Building Bridges to Your Child's Ethnic Community

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Roots & Wings Adoption Magazine

Building Bridges to Your Child's Ethnic Community

(Continued)
So, what I would say to you is that most of the fears that I had in moving into the Korean Community occured. I met people who asked inappropriate questions and made judgements. There were people who valued our family less because the parents were caucasian, the children had been orphaned and adopted. Some one did make a relationship and then leave my child, though I understood that a large measure of this was because he could not be direct enough to deal with the issue. That is cultural.

One fear, that my ties to my children might be lessened, did not occur and I believe is entirely unfounded. By seeing ourselves as a Korean American family and pulling Korean heritage in to all of us we only grow closer with our children feeling more deeply our understanding and acceptance of them.

Though most of my other fears clearly have some basis in reality and resulted in a few hard experiences for us, they have not overwhelmed us. Because we have had so many experiences that were so positive, the negative ones fall into perspective. It is impossible for us to protect our children from hard experiences. They will face prejudice both in mainstream America and in the Korean American Community. If we keep them out of the Korean Community in an effort to protect them, we do not keep it a secret from them that some of Korean background will stigmatize them for their adoptive status. In fact if we keep them out of the community we instead keep it a secret from them that many who are Korean born can love them deeply. We take from them the opportunity to view Korean Americans as individuals and give them stereotypes instead.

We grew and changed at the school. Unfortunately the internal politics at the school also continued and we went through three principals. Through out all of this we were helped by the fact that there was a Korean American psychiatrist and a Korean American psychologist who were interested in and supportive of us, one of whom was on the school board. There was much behind the scenes support and personal bravery and integrity from these two individuals. With each new principal we had to educate and confront adoption issues with them all over again. Yet for the most part we were successful. In the end though we encountered a principal whose views were quite extreme and we did move our program out of the school, but not out of the community. In doing so some second generation kids did not fit well with the new principal either and they joined together with our program. That has brought new challenges. Balancing the needs of both groups and not favoring one over the other can be challenging. But, we realize the benefits of being together with immigrant and adoptive parents helping each other, confronting the issues that our children face.

We began our connection with the Sacramento Korean Community with a philosophical base behind us. We wanted to be culturallly sensitive, develop reciprocal relationships, be inclusive all who want to work with us, and respect the need for appropriate boundaries. I think that these same principles would work in connecting to other ethnic communities though there would be variety in the cultural linkage. We began by trying to enhace our cultural sensitivity. We were entering an ethnic community as guests and so we felt that at least initially most of the adaptation should come through us. Later on when we truly succeed in becoming contributing members of the community then I think adaptation has to go in the other direction as well. One of the strongest challanges we faced was in balancing looking at people as individuals while still appreciating that the differences in culture can affect how people react to each other.

We were very fortunate to make connections with some community leaders with bicultural backgrounds and strong interpersonal skills. If I had to make these connections again, I would actively seek introductions to those in mental health fields or with backgrounds in education. With people such as this for guides it is easier to relate to others in the community as individuals. I only make the assumption that problems in communication or personality conflicts are related to cultural difference when this is confirmed for me by one of my bicultural friends. The reason for this is that if one always makes the assumption that differences between individuals are due to cultural difference one easily ends up stereotyping rather than being culturally sensitive. It is a delicate balance.

The next step after cultural awareness is to build meaningful relationships. My mother always said that if you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend. I would not begin by going into an ethnic community and asking for favors. I think that adoptive families can develop a holier than though attitude where they think that the community owes us something just because we adopted our children. It may be that the community has some responsibility toward our children, but I think that is for them to decide and not us. For if we think we are owed what does that say about the value we ourselves put on our children. If we truly believe that we have been given a gift by being allowed to parent these children then we need to be sure that we develop reciprocal relationships where we give as much as we take. Our children are not charity cases. I believe that their selfesteem will be much higher if they can view themselves as having put something into the community as well as taking something out. Therefore, I think we need to find out what needs the community has and how we will help with those needs as a first step. We would then hope that our needs would also be considered. In the particular case of the Korean Community what they view as an overriding need is to have mainstream Americans understand them better. This stems directly from the lack of political power and estrangement that they feel led to the events during the Los Angeles riots. We can be part of making those connections for them especially since the Korean Community has a tendency to avoid interacting with even other Asian groups.. I have participated in facilitating discussion groups so that we can learn about community needs. I participated in a meeting where community issues were discussed with a California senator. Members of our new non-profit group Friends of Korea provided activities for children at an all day conference on Korea in Davis California. We had the a booth at the Pacific Rim festival in downtown Sacramento which focused on Korean Calligraphy. It was the only booth at that festival that represented Korean culture though there were many others that focused on other Asian cultures.

We have also had our children participate in service projects directly within the community. Our children did a fan dance for the Korean Seniors New Year's Party. We participated in school fundraising efforts. We patronize the markets and restaurants. In return we are readily invited to community events such as the Korean American Association's New Years's Party, activities sponsored by the Sierra Lyons Club (an organization with an all Korean American membership, Korean films which are brought to Sacramento by the Korean language newspaper and have subtitles are available to us. And more personally, our special bilingual bicultural friends who serve as our bridge into the community give to us. We feel their hearts in this as they are willing to work on projects with us, encourage us and see us as their friends. We try to make relationships even with those who struggle with English but who have warm hearts, including them in invitations to our events.

We follow the principle of inclusion of all who would like to work with us. To this end we formed a non-profit corporation called Friends of Korea. It is not an adoption related group though it will remain adoption sensitive. I think it is exciting for our children to be part of a group where the focus is not on adoption - just on people connected to Korea. Friends of Korea is a non-profit organization whose purpose is to offer opportunities for all who are interested to come together in promoting greater awareness and appreciation of the value of Korean heritage in the United States. Our board of directors consists of first and second generation Korean Americans as well as Americans of other ethnicities.

We explore ideas and issues of interest to Korean Americans and others through discussion groups which focus on Korean films, history, arts, and culture. We offer language classes, and access to Korean American Community events sponsored by other Korean American organizations. We welcome all who are interested to join us in our activities.

The final principle is one of respecting boundaries - although my Korean American psychologist friend prefers the word eligibility believing that walls and boundaries are only things we build within ourselves. But, it is true that it is ok to have groups which focus on and meet the needs of a particular set of individuals. The adoption support group membership consists of adoptive families though others are on our mailing list. There is an adult adoptees group for adult adoptees only so that they can freely discuss issues without fear of offending others and within the Korean Community. There are groups with focuses where our membership would not be appropriate though there are many times when we are invited to participate. As non-Koreans we can still be an active part of the community if we are respectful and caring of others along with asking to have our own needs met.

The connection of ethnicity and love for our children is in the Korean American Community which is something if you consider all of the other struggles that they as immigrants must face just to survive. It is difficult to venture outside the security of the knowns of who we are. To be the only Caucasian face among many Asian ones can be scary, yet in interracial adoption this is what we ask our children to do eveyday. I think we only validate our childrens experience when we are willing to walk in the other direction ourselves.

Second installment will appear in next issue of Roots & Wings.
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