Similarities have cultures across the wound. Sentimental. Aljazeera and muslims and Current Affairs that matter. Hey theyre welcome to the stream home edition im josh rushing sitting in for the never a placeholder me ok today in today we time a trans racial adoption now in the u. S. Most babies who will be adopted are nonwhite but 73 percent of those will be adopted by white parents in this raises a whole host of questions about what does it mean for that childs culture for their identity particularly as they become adults now to winning us on you tube i want you to be a part of the conversation to that box over there thats a live view to chat and we have a stream producer in there waiting right now to get your questions and your comments into the show were going to get them to mean im going to get into our guest speaking of our guests there are 3 to 4 people who are involved in trans racial adoptions in the u. S. All from a little bit of a different angle and im going to ask them right now to introduce themselves were going to begin with Angela Angela can tell us a bit about who you are hi sherry japanese Angela Tucker and i am black forman obviously i was adopted from the south and tennessee to Washington State rests white parents and a predominately white town and i searched and found my birth parents in my twentys and thats when i really started. Exploring and discovering my pride asked and my black atty. I now run a. History option department in seattle and really work towards cetera. Adoptee voice. Great now and im going to take your word for 2nd here you got a movie closure that people should check out they get that pretty much anywhere the streams that at this point are right in line and. Yeah yeah and then you get a fright cast youve got a podcast coming out is it to mom does not owe it to morrow your high caste ok whats a park is called if i can ask how to get out the next hour and were people fast fast well people can find it anywhere you get there your gas applesauce spot of plastic sure ok ok called nicole you know something about this to you wrote a book called was it all we can ever know that right all you can ever know thats right its a memoir about growing up translational you adopted small white tile in Southern Oregon and actually the daughter of korean immigrants so my birth parents immigrated to the us shortly before i was born the 1st member of my birth family born here grew up in a closed adoption like me nothing really about my origins and i decided to search for my birth family in my mid to late twentys while i was pregnant with my 1st child was really kind of the impetus for my search and i wrote about it in a memoir called oh you can i remember it was just happens to be right over your shoulder there yes maam we did we didnt we didnt say your full name in the introduction it was nicole chung. And moving on to kid q you founded raising cultures right q tell me a bit about that. Yes my name is kid zones baldwin i found it raising culture is after i adopted 2 biracial children and a caucasian fern and i kind of found that it was very difficult to get any resources as a trans racially adoptive parent especially the way around weve experienced a lot of different. Prejudices a racism do that do so that it is just been a crazy whirlwind of things and so im trying to bring awareness to transfer racial adoption the other way but what do you mean other way around. When you say youve experienced like crazy things racism what he what he talking about. When i say the other way basically when the caucasian families adopt africanamerican children or you know brown children its not quote unquote frowned upon or its normal to see that in society however when africanamerican families adopt a white check out we get a lot of backlash from both communities from the black community saying well why dont you adopt a black check out there so many black chow that need but you might meet there and then we get it from the asians i will why dont you leave this white baby and in a white family you know so its been in wow. Whats it like being raised outside of your culture whats been the impact on your life. Well its a lot of impact when i proved that question wrong side of your culture im assuming what your culture what is your culture like i just loaded that question with the. Right assumption. Thats ok yeah im a black woman proudly and i was raised completely outside of my culture and i think to add on my t. L. s saying what she means when she says other way around is that for a white parent cell for my parents for example they i was always met with people running up to them saying what a great thing youve done how wonderful that youve adopted this child and i can understand from p. S. Perspective she gets the complete opposite but it was my child it was lovely my parents are fantastic but i was raised in racial homogeny and so that really leads to a lot of tokenism and a lot of me just automatically being the educator just by walking through the world every day people are always curious about where i came from how i got there wanting to touch my hair or wanting to put their hand skin up against my brown skin and that was just the norm and to grow up in that presence difficulties not just for me trying to figure out what does blackness mean for me because i didnt have any representation but it also creates this strange. It was like i had White Privilege by assonance this is how i felt that i was accepted it because i had white parents next to me but it all changed when i went to college and left the home and all the sudden and just a black person and i went to a predominantly black. College and university and so are predominantly White College and so people around are like i dont understand rate has this college where you hear that kind of thing even though thats what i grew up with and thats what i knew. Were getting some you tube comments in here ones from tiffany eunice this is nicoles book was amazing she articulated. She articulated things ive experienced as trans racial adoptee it was amazing so you really speaking to people out there nicole i want to bring in a voice from our community this is in a yates and shes a foster mom is about to go through it with a trans racial. And a foster parents living in filth from kona hawaii and in the middle of a controlled option. And as a white guy stand i have felt horrible and killed and even told before mary felt ill that i was reading another womans child the one who can finish her see heres the thing with into options that are number one i think the number one concern is is the child safe and are they healthy and will through them can navigate water inside for free and as a wife andrea and its our responsibility to be super conscious of all our efforts to for instance their heritage and towards the city. The coal the coal what kind of advice would you give him to their. Its hard to you know i never feel super qualified to give advice but i can say you know when i talk to people who are considering transitional adoption and overwhelmingly who i hear from our white parents who are considering adopting across racial lines i mean the 1st thing that i usually suggest they do is take a good hard look at their community and by that i dont just mean the town or the city that they live in i mean like look at their neighborhood look at the schools that their kids would go to if theyre part of Community Organizations or religious organizations take a look at those and ask yourself you know what kind of environment would this be if i were bringing a child of color into it with they find mirrors what they find any peers who look like them with they find role models and friends who look like them and i think that is like one not by no means the only question but one question with one place to start and then the other thing i would say is that we hear a lot more in transitional adoption these days about like honoring a childs heritage and celebrating and i think thats all to the good i think its a Great Development and there are more opportunities certainly than there were like when i was growing up i think a lot of families gravitate toward these things because theyre fun and like they can be a lot of. For like the childs culture of origin maybe like the music the food but what i found is that of course its like a lot harder to have those like those conversations about race and about White Privilege and about White Supremacy like in this country just the way that it permeates our culture its a lot less fun to talk about we know from studies that a lot of white parents dont talk with like their biological kids about race or racism quite enough whereas often parents of color sort of have to. You know so i think like being able to have those harder conversations knowing those are coming and being like just as ready to do that as you are to celebrate the childs culture its just a couple places that i generally start so if you look you could say a lot about this but those are kind of the 1st 2 things. What i want to enjoy you actually do kill people in these issues right and we have a couple more questions from our youtube audience that is. Do you feel comfortable claiming your racial slash ethnic identity even though you were raised outside of the culture and another one how did your adoptive parents talk to you about race in differences what was that conversation like interval. Oh yeah i definitely feel comfortable as a black woman now and i definitely identify strongly that way. I think one thing going back to question is. There are many white people who choose to adopt or foster children of color and as nicko said its really important to look at your community and seeing you know if there is racial diversity when then but another question that i have i ask them i still think about is why hasnt there been that versity in your family in your life before you chose to adopt a child that it can see oh really. Like a big burden on asked if parents are only coming to think about racism and start these conversations because. It has they got asked so thats one thing i think that my parents dead well which friends. I list not them protest for them to learn about their own witness and their White Privilege that they have an interest in cultures across the board before i came and they were also very aware of their position out of the and why it was such that that they could adopt me and set a black family and that that was rooted in White Supremacy i was really grateful that they were that that was kind of the foundation because it allowed me to ask questions without them feeling defensive questions like why didnt the black family adopt me why were the choices so slam and so then we were talking about how their institutional racism is baked into Child Welfare as well and that was really comforting for me. Not in the sense of understanding my blackness my back and it in me but in a sense of understanding why but stepped across the country to be raised by this way to strangers. Thank you im curious as a peer what kind of conversations you have with your white son about race in america i imagine explaining whiteness in america that youre so must be trying to explain like what water is to a fish uses is a different kind of conversation and. Yeah you know well right now my son is 3 years old so hes really you know not understanding anything other than we are his parents however my has been he is a Police Officer and with everything going on with you know protests and all of these things it becomes increasingly difficult to try to talk to our biracial children our. Africanamerican daughter about racism without our son who is 3. You know kind of joining in on the conversation he says hes very intelligent in so i can imagine the conversations that im going to have with him when he is getting ready to say in kindergarten and we walk him in a class on the the 1st day as africanamerican parents and in when we run into these things because i do have a 3rd grade son whos biracial whos run into. If youre my racial then why the you have 2 black parents and hes only in the 3rd grade and so kids are to be very observant but very cruel is whale and you know go on back to something that angela say it which was make sure that your children are educated on you know Race Relations in conversations because it can make an increasingly difficult situation for trans racial adoptees when they are in these classroom situations. Like that im going to my computer here and show a stat this is how long babies wait in foster care by race and after the american babies we dont ever see 39. 4 months compared to white babies which is really about half of that kid i know you talked about this in the preview that i read this. About the adoptive assistance can can you can explain that story in the way that went down. Yes so you know i was 19 when i 1st started this whole thing adoption and my biracial son when he was adopted he was also part of a sibling group but as we all know if youre biracial most at a time you consider africanamerican by those that really dont understand it just look at your stand and it was told to me by a prosecutor supervisor at the time when i was adopting my husband and i were adopting our car kazans and that he would not qualify for adoptions assistance and you know luckily and thank god we didnt need the assistance however i wanted to know why so i question her whoa you know when we adopted our biracial son he he received adoptions assistant so whats the difference and she said oh you know well hes under 3 and hes caucasian and he had in end blond hair and so i would not have a problem with placing him and i was just on the floor like also you guys are on a star system and with the way that you you know a place children for adoption and its unfortunate that africanamerican children are in the foster care system in most of the time they age out without ever being adopted and its also unfortunate that it is a star system where our cation children are more likely to be adopted then children of color we actually have a caucasian monkey in their brunt in our community who sent us this video. When it comes to the issue of White Privilege in raising 2 black children as a white person its complicated because right now when theyre young they are protected kind of in a bubble of my way privileged when we go out and about together but i know that it will not always be this way especially as they get older and so we do a lot of talking about these issues we talk about racism in america we talk about the realities of being a black person in america how we teach them to be proud of who they are and to live fearlessly. And these things are hard to talk about and its heartbreaking to expose them to the realities of these issues in this country and its necessary because im hoping that what were teaching them today will help them survive as they get older and on the back of that we have a comment from someone in our community kelly left on you tube right now as a white adoptive period how can i respond to the inappropriate questions in public like where she from or here touches such or to a fur my daughter. Yeah. And so i find it so important that we center at doppies and that adoptive parents often are kind of creating and shaping the narrative where in reality it for me it was really important to learn at an early age how i wanted to respond to those interests of questions that everyone asked and so my parents we did a little bit of role play before i went to Elementary School like and so when people ask me where is your real parents i had a answer ready and my answer in Elementary School was like i have pinched my mom before and she says our so i know shes real like it is really good she really age appropriate and it. Had it succeeded in the goal of just taking the pressure off of me over explain or to let people in on some of my private details that are maybe didnt want to share that its important for us as adoptees to figure out how can we answer peoples questions without telling them our whole history you know i was born here and then and in there and its like theres a phenomenon called narrative burden which means that we are sharing our truths because of peoples kind of entitled curiosity graviton sharing our trees because we actually want you so those intrusive questions you know where they from instead of saying whatever it may be i was abandoned under a bridge you know and so then i got adopted and then i ended up in this state and i met the school now instead of doing that i was able to have let this pat answer so then when i went home i could talk to my parents and you know someone asked me this question again and some rust. But i didnt have to do that like on the spot because when youre in Elementary School at all you want to do a spit n. And its hard enough. I think i have one related to kim who was basically talking about how she. Talks to her kids a lot about race i was recently working with a teenage trans racial adoptee and she was telling me about how when her her white parents talk to her about racism within america she feels like they do it in an apologetic way like. You know im so sorry that youre going to have to deal with this but this is the reality and very kind of sad about it and this transformation adopted teen went to one of her friends houses a black friend who has black parents who is not adopted and those parents were talking to both of them about policing in america and those parents were doing it and just in fact way that was not apologetic and she came away feeling like our parents equipping me well enough because she saw the stark differences in how how these 2 people were talking to their kids and i think its rooted in the fact that white parents just dont know what its like to be black you can never know and so there are some pieces that i think need to be outsourced and a black person whos lived it has to talk to that black generation. In order to really get the point across the color see you nodding over there that. Its all. Im just kind of thinking about how you know i was relating to a little bit of what angela said im obviously not black but i grew up in a really White Community i was actually the only korean person i knew until i left home for college so i was just thinking about how much i wouldve really like to have other Asian Americans and korean americans that i was close to growing up because that would have been maybe an opportunity to have some of those talks with people who share my background and also consider teach me how to be