about mental health, because at some point point,
Speaker 1: I would imagine there's issues of abandonment, and like, why
Speaker 1: is that never seeding into the conversation and just and
Speaker 1: if you want it, talk a little bit about your
Speaker 1: own mental health struggles over the years, and why you
Speaker 1: think that's not as big a part of the conversation
Speaker 1: around adoption.
Speaker 3: I will say that abandonment is our I will speak
Speaker 3: for myself, but I would is the central trauma of adoptees.
Speaker 3: There there is what's called a primal separance, right, there's
Speaker 3: no way around that we are separated from the person
Speaker 3: whose body we came out of. I mean that's there's
Speaker 3: grief around that.
Speaker 4: I don't think our society is great at talking about
Speaker 4: mental health in general, so like, you know, let's acknowledge
Speaker 4: that upfront.
Speaker 2: And I think.
Speaker 4: I feel this as a parent too. Sometimes you're like, well,
Speaker 4: I do have like I want to make sure you're okay.
Speaker 4: Like thinking about you and making sure that you're okay
Speaker 4: is the thing that consumes me twenty four to.
Speaker 2: Seven as a parent.
Speaker 4: But like in a way, you don't know what you
Speaker 4: don't know, and you're trying to gauge a lot based
Speaker 4: I'm like like offhand comments, like things you overhear. I
Speaker 4: think my parents didn't know I was really struggling, and
Speaker 4: I don't think they knew the reason, because again I
Speaker 4: was not telling them that.
Speaker 2: I was like hearing stories at school.
Speaker 4: But like when I was about eight or nine, I
Speaker 4: started twisting and twirling my hair like a nervous tick,
Speaker 4: and like I developed like a small bald spot, and
Speaker 4: that was like their signal, we don't know what's.
Speaker 2: Wrong, but like something's clearly wrong.
Speaker 4: And I started seeing a therapist, like a sort of
Speaker 4: she specialized.
Speaker 2: In play in art therapy when I was really young.
Speaker 4: I mean, I will say I give them credit for
Speaker 4: realizing that, like I needed more help and support. There
Speaker 4: were things I was not voicing to them that I
Speaker 4: had to talk about with somebody. But I mean, for
Speaker 4: all that I know, I talked to the therapist. I
Speaker 4: know she talked to my parents. My parents and I
Speaker 4: for all the love and support, like we still didn't
Speaker 4: talk to each other about these things. We didn't talk
Speaker 4: about it untill I was an adult. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: just being adopted, and it wasn't just being Korean. It
Speaker 4: was like it was a combination of a lot of
Speaker 4: different things, you know that led to that moment where
Speaker 4: they could tell I needed help.
Speaker 2: But you know, that's just something I've been living with.
Speaker 4: And I'm sure some of it was, like like Rebecca
Speaker 4: was saying, like abandonment as kind of like that first
Speaker 4: central trauma for a lot of adoptees. Yeah, and then
Speaker 4: just the impacts again of growing up and like seeing
Speaker 4: no one who looks like you, and then experiencing racism
Speaker 4: and while being told race doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you square those things as a child.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of something that started pretty early.
Speaker 3: So my story is further complicated by the fact that
Speaker 3: I did reunite with my birth mother at a very
Speaker 3: young age. She is white and problematic. We had a
Speaker 3: very intense relationship and bond. All I wanted to speak to.
Speaker 3: The central trauma of abandonment was her love and her
Speaker 3: to regain her shine and her attention. And she had
Speaker 3: a very bizarre relationship with blackness, and here I am
Speaker 3: trying to figure out my blackness. And so at a
Speaker 3: certain point she wrote her own book, and I agreed
Speaker 3: to help her promote it, because that, of course is
Speaker 3: a great package. This was many, many, many many years
Speaker 3: ago after we went on I think it was Good
Speaker 3: Morning America. I read about this in the book, and
Speaker 3: I was talking with Joan London. You may remember about
Speaker 3: being a black a black woman, and how it's really
Speaker 3: important as a black adoptee to use my voice to help,
Speaker 3: you know, amplify and clarify my experience in what might
Speaker 3: be a similar experience for others. And afterwards, my birth
Speaker 3: mother and I went to lunch and she said, you know,
Speaker 3: I heard you say something today on the show, and
Speaker 3: I really thought, because of our dynamic, I thought she
Speaker 3: was going to say that I was hogging the airtime,
Speaker 3: that I was speaking too much, that I was taking
Speaker 3: away from hershei she said, I heard you call yourself black.
Speaker 3: She said, you came out of my body. You can't
Speaker 3: just go around calling yourself black. And that was a
Speaker 3: moment that tipped the scale for me. And I came
Speaker 3: home that night and I was living with my best girlfriend,
Speaker 3: who is you know, chosen family to this day, and
Speaker 3: I just felt I don't I wouldn't say suicidal ideation,
Speaker 3: but I did also I did feel like I don't
Speaker 3: want to do this. I don't want to feel this way.
Speaker 3: I don't want to have this experience. It's too much.
Speaker 3: And she encouraged me to see a psychotherapist or a therapist,
Speaker 3: and I just sort of ran down this list of
Speaker 3: things that I had gone through, including this comment for
Speaker 3: my birth mother, and she was like, Okay, you're clinically
Speaker 3: depressed and you need to be on medication right now.
Speaker 3: And that was really That was really both a relief
Speaker 3: and also kind of alarming because I had been living
Speaker 3: with all of this, this sort of milange of abandonment
Speaker 3: and you know, ra social identity and security and trying
Speaker 3: to just navigate this white world consistently and constantly. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that was definitely a moment.
Speaker 1: To the mental health part of this.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: How much of a role does the state and the
Speaker 1: adoption agencies and all of the foster homes play in
Speaker 1: educating their families. Hey, look, you getting a kid, but
Speaker 1: you need to be prepared to help this child through
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff because as they mature, they're going
Speaker 1: to make realizations about themselves and they're going to need
Speaker 1: to help. How much is the toll on and adoptees
Speaker 1: mental health also ignored by the state and the adoption
Speaker 1: agencies themselves. And what role do they have in preparing
Speaker 1: the parents for what the hell is going to be
Speaker 1: happening when they create a transracial home.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the problem with that is really
Speaker 3: that even in the best case scenario of an adoption
Speaker 3: agency telling adoptive parents, you need to be prepared. You
Speaker 3: need to know how to do the hair, you need
Speaker 3: to do this, you need to do that. White parents,
Speaker 3: depending upon where they choose to live, what their you know,
Speaker 3: what their personalities are, what their own backgrounds are, or
Speaker 3: how what their you know, sort of values are, it's
Speaker 3: really easy to not do the things that they're told
Speaker 3: to do. You know. I think even if my and
Speaker 3: in fact somebody did say to my mom when I
Speaker 3: was younger, you should you should find someone to help
Speaker 3: her with her hair, she was like, it's fine, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean because to her it was fine, and for
Speaker 3: me it was until it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why is this Korean baby hair sticking straight up?
Speaker 1: And let's just put it down? Just put some put
Speaker 1: some veo. Was that VO five?
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: Put some Hoddle old treatment.
Speaker 4: I mean, even in the best case scenario where you
Speaker 4: have an adoption agency that's trying to really educate perspective adopter.
Speaker 2: About like trauma informed parenting and.
Speaker 4: Like where a lot of because let's not forget a
Speaker 4: lot of adopted kids are coming from.
Speaker 2: Really hard places. You know.
Speaker 4: I was adopted like straight out of state care at
Speaker 4: the age of two and a half months, and so
Speaker 4: I didn't spend like a long time in like an
Speaker 4: institution or in foster care, and like all these things
Speaker 4: can really obviously like affect kids for a long time.
Speaker 4: I know there is like required education training, there's often
Speaker 4: not a lot of post adoption support for families or
Speaker 4: for birth parents, and that's huge, you know, And ultimately, like,
Speaker 4: let's not forget adoptees.
Speaker 2: We are not the clients.
Speaker 4: We are not really the people the whole system set
Speaker 4: up to serve, like we are babies or children, and
Speaker 4: people are making decisions for us, even if they're doing
Speaker 4: that in the hope of acting in our best interest,
Speaker 4: Like it's adults making decisions, it's adults being served. It's
Speaker 4: often like you know, adopters needs that are being kind
Speaker 4: of centered in all this. And so so yeah, if
Speaker 4: a white family doesn't know like what questions to ask
Speaker 4: even or what support to ask for, that's going to
Speaker 4: be yet another barrier to them and ultimately their children
Speaker 4: getting the support that they need.
Speaker 2: And we know from.
Speaker 4: Studies that a lot of white parents aren't comfortable talking
Speaker 4: about like race with their with their kids, and so
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's like it's like people don't think
Speaker 4: there isn't a problem, and so they're not asking for
Speaker 4: the help that they or their kids might need.
Speaker 3: I think also the way that it has been celebritized
Speaker 3: and the relationships that we see, you know, with celebrities,
Speaker 3: white celebrities adopting black children and having this kind of
Speaker 3: image of isn't this wonderful? And it really you know it,
Speaker 3: see there is representation.
Speaker 1: Look at my black baby I bought.
Speaker 3: It's really for us, it's it's really cringey. But I
Speaker 3: think for most white folks it's like, oh that's really great.
Speaker 3: And again and it's really easy. I mean I have
Speaker 3: talked with and met with many many white adoptive parents,
Speaker 3: celebrity and otherwise who listen intently, you know about oh okay,
Speaker 3: well I'll do this, and I need to do this,
Speaker 3: and oh great, okay, it's more than more than a
Speaker 3: Serena Williams poster. And take all these notes right, and
Speaker 3: then don't actually do any of those things and or
Speaker 3: start doing them, like start trying to collect black friends,
Speaker 3: try to collect black community, and black folks are like,
Speaker 3: you know, you should have done that first. I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to be your black friend for your black child,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. The funny thing is is
Speaker 3: that we talk so much about good intentions but the
Speaker 3: intentionality is not there, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Do you ever, Rebecca, do you ever feel like you know,
Speaker 4: people want you to give them like a list, like literally,
Speaker 4: tell me the five things I have to do?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, I do those five things. Everything's going
Speaker 2: to be fine.
Speaker 1: Ask a question, what one?
Speaker 2: Sorry, No, you've already kind of.
Speaker 1: Answered, Like what advice? Is there not a checklist?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 1: If I'm considering adopting a transracial child, you know, what
Speaker 1: do I do? Because if it's not your job to
Speaker 1: help me tear down the oppressive system, and I'm the
Speaker 1: white parent and you won't help me be my black
Speaker 1: child's friend, how do I get black friends for my
Speaker 1: black child if the solution is not bringing them around
Speaker 1: white people until they're a senior in high school?
Speaker 4: Like? What?
Speaker 2: How? What?
Speaker 1: What are the hurdles for potential transracial adopt adopters?
Speaker 3: I just I feel I feel like there has to
Speaker 3: be just as like a come to Jesus moment. Really,
Speaker 3: like you, it's.
Speaker 1: Not a specific checklist. There's not a way to do.
Speaker 3: I mean there is. I've been asked, and I've given
Speaker 3: them many many times. I don't think that is the
Speaker 3: answer necessarily, Although I think that those things are good
Speaker 3: to keep in mind, but I think that it's really
Speaker 3: are you willing to decenter whiteness. You have a Black
Speaker 3: or Asian Korean different race child in your house, that
Speaker 3: means that that race needs to be reflected as much,
Speaker 3: if not more than y'all's taste and priorities.
Speaker 4: I mean, I will still meet a lot of people
Speaker 4: who want the basic story of transracial adoption to be
Speaker 4: comforting and simple and like kind of a savior story.
Speaker 4: I remember being told many times by many different people
Speaker 4: it's like proof that love is really enough. It is
Speaker 4: an antidote to racism, Like it's just it's incredible, Like
Speaker 4: the I mean again I talked about this love. With
Speaker 4: the pressures that people will put on adoption and adoptees,
Speaker 4: there's so many things, and I think we've.
Speaker 2: Talked about some of them already.
Speaker 4: Like you need to before you adopt, not after, and
Speaker 4: not when your kid is ten or sixteen, but before
Speaker 4: you even take the step, you need to start really
Speaker 4: taking a hard look at your your community, Like what is.
Speaker 2: The world and the life that this child? What are
Speaker 2: you bringing them into?
Speaker 4: And I don't say that to say like and then
Speaker 4: you should decide that you're terrible and not adopt, but
Speaker 4: like you need to be able to be And if
Speaker 4: it's uncomfortable, good, if it takes work, good, if there's
Speaker 4: stuff you have to do first to be ready to adopt.
Speaker 4: Like that makes a lot of sense to me. You know,
Speaker 4: we prepare as biological parents.
Speaker 2: We prepare in lots of different ways right to have
Speaker 2: a family.
Speaker 4: So if you want to be a parent through adoption,
Speaker 4: and particularly to a child of another race than you, like,
Speaker 4: these are just the questions and like the the interrogation
Speaker 4: that you should be able to do, because you need
Speaker 4: to center that child and their experience and what their
Speaker 4: life is going to be like, and not think about
Speaker 4: like you are no longer just experiencing the place you
Speaker 4: live or your neighborhood through like your own experience. And
Speaker 4: I think I think is really important is that this
Speaker 4: is kind of separate from the race, but it's related
Speaker 4: is that I don't think adoptees should ever be made
Speaker 4: to feel as though like they have to choose one
Speaker 4: family over another. And this comes up in lots of ways,
Speaker 4: Like I've talked to so many adoptees who feel like
Speaker 4: we have to almost tamp down both our questions about
Speaker 4: our racial identities, cultural identities, and also like our questions
Speaker 4: about our birth families if we're not in contact with them,
Speaker 4: sort of like to protect the feelings or the integrity
Speaker 4: of the adoptive family.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, if there's one.
Speaker 4: Big important message I think people should understand about adoption
Speaker 4: is that like, both families are real. I mean, we're
Speaker 4: all real humans, and adoptees shouldn't be made to feel
Speaker 4: as though they always have to kind of like pick
Speaker 4: one family or only belong to one family, or only
Speaker 4: think about or love one family versus the other. I
Speaker 4: think if that had been stressed more in my life,
Speaker 4: that would have been it would have made so certain
Speaker 4: things easier for me.
Speaker 2: Maybe not the racial component, but other things.
Speaker 3: I would say. Also, the last thing I would say
Speaker 3: about adoptive parent, potential adoption adoptive parents is do not
Speaker 3: recreate or create a microcosm of the worst dynamic of
Speaker 3: racism in America, which is to say, we're the only
Speaker 3: one in the room, We're the last person who is considered.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm saying? Do not create a
Speaker 3: microcosm of what we already see in the world, in
Speaker 3: this country in the worst racial dynamic possible.
Speaker 1: Well, this has been an amazing conversation and I cannot
Speaker 1: thank you both for, you know, just sharing your journey,
Speaker 1: sharing your traumas with the world, and effort to help
Speaker 1: bring some understanding. I cannot thank you all enough. Nicole, Rebecca,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you for going beyond the scenes with me.
Speaker 2: Thank you Roy, Thank you, Roy, Rebecca.
Speaker 1: Be sure to look in the episode description for a
Speaker 1: link to watch Nicole and Rebecca's original interviews with Trevor.
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