Building Bridges to Your Child's Ethnic Community
Roots & Wings Adoption MagazineBuilding Bridges to Your Child's Ethnic Community
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We must become involved global citizens --- to see our lives as interconnected. Adoption is not something that one does once; it must become part of a lifestyle that reflects your concern for others. Many families do continue to contribute financially to the care of the world's children -- especially to those in their own children's countries of origin --- through their adoption agencies. However, it appears less commonplace to make the leap into our children's American ethnic communities that might help our own children right here at home.
Few Americans will forget the events of three years ago when, on April 29, mass rioting took place in Los Angeles following the Rodney King verdict. In the Korean Community, this event is know as Sa Ee Gu which means "4 29". On this day, African-Americans and Korean-Americans came into serious conflict, with the result that Korea town was burnt nearly to the ground. At that time I had only begun my explorations into the Sacramento Korean Community, and the differing perspectives on what happened on that infamous day and why it happened were largely unknown to me.
Of seemingly little connection to the events that tore apart communities in Los Angeles was the annual celebration of the Korean Children's Day picnic held in Stockton, California, for adopted Korean-born children. However, that year for the first time, many adoptive parents were fearful that it might not even be safe to have a large public gathering that centered around a Korean flag. The shock was that we were very much connected to an event of which we had little understanding. Our children were, after all, Korean-American. Our connection to our children's ethnicity is there whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. As adoptive parents who have adopted transracially and transculturally, I think that we have a moral responsibilty to acknowledge that connection, however. We are inevitably linked, and if we do not care about and for each other, both the adoptive families and the ethnic community suffer. Our children are and always will be Korean first. The ways in which Korean-Americans are perceived and the ways in which they are treated here in the U.S. will affect our children both now and later when they are grown and no longer under our protection.
Making the connection
One of the first things that adoptive parents often say to me when I suggest that they participate in our language school, or a Korean Community event is that their children are not yet asking about Korea. They seem to feel that the child will ask when he is ready and then they will provide some information. My feeling is that young children may not be able to even frame the questions though the need for connection is still there. My son came to us from Korea at an older age. He had some intensely negative feelings about anything Korean because of some difficult memories. I very strongly felt that he had better have some positive interactions with fellow Koreans or he would always believe that, "Koreans are mean!" He had many love/hate feelings craving the food, missing the ease of communication in his original language.
So, for us it was pretty clear that we needed connections. If I had had only my daughter who came as a baby, I would not have known this and I might have waited for her to ask about Korea. But, her brother was a great gift to her, though neither of them yet realize this. My daughter was exposed to Korean foods, people, language etc. young enough that she has never shown the ackward feelings about these things that I see in some other adoptees. If I had waited for her to ask, she would have had to feel all those conflicting feelings that would compel her to ask. Instead it was just there for her. This does not mean that I am taking over my children's heritage experience. They can still have personal relationships with their teachers at Korean school and their second generation friends as well as other adoptees that do not include me. It does mean that I have decided as their parent that this connection is important for them. It is much the same as my deciding what is a reasonable bed time, what snacks they should have, what our family rules are. It is not the same to me as the decision of whether they take piano lessons or play soccer. My feeling is that the importance of knowing who they and we as a family are is something that is not of casual importance.
And the fact is that the connection to Korean heritage is not our children's alone. Just as we as a family share all of the heritages that are mine and my husband's by birth, we also share our children's Korean heritage. We, their parents, can learn Korean too if we wish. We can learn about the culture. We can have Korean American friends. We can find strength from inclusion in the community for while we their parents are not Korean, we are a Korean American family. So, I believe that the first step in venturing into your child's ethnic community is to feel your entitlement to do so.
The next step is to honestly address some of the fears that adoptive families have. I met my first Korean American friend when I walked into her dry cleaners and introduced myself. I knew that I was going to need help when my five year old son arrived not speaking any English. I remember what a scary thing that was for me to do. She actually wasn't very receptive at first because she had helped an adoptive family previously and the experience had not been positive. The family had only wanted her help initially and had then wanted to cut everything Korean from their lives. It hurt my new friend to see this child truly lose all connection. So, my promise was that we would have a lasting relationship. One fear that I remember from those days was that she and others born in Korea might find that I was not a good enough parent for my children. I remember being so careful how I fixed my daughter's hair what clothes the kids wore until, I realized that it probably was not good to have my children feel my over concern about this. So, I actually talked with my friend, as we were becoming close, and her response was to tell me about a million times that I should never care about this. It particularly concerned my son who acted out a lot of anger in those days. She would say, "He is your son. Is he not? Why do you care what anyone thinks, Korean or not?" So eventually I did come to see it her way - to feel my entitlement in the community, not to be so concerned with what others would think.
The next step was to move beyond an individual relationship and I did so when my friend encouraged me to go to church with her. A whole range of fears came into play then. I was so worried. Would my clearly adopted daughter as evidenced by her caucasian mother be stigmatized when she went to the Sunday school class with my friend's daughter. It was a worry that was always there sort of underlying, would she be teased because she had been orphaned, because she was adopted, because her mother was caucasian?
It didn't happen there. After several months, however, my friend began taking her children to Korean school. I decided to let my daughter try it with her daughter and I myself was invited to join an adult class. For six months it was wonderful and then internal politics that had nothing to do with adoption, but occur in all communities, caused a decline in the school's enrollment and my friend decided that she would rather take her daughter to language classes at church. By this time we were pretty comfortable at the school so I decided to stay. But, after my friend left, the experience for my daughter changed and there did come a day when she was teased because her mother was caucasian.
I held my daughter crying for a long time. I felt very scared and very vulnerable. But the incredible thing was that my daughter just decided that this was a really mean girl. Because by this time she knew so many Korean Americans who loved her, she was able to individualize rather than stereotype. Some of Korean background hold some prejudices against orphans and adoptees, but others do not. There is not one Korean attitude about adoption anymore than there is one Caucasian attitude about others of different ethnicities. This is not to say that ethnic cultures that have a strong value for blood ties will not have individuals who exhibit prejudice toward our children. It is to say that people are individuals and there are most certainly many Korean born individuals who will accept our children.
At the time, however, I had not resolved this issue to this degree. I went through a lot of soul searching. I recalled the time that someone had spit in my son's hair at his elementary school because they didn't like Chinese people and remembered that he had continued to go to that school though certainly with some intervention. So, I had to decide, is prejudice worse when it comes from someone of your child's ethnicity or do you treat it as you would other prejudice? My compromise was that I would stop sending my daughter to Korean school for a while, but I would continue myself. By this time I had made another friend. My Korean school teacher was Americanized enough to have some understanding of my situation and she was very interested in learning about adoptive families. At the end of six months my teacher offered to tutor me privately during the summer as the school would be out of sesion then. And suddenly, I am not sure why, I told her that I really wanted to learn Korean with my children and did she think that maybe she could do a class for all of us. She went to the principal and came back with a proposal to have a summer class just for adoptive families. There was such love in the offer and it was really wonderful to accept.
The summer class was fantastic. Even though there was much potential for misunderstanding, there was so much love coming from both the adoptive families and representatives of the school that you could feel the challenge and excitement of what we were doing. In the end we asked to have our own program within the broader Korean school program and that fall we all continued our classes. One thing I always wanted was for any program we undertook to be deep within the community and not run as a program for adoptees by our support group. I felt that in the end our children needed to feel as much a part of the community as possible and not feel as though they were separate and aside. So, we had to balance the need to have a program tailored to our special needs with our need to be in the community.
That winter we participated in the Korean School fundraiser which was also a Christmas party. Though their classes were separate all of the children, adoptees and second generation kids sang together as part of the entertainment. Watching those children all together with no distinction being made between them made my heart soar until another thought hit me. My God they really are Korean. Am I giving them back? Are they still mine? Will they someday return to their origins without me? And then we joined them on the stage and sang too. This was hard for many of us who did not grow up with singing as a strong element of our cultural bacgrounds. Yet, for our Korean friends, singing together has real meaning and the inclusion of that did come through. Suddenly, I knew that I was not about to lose my children, but instead that we truly were a Korean American family and that Korean heritage could be a part of all of us.
We were very fortunate to have teachers with backgrounds that enabled them to understand us fairly readily. They were committed to our children and we tried to convey to them that our children were very deeply attached to them. This was very true. I think all of us were a little shocked to see how attached our children became. I don't think any of us had really known just how important these relationships would be to our children. Seeing this we emphasized to the teachers that we knew that their lives might well lead them in other directions, so please let us know well in advance if they could not continue to teach so that we could build in transistions. This usually occured with a teacher who had to leave to continue education in another city, or to pursue job opportunities telling the children themselves and introducing the next teacher.
However, there came a time when one of our most naturally talented teachers who was my son's teacher had to leave. I think because he was really hoping to continue and because on some level he felt he was letting us down he just left without notice - just suddenly gone. The abandonement issues that this raised in my son were difficult to deal with. It is probably the hardest thing that has happened to us in this community and yet my son still continues at Korean school and still has Korean friends that he trusts.
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