Rethink transracial adoption.

Andrew Lee
Written By Nicole Cardoza

Good morning (or afternoon or evening) and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Today we're honored to have Andrew here to share his perspective on transracial adoption. This came up in questions when we wrote about Amy Coney Barrett back in October (see related issues section for context) and I'm glad we have a voice to share more with us today. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.


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By Andrew Lee (he/him)

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett publicized her large family, including two Haitian adoptees. In response, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi wrote that historically, white families used adoption to “civilize” “savage” Black children. “And whether this is Barrett or not,” he tweeted, there is “a belief that too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.” Conservatives were outraged at the “attack” on Barrett’s children, arguing that no one who invited children of color into her home could be racist (Newsweek). 

But this isn’t just about one judge. While this summer’s protests brought racial injustice into the consciousness of many white people, some of them still believe that transracially adopting (that is, adopting across racial lines) a non-white child is the ultimate act of allyship. 

This issue is personal for me because I’m a Korean person adopted into a largely white family. I think it’s important to question the idea that international, transracial adoption is a pure act of white allyship. This isn’t because I wish I stayed in an orphanage, or because I’m against multiracial families, or because I think that people who can’t or don’t want to have biological children should be prohibited from raising kids. However, like many other transracially, internationally adopted people, I’ve realized that there’s a lot more at stake in these adoptions than we first think.  

About 200,000 Korean children like me have been adopted by families in the United States (NBC News). Scores of adoptees come from countries like Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Thailand (Considering Adoption). The narrative is that our birth families don’t want us, so their adoptive parents do us a service by taking us in. In this story, birth families and countries are irresponsible, while adoptive families and the United States are charitable humanitarians. 


There are a few problems with this. First, international adoption has been loosely regulated. In some countries, parents place their children in an orphanage temporarily when they can’t make ends meet, later returning to reclaim them (CNN, Firstpost). Some have found their child has been adopted to a different country in their absence. In other cases, adoptive parents fail to correctly register their kids for US citizenship (The Intercept). Their children find out years later that they’re actually undocumented immigrants subject to deportation to countries don’t remember (NBC News). The demand for adoptees is so strong that the welfare of actual adoptees can be an afterthought.

The second problem with the humanitarian view of adoption is that countries that send children to the United States are often poor as a result of the American government’s actions.

There’s a reason Americans don’t get adoptees from France or England. While South Korea isn’t a poor country today, adoption from the country started right after the Korean War, when it was one of the poorest (Brookings). During the war, American forces deforested nearly the entire peninsula with napalm (Truthout). Some women survived by having sexual relations with American occupying forces. Their mixed-race children were the first Korean American adoptees (USA Today). 
 

Afterwards, adoption of full-blooded Korean children like me followed, as efforts to economically outcompete the communist North came at the expense of setting up a welfare system for single mothers (The Korea Herald). Adoption from South Korea, wrote adoptee Maija E. Brown, created “a paternal attitude between Korea and the US where white Americans rescued Asian orphans, while concealing the US responsibility in the Korean War” (University of Minnesota). In the words of Ju-Jyun Park, adoption from South Korea is one of the ways in which “the war lives on as a material fact” (The New Inquiry).
 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, another source of adoptees, has seen autocracy and war since the United States helped overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s (Guardian). Today, conflict is driven by the reserves of valuable metals like coltan, essential to the production of computers and cellphones (Dissent). Just as in Korea, US policies created the conditions to ensure vulnerable children couldn’t be supported by society, and then swept in as these children’s “savior.” 


Even domestic transracial adoptions have problematic aspects. How else could you describe a system that literally offers Black children at a “discount” rate compared to white children (NPR)? (For more on the complications that can arise with the domestic adoption industry, check out this report and this article.)

This is why a color-blind savior attitude towards adoption just doesn’t cut it. If you transracially adopt a child, recognize that systemic racism doesn’t disappear because you “don’t see race.” That child will need a multiracial community to provide the resources and resiliency to survive in a white supremacist society, skills that no white parents will be able to provide, no matter how good their intentions.

In the words of transracial Korean adoptee Jenn Hardin, racial justice means we have to “explore the dark history of Korean adoption, the parts that don’t fit the ‘save the orphans’ narrative that so many refer to because it’s all they know” (Medium). We should question the transfer of resources and children from poor countries to rich ones. We should rethink a system that deprives poor women of color in poor countries of the social support and reproductive care that would stop their countries’ orphanages from filling up with potential adoptees. 

It’s time to rethink transracial adoption. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • About 200,000 Korean children have been adopted by families in the United States (NBC News). Adoption from the country started right after the Korean War. 

  • The countries that send children to the United States are often poor as a result of US military and government actions. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, US policies created the conditions to ensure vulnerable children couldn’t be supported by society, and then swept in as these children’s “savior.”

  • A color-blind savior attitude towards adoption is not allyship. Systemic racism doesn’t disappear because you “don’t see race.” Transracially adopted children need a multiracial community to provide the resources and resiliency to survive in a white supremacist society, skills that white parents cannot provide, no matter how good their intentions.

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