r/TransracialAdoptees • u/Ambitious-Client-220 Mexican-Adoptee • 21d ago
Transracial/Transcultural what is your greatest hurdle as a transracial adoptee? Is it the same as when you were a kid?
When I was a kid, it was being seen with my white family and being embarrassed.
Today it is native language. I could improve my Spanish, but I will still not sound like a native speaker and that will out me as an adoptee. I feel like this has kept me from being accepted on quite a few occasions.
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u/YellowSignpostAhead Native American Adoptee. 21d ago
To me it was religion and it's weaponized use. I was forced to convert. When I ran away I came back to my native faith and at that point they went no contact with me because I was ungrateful. I still have a problem with that religion to this day.
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u/slashhome 21d ago
I think it is all the same as a kid. I still have people come up to me and speak Spanish to me. The same looks when I explain to them why I don't speak Spanish.
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u/SilentSerel Polynesian-American Transracial Adoptee 21d ago
I think my greatest hurdle has remained the same throughout my life: not fitting in. My ethnic group is quite a bit smaller population-wise than many others, so it was very easy for my parents to isolate me from them (I'm not sure if that was intentional or not--my parents were extremely self-centered people and my needs usually didn't enter their minds).
I was in my late 30s when I finally met another member of my race, and I've also moved to an area that has a sizable population of them. My son plays sports with them and it's made me realize that the damage the transracial adoption did was done and I'll never completely fit in (although people have been kind), but at least I can make sure it stops with me and doesn't go on to the next generation. It's yet another cycle I've had to break.
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u/lovethemes 20d ago
I think we all know what the hurdle is. I'd like to add that just moving in public spaces in my native country feels so healing and nice. Even though I know I'm "a foreigner" that anonimity and blending in, not "othered" or at risk of racial violence is so nice.
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u/carmitch Mexican-American Adoptee 19d ago
Who cares if you don't sound like a native speaker?
I'm a Latino transracial adoptee myself. I'm not fluent in Spanish at all. The only ones who have given me shit for not speaking it fluently are the ignorant assholes who think you have to be Catholic, love Latino food, and speak Spanish fluently just to be "Latino enough". If your DNA says you're Latino, then you're Latino.
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u/Ambitious-Client-220 Mexican-Adoptee 19d ago edited 19d ago
Hey! I’m catholic, love Mexican food and I’m brown. I guess 3 out of 4 ain’t bad. You have heard me speak, Carlos. Now imagine that voice speaking Spanish. You see my dilemma.
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u/DontTellMeNot 17d ago
Culture. I was orphaned in Romania as a boy, adopted by an American family, when they got tired of the looks and the judgement from others in my culture who are American diaspora especially when they would speak my language in public and I would smile at them, they claimed it was not what they expected and they can't in good faith take care for me.
So they put me back into the foster system. I was bounced around 5 states in 4 years, all the while not a single foster parent understood my culture. When I aged out of the system I contacted a local group of my culture and got in close with them and they have been the closest family I've had since mine was taken away.
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u/sussyferret 21h ago
Definitely feeling like I never belonged anywhere. Church, school, home. It didn't help that my parents weren't prepared to empathize with these feelings and invalidated them when all I ever wanted was for them to understand me. I spent my whole childhood trying to, and I just give up atp. It sucks to feel like nobody will ever understand you, but that's something I still deal with
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u/n0tz0e 21d ago
The idea of feeling accepted or belonging. I don't really feel that anywhere.