Cumplimiento de los objetivos

Research has shown that colorblind ideologies generally resulted in adoptees feeling isolated and having to cope with racism without social support from their families (McRoy and Hall 1996; Tuan and Shiao 2011). While celebrating Korean heritage was an important factor in fostering ethnic pride, their exclusion outside of their families

centered on their racial visibility. With non-adopted Asian Americans, ethnic identity’s ability to protect against racial discrimination has been questioned (Lee 2003b). Thus, adoptive parents need to address the social consequences of being Asian for their children rather than only focusing on their Korean ethnicity.

1. Pre-adoption: Overwhelmingly, adoptees in the study supported instituting

mandatory educational classes for prospective adoptive parents. Holt International has been a leader in this field with their Parents-In-Progress program that educates parents on the social consequences of race and the implications of being a

multiracial family. Given adoptees’ widespread belief in such programs, other adoption agencies could implement similar policies to provide more conducive environments for adoptees to digest and process their racial exclusion with a strong family support system.

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2. Childhood and Adolescence: Services should take into account the pressure of blending in with families and peers. Structures inclusive of the entire family, rather than singling out just the adoptee, would encourage families as a whole to see themselves as multiethnic and interracial. The knowledge and experience gained would be valued by the family as a whole. Adoptees whose families regularly socialized with other adoptive families generally accepted or enjoyed the experiences as routine family behavior. Play-dates, by comparison, were interpreted as more forced and highlighted adoptees’ differences from their White families and communities.

3. Childhood and Adolescence: Agencies could foster connections to non-adopted Asians and Asians Americans for not only adoptees but the entire family. For example, the Chicago Arirang Lion’s Club, a Korean organization, annually organizes a Korean picnic for adoptive families in the area. Yet, interactions must represent the diversity within Asian Americans to counter essentialized racial stereotypes that many adoptees employed in their identity negotiations. Exposure to Asian Americans who focus on Asian experiences within the U.S. rather than a foreign country could provide a broader perspective on race relations and racial inequality.

Future Research

Korean adoptees, as the largest and oldest transracial adoptee population in the U.S., occupy a unique position in U.S. racial history. Studying their experiences sheds light on the multiple ways in which race continues to function as a master status within

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which individuals must negotiate their self-identities. However, the present study findings produce additional questions that beg answers.

My original study design was a comparative analysis of transracial adoptees’ experiences in the U.S. and how physical appearance and racial categorization shaped their identity formation processes and racial attitudes. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete such an extensive project at the current time. However, the questions still remain. Additional research is needed to examine the variation both within racial groups and between them as measures of social distance in the larger society. How do Black adoptee experiences compare to those of Korean adoptees? And what about Latino? How does the internal ethnic and visual diversity within the categories of Latino and Black affect adoptee experiences? Given the most recent domestic placements of African American transracial adoptions by Sandra Bullock and Kristin Davis in popular culture, how does this affect the racial preference of adoptive parents? Do parents use different socialization strategies depending upon adoptees’ physical appearance, and if so, what is the effect?

According to Tessler et al. (1999), Chinese adoptive parents have employed a bicultural socialization that embraces and actively participates within Chinese culture from a multicultural family perspective. As the Chinese adoptee population ages, comparisons between Chinese and Korean adoptees can address the role family cultural socialization plays in structuring adoptees’ racial attitudes and the effectiveness of ethnic identity for protecting against the negative effects of racism.

Lingering questions remain that the present study could not answer. Ramona Chan was the sole adoptee with one Asian adoptive parent, though he had passed away

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during her adolescence. Ramona was more confident and secure in her Korean and Asian identities during childhood and adolescence than most adoptees in the study even though she had only modestly explored her ethnic identity. With greater numbers of Asian Americans adopting internationally (Tessler et al. 1999), future research should examine how parents’ racial status influences the cultural socialization strategies they use. How does having an Asian role model present in the family affect adoptees’ racial and ethnic identity development? Are they more willing to acknowledge and explore their racial and ethnic identities than adoptees with two White parents?

Further examination regarding the construction of Korean adoptee identities, communities, and culture is still needed. The present study did not rigorously examine the narratives and negotiations occurring within the actual “sites of collective

articulation” (Kim 2005), i.e. the online forums, heritage camps, gatherings or reunions, and mentorship programs. Future studies should include ethnographic data from these sites.

Additionally, Lynn Ackerman was the only adoptee in the study who personally adopted internationally, in part, as a result of her salient Korean adoptee identity.

Participating as an adult in the adoption process strengthened her adoptee identity and her ties to Holt International and the larger Asian adoptee community. Future research should explore how adoptees who have adopted themselves socialize their children. Are they more likely to replicate the socialization strategies their parents had used or to follow current trends of openly acknowledging both ethnicity and race? How do the racial and ethnic identities of children with Korean adoptee parents differ, is at all, from those with non-adopted parents? Are these “second-generation” international adoptees more likely

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to embrace and claim an adoptee identity than “first-generation?” How are these new families influencing adoptee culture and communities?

Conclusion

In sum, Korean transracial adoptees provide a unique lens into examining the constrained nature of identity formation. Their marginality from both Whites and Asians, of being a part yet apart, highlights how a colorblind perspective can leave Korean adoptees, and I would assert all transracial adoptees, unprepared to cope with their racial exclusion and disconnected from their socially defined racial and ethnic in-groups. However, a Korean adoptee identity emerged as a strategy that positions adoptees as full- fledged members of their own self-defined community rather than marginal members based on racial and cultural exclusions.

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