19 years ago, a 19 year old Hispanic woman named Sasha realized she was pregnant for the second time. Her first pregnancy, two years earlier, had already caused tension in her family and she was even disowned by some of her relatives. When her parents found out about the second pregnancy, she was kicked out of the house and told to put the baby up for adoption. While this was happening, a Caucasian couple from Kalona, Iowa had been trying get pregnant with no success.
Through family and friend connections, a plan was set in place for the Caucasian couple to adopt the Sasha’s baby. Sasha’s mother was not happy about this. A Hispanic child should be raised by Hispanic parents. Some of the adoptive parents’ relatives were not happy either. White …show more content…
Since then, they have maintained their opinion on the issue. According to the NABSW in their latest position paper written in 2013, transracially adopted children are “disengaged from their cultural background [and] . . . denied the opportunity for optimal development and functioning” (Preserving Families of African Ancestry 4). Although this is true in some cases, there are many things adoptive parents can do to teach their children about their cultural and racial background and help them develop a racial …show more content…
That doesn’t mean there aren’t things I wish had been different. For the majority of my life, I lived in the primarily white town of Kalona, Iowa. Even though I always knew I was Hispanic, I wasn’t until high school that I truly realized what being Hispanic meant.
As I started college, I began to question my identity. Can I really call myself Hispanic if I didn’t grow up in that culture, I look “white,” and I don’t speak Spanish? I began to slightly resent my parents and even my birth mom for not giving me to a Hispanic family. But I realized that it’s not my parents fault. When I was adopted, my parents didn’t know many other people how had adopted transracially and they couldn’t get much help on the internet as it wasn’t as prevalent during that time as it is today.
Even though transracial adoption is becoming more of a norm in the United States, there is still a lack of resources for parents who choose to adopt transracially. In order to combat this problem, there should be free classes offered to adoptive parents in order to teach them the things written about in this paper. It is important for transracial adoption to be a positive experience for both the adoptive parent and the adoptee. Not only is this an important issue to those who are a part of a transracial adoption or those thinking about adoption, but I also believe that transracial adoption is one small, but important step in our