But your situation is different than my situation.
I’m not Korean. It isn’t that I’m ignoring my Koreaness, I just don’t have any.
So your son can say “yep, I’m adopted, and yep, I’m Hispanic. And my mom is Hispanic. But Hispanic culture has never been a big deal in our family.” Because he’s had the experience of growing up in a Hispanic family, he isn’t likely to romanticize what it would be like if he’d been raised in a Hispanic family.
My son will say “yep, I’m adopted, and yep, I’m Korean. But my parents are white people.” And hopefully he won’t say “and because they are white people they’ve never been able to understand me and they never bothered to teach me about where I came from. Had I grown up in a Korean family, I’d know about Chusok and be able to make Bulgogi” (ignoring that many Korean American families don’t celebrate Korean holidays or cook Korean food). Instead he’ll say “but that’s OK, my parents made an effort to respect my heritage (although I didn’t always appreciate it at the time).”
On the other hand, people always know they’re adopted, so that can save them from some stupid comments made by people who think no one is in the room who’ll object, or just general stupid comments. My (same race adopted) sister and I used to be regularly told that we look exactly alike - we think we look nothing alike. Then there’s the perennial family tree school assignment. I’m not saying you don’t have a point, just that there’s pluses and minuses.
To cover the relatives not accepting a different race child, just because you’re the same race doesn’t mean the relatives will accept the adopted child. My grandparents were apparently not very happy at first about having an adoption in the family, but my parents made sure that they treated us the same. I had no idea of this until adulthood, probably because the grandparents came to love her.
I am a person with nieces and nephews(and friends) of mixed color, and yes, I think they should know about their cultures,but not be called a different race, as if they were not as good because they are different. No one need be ashamed of their back ground. (I am referring to a child who is totaly innocent). They should be taught that :no matter their color, size, shape of eyes nose etc. they are still worthy human beings and that they have a culture to take pride in. They need to know that predudice is a form of ignorance, and they will run into such things. That doesn’t dimminish them but the person that is predudiced.
Monavis
Yep. What she said. [minor hijack] I’ve got a photo around of the kids, age…hmm.3 and 1.5? all dressed up in their Han Boks, about to be taken to Chusok Festival in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. ( Where the World’s Fair was ). It seems to me that the appropriate way to make Bulgogi is to gather the ingredients, make the marinade and then immerse the meat in the marinade…seven days before you plan to cook it. Otherwise, it won’t be quite garlicky enough. ( What are your feelings on Kalbe? [/minor hijack]
I actually can’t stand Korean food. Makes me wish I’d adopted from India or Thailand - just for the cuisine.
I make bulgogi every few years and we try to eat at a Korean restaurant once a year. Mandu is good, and we can all stomach bulgogi and kalbi. But my son is growing up on pad thai. (He seems to like Korean food ok, but prefers Thai).
And this would be the first year of Korean camp - but we booked a vacation that week - he really really wants to go camping. And my son is one of those kids who wishes we’d ignore him being Korean. Skipping the camping trip he’s been begging for for two years for Korean camp is a good way to turn him off on the culture thing. He owns a hanbok, but won’t wear one since he got old enough to dress himself (his blue eyed sister on the other hand, will wear hers).
We are big on giving opportunities, but letting them make their choices.
I gotta respect that. Both kids deeply look forward to the camp experience for 4 or 5 days each summer.
As for the food and culture stuff, we don’t do much either. It is theirs to explore, and ours to support that exploration. Ramming it down their throats would be anathema.
The boy who flew over with my son detests being Korean right now. He has refused to attend camp for the last few years and his mom wisely has allowed him his choice. I didn’t mean to make it sound so dogmatic, I hope it didn’t appear as such.
The OP is white; the vast majority of adoptive parents of children of different races are white. Certainly, anyone can have ingrained ideas about race, but since this is a thread about white adopters I wrote from that. However, considering that some black people had a similar reaction to the experiment (difficulty associating black with good and white with bad) I think it’s fairly naive to assume that all races have an equal share of blame for racism. In this society, white people write the rules and we need to face up to and take responsibility for that, not just bury it under the “but everyone is racist!” nonsense and pretend that we don’t have a special part to play. But maybe that wasn’t what you meant.
