r/TransracialAdoptees

I was brought up to believe i was white nd 2 types of Indian blk foot nd Cherokee. Now however I took a DNA back when the pandemic started nd found out tht wasn't exactly true. See I found out I'm mixed blk nd white wth Indian. I always knew sumthin was different wth me then my so called relatives but was never told. Im 58f now. When in my 20s my mother introduced me to a friend she said nd this man kept looking at me like he was memorizing everything abt me. Not in a creepy way but more like he wouldn't ever see me again. He told me he hadn't seen me since I was born. I ddnt put 2 nd 2 together until 2021. I believe tht man was my father nd i was never told. Unfortunately I dnt remember his name just wht he looked like. Now all these yrs later I still cnt get answers but I'm living wth tht. I'm proud to say I hav his green eyes, lips nd his attitude nd my crazy hair.

Wish I could of gotten to know him better but life doesn't always go our way. If it wasn't fr tht test I wouldn't of known. Proud to say I'm a mixed woman nd I luv my heritage. Has anyone else experienced this

I know many of us did not have a happy childhood, me included. But I have heard some transracial adoptees say they had a happy childhood. If you are one of these, what do you think your parents did to make it successful? I know potential adopters read this reddit and regardless of many of our views, transracial adoption will continue. So those who are going to adopt might be interested.

Hello everyone. My actual question is located towards the end of the post, but I feel it is necessary to provide some context before we get to that part:

I am black/white/Latino. My mother was adopted by a fully white family, which is my only family due to the the estranged relationship I had with my late father. Her losing custody of me and being incarcerated led to me being raised for a majority of my childhood by various members of her entirely white adoptive family. My family is my family I suppose, I consider a couple of them as "true family no matter what", while the majority who always displayed a plausible deniability level of othering/microaggressions would be put into the "Sure we're family technically, but we all know I'm different and y'all will just never get it or acknowledge it even after I've tried explaining it, so lets just keep some distance for my own sanity". Suffice to say, I resonate with what many of you post here, but cannot in good faith put myself in the same category of transracial adoptee either. My experience may be adjacent to yours, but I'll never live it.

I am a mid 20's man in the US, my mother is mixed race black and white, father is black and Latino. I do not have much connection to any Latin American/Spanish speaking culture in all honesty, and I cannot speak Spanish.

My partner is a mid 20's woman in the US, half Asian and half Latin American, born in Latina American and is culturally Latino for al intents and purposes.

We have always wanted to adopt a child since the realization we wanted to be parents one day. It has never been a second choice or option.

My career has granted me the opportunity to move to Taiwan long term, and it is likely this move would be permanent should I want it to be, given the sector. I have been to Taiwan previously for a few months, and I would have 0 opposition to building a life there. I actually think it would be a far better choice than staying in the US for now for us personally, for several reasons (politics, big pay increase, work life balance etc).

With this background information providing some surface level context, my question for transracial adoptees that are anti transracial adoption is this:

**What do you suggest we do?**

If we adopted a child that fit my racial profile more closely, they would surely have a very high likelihood of being ostracized/alienated for their race/ethnicity in Taiwan. I think myself, my mother, and most of you here would agree that being the odd one out is not great for a child's development or self confidence, especially when the environment the child lives in is extremely racially homogenous and they are the victim of harassment. No child deserves to be racially harassed, and choosing to adopt a child into an environment where I know it's almost guaranteed to happen to varying degrees feels like it would be selfish and just kind of wrong.

With this in mind, we came to a consensus that if we decide to make Taiwan our new permanent home, then the most reasonable option when considering the wellbeing of the child in day to day life, would be to adopt a Taiwanese child so that they can have a chance to grow up in a place they feel they belong, with a community of people that looks like them and will not make them feel like an outsider. I have put many hours of thought into this, and I do not see a scenario in which we adopt a child while living in Taiwan that would be more fair to them than this one. That being said, I am very much willing to hear all opinions on this matter from transracial adoptees. I am also happy to provide more information regarding us/our backgrounds or regarding anything else you think is relevant if necessary, but this post was already getting long and I didn't want to bog it down with what may be unnecessary fluff. That being said, I will add a few more points below I think are relevant:

We both have been studying Mandarin and will continue to do so. This is non negotiable, I will not move to a country and start a life there without being able to function in society, and I will NOT be putting a child under my care in a position where they have to play translator for their parents who couldn't be bothered to learn enough of the language of the country they live in to function. I have watch this play out through both my childhood and as an adult with my Latino friends and their parents. It isn't right. We've made more progress on the language front already than I anticipated, so that's pretty neat I guess.

The family I consider family would treat them as such, which is compromised of 6 adults and 4 children. None would live in Taiwan, but we are lucky that money isn't much of an issue and visiting would be at least a couple of times a year thing. I think having some sort of "familial support system" outside of just two parents is important, and while a local one would be ideal, for now at least we can be assured that our child would have other people they can trust as family within our own network.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this. This has been weighing on me heavily and I hope some of you can provide your opinions, whether they are in support or staunchly against. If your answer is "sucks to suck but just don't adopt then", feel free to state that too. Obviously there is no need to be callous, but I would truly just appreciate some honest opinions regardless of which way they go.

I had to attend a retirement party yesterday for a friend . I am socially awkward. It was worse because I was the only nonwhite person. I was raised by a white family but now I’m not comfortable in a crowed of white. yet if they would have been Mexican, I would have felt like an imposter.

Does anyone know where the assumption came from that your appearance has to match a specific culture ?

I was adopted and raised by a white family in the US. I am black biracial.

I really like black people. Like genuinely, we are so cool.

But that is not my culture. My culture is the culture I was raised in.

It seems like sort of a cruel thing to make transracial adoptees who already have a lot to deal with also try and fight the way they were raised/ socialized for 18+ years.

Just to match what people think someone who looks like them should be doing?

I have lesbian moms so Mother’s Day is kind of a requirement in my family but I kind of hate it. After I came out of the fog It’s always been a really emotionally confusing day for me. My moms gush about how much they love being my moms and that’s very sweet and loving but they always wind up saying something about how they are grateful to my bio-mom and I Clam up and completely shut down. I don’t want to talk about it with them really ever but definitely not on Mother’s Day. It’s hard to have the most joyful day of their lives be the most painful violating day for me. I love them so much but man this is hard and confusing. I just want to hide tomorrow.