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