Exploring Blackness and Adoption: Navigating Identity and Challenges

Blackness and adoption

Adoption taught us anti-blackness

Being adopted makes us an “other” whether we were raised by white, black, or brown families. In this episode we talk about unlearning the anti-blackness we internalized as children, why black adoptees cost less than white adoptees, the parallels between adoption and slavery, and our experiences growing up as black adoptees. 

What we discussed 

(00:00) “I couldn’t have been blacker” (raised by a white family)

(03:52) Cost of black child vs. cost of white child 

(11:15) No idea how to raise a black child OR Internalizing racism as a black adopted child

(17:59) True cost of hating our blackness 

(19:45) Did we know other adoptees as children? 

(26:30) Adoption and slavery (similarities) 

(32:17) Our experience as black adoptees

Links

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Learn more about Lia

Credits

Special thanks to Samuel Oyedele for editing our podcast, support his work on Instagram or e-mail him at Drumaboyiglobal@gmail.com 

Transcript

Lia:
hey everybody welcome to adopt these crossing lines that not to feel good podcast if you're looking for something that's grateful adopts this probably isn't the one for you go ahead and keep scrolling and looking for another podcast that's not what we're about over here already to get into this show

Noelle:
absolutely

Tosha:
yes let's go

Lia:
all right well first i want to say happy black history month to all of our listeners out there black history month is one of my favorite months of the year i don't know why they gave us the shortest month of the year actually

Lia:
i do know


Lia:
why but we're not going to get into that right now um so for today's episode we're goin t be talking about blackness

Noelle:
yeah

Lia:
and adoption like the experience of being a black and um some of the things that pertain to the adoption industry as it relates to like black children and black babies and whatever else comes up for us during the show we're just going to rock with it so when you think about like your blackness as it relates to adoption what sort of things come up for you?

Noelle:
so every time people find out that i was adopted by a white family they always say to me oh you don't know what it's like to be black because you were raised by a white family yeah and i have to help them understand that i couldn't have been blacker i was the blackest thing for miles i grew up in a white family in a white neighborhood in a white school and all i knew was my blackness and i had no one to share it with i had no one to process with and so the experience left me feeling holy black all of the time

Tosha:
i would say for my experience being a black adopt i grew up in a pretty diverse community but there were not a lot of dopes so i feel like i stood out as an adapter and then being a black adapter i really didn't know of any others until i was a little bit older and you know everyone has their own experiences but i kind of feel like being a black adopted it felt a little isolating because the black community seems like a titan community so when someone found out i was adopted it was like wow really and then of course all the questions that flow after that kind of realization

Lia:
yeah Tosha i resonate with so much of what you said like even though i was raised in a black family my being adopted made me an other and i felt like i was always secluded excluded because for one people couldn't comprehend that like i was black and adopted i think sometimes like we just think that i don't know i think a lot of times with black people um sometimes we unofficially adopt right like people are raised by their grandparents people are raised by their aunts maybe there's no like sort of papers there's no sort of legal proceeding but that is essentially adoption and so i think sometimes as black people we have a hard time wrapping head around the fact that like damn nobody in your family wanted to like you just ended up with the stranger it's like that's crazy you know um and so that's a lot of what i experienced when it came to being black and adopted i felt like i never really fit in anywhere and always just trying to find my place um i was i was doing some research because i was curious about what are some of the statistics around you know black children black adoptions things like that um so if you don't know black children tend to cost less to adopt if you are going through like a private adoption agency and not going through the state and when i looked into it i found this article by m p r and i was talking about how non white children and black children in particular are harder to place an adoptive homes so the costs adjusted to provide an incentive for families that might otherwise be locked out of adoption due to as well as for families who really have to maybe have a little bit of prodding to think about adopting across racial lines and that's a direct quote and when i read that like that was so interesting to me because why are you trying to convince people to adopt across racial lines


Lia:
like why is that something that you're having to work to do you know what i'm saying


Lia:
and i don't know if you guys know this but in nineteen seventy two the national association of black social workers they actually took a stand against the placement of black children in white homes for any reason and i would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when this was taken place because i know that people were losing their minds right like

Lia:
and i just i think it's interesting how we've gone from that to like where we are now to where trans racial adoptions are so commonplace and so widely accepted how did we get from there to here do you ll have any thoughts on either of those two things

Noelle:
so you just told my adoption story my adoptive mother was famous for telling me that the reason that they got me was because no one would take me um i'm alleged to have native blood i don't know how to say that sorry for the hesitation i'm alleged to have a native heritage and i'm black obviously and she would say me the black people didn't want you the native people didn't want you and so they gave you to us so i was always given the sense that i was trash that i was something that nobody wanted and i was treated as such

Tosha:
and for me it's thank you for providing that information m lea i didn't realize the cost difference and all of that until later in life and so i went back and thought about all of the families that i've known with you know other racial adopts and i'm like it makes so much sense but when you find out that some of us were purchased because we were cheaper that is terrible and if it's just a cost thing that is very it's quite tragic because you you chose this baby because it was cheaper they lose their culture their heritage all of that it was just i got you because you were cheaper that was it and you lose so much when that happens and kudos to every anyone who has fought against that just simply for that simple reason and nothing else is terrible

Noelle:
another piece of what i used to be told is that they tried to get a white new born but the waiting list was three years long and they wanted a baby sooner than that so it's also availability as well as price
and imagine being


Tosha:
told that that is that is how does someone recover for something like that like you got me because i was the cheapest thing on the shelf m m

Lia:
yeah it's it's really wild to think about um i was looking up these different prices because i was curious to see them for myself an for this particular adoption agency for it says for an african american baby that was due any day they were charging seventeen thousand plus legal fees and then for occasion baby that was due in february they were charging twenty nine plus seven thousand in legal fees right so that's like thirty six thousand which is like almost double the cost of a black baby and first of all why are we buying and selling children to begin with why are

Lia:
we why are we doing that and since we're doing it why are we charging less for a black baby like you don't think that's going to mess with somebody's psyche you don't think that's going to mess with how somebody use themselves like a lot of people know how much their adoption cost i don't know um i don't know if either of you know but a lot of people i've seen a lot of people on twitter and on instagram where they literally will have the receipts from when they were born and how much they cost and i just think i think that's disgusting because why are we again why are we buying and selling children you know and i think we all know that black and brown children are over represented in the child welfare system and so there's our i like ah what's the word i'm looking for cannot find the word i'm looking for right now but there's already so many of us like in the system and if the idea of a system is to serve the best interests of the child and if the goal is truly unification one why are we selling children and two why do some cost more than others your goal is truly to put them into homes that just tells me that that's not your goal that tells me that you are in this for the money right like states get tax breaks and they money for the number of children that they place from foster care into adoptive homes so they're incentivized to put us into these homes and i don't think necessarily into the best situation but basically just to give you to somebody so that it is out of their hands and then they can collect their check and it's like they're getting double checks right they're getting checks for selling you and the they're getting checks because they met their quota for the month or whatever it may be um so i think it's really interesting the way that the industry is run and how it's framed in this way that it's for the best interests of the child when in reality it's not nothing about it serves the interest of the child

Tosha:
and i don't know the statistics of how many people of color black and brown babies that are given up for adoption versus caucasians or white babies i have no idea so the thought processes you would think oh maybe there's just more of us so the cost would be less i don't think that's it at all though i think were seen is less than so our value was less there for we cost less and the value for a white family they're going to want that white baby you want the white baby you're on have to pay for it but if you don't we've got plenty of brown babies that your selection to choose from and what happens and i think it not just with i think with adopted parents they want that baby is like oh that baby is so cute baba but when that black baby grows up and there's any racial issues within that white family the it's going to come out and i feel so much for those children who grow up to adults with with no culture feeling bad about their culture being shunned from their culture so i wish there was more and i don't know what the process is if they're educated at all if they're encouraged to assimilate these kids african american communities i have no idea but i'm thinking there is thing like it's just like you purchase this child off you go and that causes a lot of internal conflict and a lot of internal issues and i hate to speak on others that i don't have the same experience it's just my person observations um but i understand it services the industry but per usual is a disservice to the adopted

Noelle:
so i can speak from a place of having that direct experience and these people my adopted parents knew not a single black person not a single black person i did not see another black person until i was in middle school and didn't really know any black people to talk to them until i was in college and i can remember this i don't know why i remember but my adopted mother got me a book about black people and it was a picture book filled with pictures of starving children in africa oh brimnibreins sorry i might not have said that correctly umkabrini which is one of the housing structures in chicago i believe um you know pictures of black folks standing on corners doing whatever they were doing pictures of black folks being arrested that was the book that she gave me i did never i never had a black baby doll

Tosha:
how did that make you feel like what did that do to you seeing those images and trying to reconcile that as a child

Noelle:
i think i had a lot of internalized racism as a child i think i was afraid of black people i was afraid to become a black person and it was you know what were the other options there were no other options so there was a lot of self loathing i thought that i was ugly i tell this story it does not make me sound very humble but i was probably twenty nine years old i know for a fact i was twenty nine years old before i realized that i was actually attractive i had no idea right so lots of fear i was told things regularly like don't be angry don't act like them there was this big them in our house right and it was black people so i was taught to be afraid to be black don't be too loud don't be angry be deferent you know make sure that you make white people feel comfortable and that's how i was taught to be it took me a lot of unlearning to get out of that

Lia:
no as you were speaking that brought up some things for for me Tosha i don't know if you can relate to this because we're both the same race adopts but i felt like even though i was black and adopted by a black family my blackness was still very different than the blackness of my friends and i just felt like i couldn't ever really be black enough in it wasn't really until like college and later on that i really came to this this moment or this epiphany where like i realized that i was black enough and blackness is a spectrum you know we're not like a monolith and i think so often we as black people


Lia:
try to box ourselves and box others into this this narrative or if you're not this particular type of black then you're not black and that was that was really hard for me right like my adopted parents were both educators and very much like prided themselves in that but think that in a lot of ways especially my mom that she had a lot of likeinternalized anti blackness because a lot of the things that she would say was just like why are you saying this did you forget that you're black too like you forget that if you get pulled over you are a black woman at the end of the day like pandering like catering to these white folks serves you no purpose at all because at the end of the day you are a black woman in america and malcom x said the most disrespected person in america is a black woman um so that that is kind of what came up for me i felt like even though i was adopted by a black family there was a lot of internalized anti blackness that got projected on to me that i eventually had to take the time to unlearn and really like come into myself you know and it was really weird for me because my adopted dad he went to an h b c u like very like pro black and i'm like okay like why didn't we have like more conversations or like more dialogue around these sorts of things i remember whenever travann martin died right so i grew up in orlando and Trayvon Martin was murdered in sanford which is just outside of orlando and for me that was like it was train martin and mike brown those were like my awakening moments where i was like oh no like i can't continue to live my life like this like my people are dying just because they're black and i'm not okay with that and i'm also not okay with being silent and sitting side lines and not doing anything about it and so i had my awakening moment and i think that is when i personally really came into my blackness and love myself for being a black woman but it took some time to get to that point

Noelle:
one of the things that i feel horrible about i carry a lot of guilt and shame about is that my son's too black men both have shared with me how damaging it was that i did not love myself as a black woman and my oldest son said to me one day i wish you were this black when i was growing up

Tosha:
it's a side effect from the adoption um so for mine i love the three of us because we all have three you know totally different backgrounds and experiences so i didn't really experience that within mine they come from the south so i always say i was southern raised northern bred because i grew up in the north so for me i just dealt with more of the issues of sounding different than my family that lived in the south being s and you know sounding proper things of that nature but the blackness was always there third generation h b c u so my dad my grandma so very very solid with that um the only issues was within our household the blackness was there and they were just teaching me how to navigate in the world and some of that can be anti a bit m making sure i'm talking proper and acting a certain way when i'm around other people who are not of my same race so i was taught those things whether it was the fear that they grew up in growing up in the deep south or whether they were just trying to protect me i'll never quite know especially with the climate that the world that we still live in just is very thick out there i have to say that i don't really think there was a lot of anti blackness or anything like that too much within my experience m

Lia:
yeah i think that's one of the things about adoption just the human experience in general is that we're all adopted but our experiences are all very different but the common theme or the common thread that runs through adoption s trauma and i think no matter same race trans racial black white honestly no matter what like there's trauma like there's separation from your family and so it's inherently going to happen there's nothing that you can do to really so really get around it um when it comes to like blackness and adoption did you all know like other i don't now you talked about how um basically your blackness was always front and center even though you were adopted um even though you are trans racial optylike it still is front and center but i'm wondering if um you all knew any other like either black adopts growing up or other people who were adopted in general

Noelle:
i knew

Tosha:
i did

Noelle:
oh i knew one other girl who was adopted i met her in fifth grade and she she was a white adopted in a white family and the way they treated her they treated like she was gold at least that's how it looked from the outside so i had a very hard time understanding why i was treated so badly because here was this other adopted person remember being very excited that we were both adopted and still to this day when i meet adopts there's this instant connection because it is a part clar kind of trauma bonding when you find out that other people are adopted i was so excited to meet this girl and i went to her house and she had her own room and it pink and frilly and filled with toys and it was so opposite the experience that i was having that i just never went back we ended up now being friends just put such a spotlight on what was wrong in my life and in my family that i i just could not consider us the same kind of adopting m

Tosha:
i had a somewhat similar experience towards the end there so in the church that i grew up in there was a set of brother and sisters brother and sister that was adopted together so cool until i found that out because i also have sibling so i was envious jealous all those things and so at first i liked being around them because they were adopted as well but towards the end made my personal situation worse it just made me feel more lone because i felt that they had at least the two of them to share thoughts with and bounce ideas off with and i didn't have that so i kind of action we shut down a little bit um and then moving forward i didn't meet anyone else that was adopted that i knew of until i got to college and then i met a whole bunch of different people at that time that was better experience but at the time for my young age i kind of nest with my same exact experience if yours was tad better than mine i didn't want to deal with you and that was just a little hurt still little immature still i understand how all of this worked and around that same time i was coming out of just finding out i was adopted anyways so i did look up to them being mentors and older but then being siblings and knowing that i had a older one that wasn't adopted with me hurt me in the end and i just couldn't continue with that relationship

Lia:
so for me growing up i can't honestly can't recall any adopts that i knew growing up um at a certain point i found out that a cousin like within my adopted family was adopted and so that was interesting and we've chatted here and there about it but even her and i really haven't gotten into that the first adopted that i could remember meeting is actually someone that i met on twitter and he is a black same race adopted and hearing about his experience was really interesting to me because um even though it was inherently traumatic his experience that he had with his adoptive parents was overall positive and there are some things that stand out to me when it comes to his option that i think people can learn from so his adoptive parents did not change his name not one part of his name so his name is his name and so i think that does two things right i think on it preserves his identity right which we'll get into in our next episode but two i think that when it comes time to if you choose to look for your family or if your family chooses to look for you you've now eliminated that barrier and when you change your child's name you create a barrier on access to information because the bio family knows them as there their bion name and you've now changed their name and it's as if this person no longer exists and i don't think people think about that i don't don't think people think about the impact that that has other thing that his adopted parents did that i thought was really interesting is that they did not force him to call them mom or dad and i saw a thread on twitter about that this week and it's like why is there this this expectation that i have to call stranger mom and dad and it's such a common expectation it's just like this is what you're supposed to do and like no one ever really questions it but why like you don't walk up to strangers calling them mom and dad like people are going to start looking at you sideways if you start doing that so it's interesting that when it comes to adoption so much of that is stripped away and i think again it feeds into like stripping you of your your identity and also just like this idea of ownership you belong to me now so i'm going to call you what i want to call you and like for get everything that came before you because you need to assimilate into our family and what we have going on and so i think that i thought that was really interesting i have never i've never met anyone like that unto this day i still i've gotten deeper in the adopted community i still haven't met anyone else like that i don't know how common that experience is but to me it's clear that his adopted parents had him in mind when they made those decisions and i think more adopted parents need to think like that

Tosha:
and that is very interesting for having this during black history month because now that reminds me of slavery and all of that erasing of your past and the continuance of that so erasing your name you can't your family can't find you you kind of lose your heritage lose whatever was going on case in point my mother right now is trying to trace her line and figure out family history and i'm like that's great for you that's not my blood line mine was taken from me i took it i mean part of the process to take it so kudos to his for keeping the name and all of that i do have a question though as far as calling you know the parents mom and dad was that a was he adopted later because i was adopted as a baby so it was natural for me to call them mom and dad

Lia:
yeah certainly that makes sense he was adopted when he was twelve so

Tosha:
okay

Lia:
i think that's also like part of it i wish

Tosha:
yep

Lia:
that it was like more of a standard but yeah i think like if you're a baby and that's really all you kind of know then like yeah it makes sense why you would gravitate towards that but i think for folks who are adopted later i mean even at like four or five you you have recollection of that and so i think

Tosha:
absolutely

Lia:
it's it's like getting i think tish mentioned this on a earlier episode it's like getting a dog and like the dog being called one thing somebody giving the dog up to the shelter somebody else going in adopting that dog and then calling the dog something else like you're going to be looking at that person sideways so if we have if people have that level of empathy and understanding for an animal why do we i have that for human beings i don't get it i really don't

Tosha:
i think we know where some of that comes from it's wanting the child to be theirs and the erasing of the past is definitely a hundred percent intentional

Lia:
yeah

Noelle:
that makes

Lia:
go ahead

Noelle:
i was just going to say that that makes me think both Tosha's comments about slavery this sense that there's ownership over the bodies and lives of these children that you know i think honestly my family wanted to erase my blackness if they could have figured out how to do that physically i think they would have done it they did not want a black child they wanted their baby

Lia:
yeah and i think even with same race adopts like they still wanted they wanted their own you know so many so many families adopt then end up continuing to try for a biological child because ultimately that's what they wanted like we were never in most cases never a part of the original plan right like such and such happened and then we turned to adoption and like again what does that do to a child's mind when you know that you were a second or third option you were not what they originally wanted i think certainly messes with your self esteem and the forming of your identity and and things like that ah i was to say um i think a lot of times when it comes to children and not just within the context of adoption i think children in general there are a lot of adults who think that children are not their own person they're an extension of themselves so therefore they don't give children the autonomy that they need and deserve children are people too but i think people just get on these power trips where they just want to be in control in all of that and you forget that like this is a person and not only as is a person this is a person that is going to grow up and then you wonder why your kids are estranged you what did you think about what that relationship was like with them when they were growing up and how you parented them and how you treated them and how you talked to them and so i think adoption adds another layer to that i know for me like i always felt like my parents basically thought that because they provided a roof over my head and i got an education you know i had clothes on my back and i had food to eat that i was fine when in fact i was not fine like i was suffering inside because of the lot of the choices that they chose to make and they weren't thinking about me they were thinking about their their best interest um and i think i think that comes up a lot more than folks are willing to admit that children are their there they own they are their own individual person and deserve to be treated as such they are not an extension of you

Noelle:
so when we talk about chattel speaking of black history month when we talk about chattel slavery we understand that these were people who had absolutely no rights and were owned by other people chattel slavery the housewife there's a author maria mis who talks about housewifery as being another form of hattleownership the wife being owned children or chattel there still chattel they have no rights they they have no etonomy as Lias saying and and their chattel they are owned and that's all children so when you think about bartering and buying i know people think that we're really severe when we say that children are being paid for but that that's exactly what's happening children are cattle they have no rights under the law whatsoever

Lia:
um m i'm trying to close this out here i'm just trying to think um so if you had to to sum up and maybe a couple of sentences your experience as it relates to blackness and adoption or your experience as being able adopt how would you go about summing that up

Tosha:
i'll go so i would sum up my experience of being a black adopted a journey um and i think there was just added layers of trying to figure out seeing different levels of what blackness is and trying to figure out what that meant for me i had one idea when i was younger going to h b c will totally change you can get radical so many things going to happen but over all my experience of being a black adopted has been very eye opening as far as how the black family looks at family perseverance and looks at black flames as a whole and how we can you know have some internal racism and things of that nature so being a black adopted it has his challenges just like being a black american in america

Noelle:
nicely said Tosha i would have to say that i am so happy that i spent three years in memphis tennessee it's a majority black city i got to meet black people of all shapes sizes is classes hues the whole nine and it really gave me back something that i had lost and i knew as a child it was missing cool so i would just have to say that journey is a really nice way to talk about it Tosha getting back to myself being able to reclaim this piece of myself thank you to the black people who have had patience and tolerance with me as i've gone on this journey but i have been able to reclaim my blackness and i'm not giving it up for anything

Lia:
yeah it reminds me of maxine reclaiming my time reclaiming my time um if i had to to sum up you know blackness as it relates to adoption or being in black adopted i think what comes up for me is this constant state of otherness and having to work through that and figuring out who the hell i am i think aTosha again summed it up beautifully by saying it's a journey um i think like anything in life it takes time and so i think i've moved out of the state of constantly feeling like i'm othere and moved into the state of accepting my black and being proud to be a black woman and not wanting to be any other way or exist any other way in this life i think that's what i think about when i think about being a black adopted yeah