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ARTICLES:
Politics and Society
Abductees
Speak By Stephanie Cho and Kim So Yung June 2003 Stephanie Cho and Kim So Yung are co-founders of Transracial Abductees, an organization that works to educate transracial adoptees and communities of color and expose the unequal power between the white adoption industry and children of color adoptees. They choose the word "abduction" to describe how the adoption industry forcibly removes children of color from their families and communities and assimilates them into their new white families and society. In this article, they reflect on their experiences growing up in the Northwest United States, when they started thinking about racism and adoption, and how they became political about it. Stephanie: Sometimes my memories are pictures that are revisited. I can't remember if it is a picture I saw when I was younger or if it is really my own memory but I think I first noticed racism when I met my white family. There have been arguments made that racism happens when contact between white and colored meet. This might have been true for me. When I first came here, my mom used to say I was so small I looked like a "china doll". She meant that as a term of endearment but I would describe it now as racism. Knowing that I was adopted and recognizing racism happened at the same time for me. People acknowledging the fact that I was adopted was also acknowledging that I was a person of color. This would usually result in someone saying I looked like a "china doll" or saying something about my imported status, like when did you get her like I was just shipped and delivered onsite (which I was). I started becoming political when I came out as queer. Queer people are all about identity issues and from that I re-identified and basically reclaimed me back. I used to work on people of color issues without really working on transracial adoption issues. Like my assimilation taught me, transracial adoption is not a people of color issue. I know now, centrally, my adoption is one of the major reasons I organize around people of color issues and that even my queer identity is centered around my transracial adoption identity. I know other adoptees that work in the people of color movement but don't work in the transracial abductee movement. I think that will start to change in the next 5-10 years, but for now it is matter of doing some strong political education with other people of color organizations. They need to learn to be good allies of transracial adoptees that work in their movement and learn to support them as a moving force in the people of color movement because transracial adoption is a people of color issue. So Yung: I always knew I was adopted because of the obvious difference in looks between my white adoptive parents and me. My parents always tried to downplay it, and teach me that I was no different from anyone else, meaning that I was "as good as white." All the time I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to question my parents' definition of what my being a Korean adoptee meant. I wasn't allowed to explore Korean culture or ask questions about the war in Korea. I especially wasn't allowed to talk about racism. I always felt a certain sting when my family or people we met would say something racist. They would talk about how beautiful and exotic I was. My mom would always coo over my "rosebud lips." My friends would express jealousy over my "silky straight hair" and "smooth, clear skin." They would always want my hair and acne-free skin, but never my skin color or my "Chinese" eyes. When I was around middle school age I began to name the racism I felt happening. That was quickly squashed by my parents, who used physical punishment to keep my brother, also a Korean adoptee, and me from "accusing" people of racism. During that brief period of rebellion, my brother and I actually talked about how people in our family, school, and whole town were racist, and would make a point of calling each other by our Korean names. But we were totally dependent on our parents. We were very isolated in a small, white town. Everything around us taught us that we shouldn't criticize our parents; they weren't open to having their views and choices questioned. I became really focused on school and grades. I lived in my head a lot, reading constantly and being a perfect student. Looking back, it seems like I turned the part of me that was critical off. I had to wait until it was safer to have those kinds of thoughts. It
was when I had been living away from my parents for about two years,
and had started to organize against racism at the university I was
attending, that I began exploring those questions I had about racism
and transracial adoption again. I think it took organizing around
more general people of color issues for me to realize the political
impact of coming out as a transracial adoptee to other people of
color, and as a person of color to my adoptive family. That may
sound strange, but it's exactly what I mean. I tried to assert myself
as a person of color with a person of color consciousness to my
white family, and to this day I don't think any of them really gets
it; they still reassure me that I'm 'just like their real daughter,'
and that they don't see a difference "whether someone's black,
red, green, or purple." Our Vision for Transracial Abductees We like that Transracial Abductees is an activist organization made up of transracial adoptees who are angry and critical and will continue to push people's thinking about transracial adoption and people of color issues in general. Stephanie is a paid community organizer working on low-income issues and thinks it is a great job, but the issues are mainstreamed liberal issues. Transracial Abductees, on the other hand, can be more outspoken and direct about our views on the adoption industry. We envision the organization as an outlet and movement starting organization that mostly focuses on political education for the time being and later organizes transracial adoptees on local, national, and international legislation and has deprogramming camps all over the world. Building a Transracial Abductee Movement There are rumblings of a transracial abductee movement just beginning to surface. The very structure of transracial adoption is based on assimilating to white American society, and mainstream transracial and international adoptee organizations continue to exist within this structure. Many adoptees are isolated from communities of color. To organize and pretty much reverse that assimilation process is a serious battle. Also, because racism has changed and evolved into new and more sophisticated forms, this has had major impact on the white people who choose to adopt children of color. Now, transracial adoption is viewed as the ultimate form of cultural competency that puts whites on the road to becoming worldly anti-racist people. Many choose to adopt children of color, not just because of the "save the needy" aspect, but for their own social gain and legitimacy in the world of people of color. A movement around transracial adoption that is critical of the adoption industry is beginning to shape itself in really creative ways. Our website is one example and there are numerous groups forming in bigger cities. In 5 years, we would like to see that the transracial abductee movement has become a movement and that there are many transracial adoptees actively organizing in their communities. In 10 years, there will probably be a mainstream organization that works on transracial adoptee/abductee issues that is centralized in a major city. Hopefully, there will be a faction of the organization that stays pretty angry and more militant. In ten years, the isolated pockets of abductees that exist now will be much more connected and will really be able to mobilize adoptees on a larger scale. About
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