How white adoptive parents of Asian born youth talk about racism within the family

Abstract

Transracial adoption has been widespread in the United States since the 1960s. This practice is controversial and challenging because of the combination of transracial adoptees experiencing racism and White adoptive parents who are steeped in white privilege. White parents educating their transracially adopted children about racism is not an innate process, but rather one parents must learn. This has been an understudied issue, and the literature is missing empirical information, particularly about White parents of Asian born children educating their children about race-related issues. Therefore, the goal of this study is to generate new knowledge about how White adoptive parents address race-related issues with their Asian born children. Eleven White adoptive parents of Asian born children participated in two in-depth face-to-face interviews. At the time of the interviews, the children were in their late teens or early twenties. The results indicate that less than one-fifth of the parents proactively interrupted or addressed racist comments. Discrimination based comments were primarily addressed solely by parents or by children, but not collaboratively. Two-thirds of the study participants were comfortable discussing racism with their children but only one-third felt confident about discussing racism. Finally, only one-fourth of the parents had a person of color in their lives that they could turn to for guidance about race-related issues.