Race and ethnicity

Oct. 3, 2012

Reading about yin and yang reminds me of the balance I need to find in my own life. Becoming a mother threw all of my roles out of balance — wife, sister, friend, professional. But the biggest challenge is internal. It’s a lack of balance between my small self and my big self, my emotions and thoughts, my inner child and outer adult. Some days I feel I know neither who I am, nor who I really want to be.

I looked up Richard Lee, and I searched the library online to find a handful of his research papers. So far, the most informative is a 2003 article from the journal The Counseling Psychologist, “The Transracial Adoption Paradox: History, Research, and Counseling Implications of Cultural Socialization.” It is 35 pages, and I’ve only gotten a third the way through it.

“Cultural Socialization in Families with International Adopted Children” (Journal of Family Psychology, 2006, Vo. 20, No. 4) was also interesting and helped me answer a question someone posed Sunday. I can’t remember her exact phrasing, but she essentially asked why I am still interested in Taiwan. The question surprised me. I think I said something about how I wanted to learn about the country of my birth. But it got me thinking, why do I care about it?

A few statements in Lee’s second article grabbed my attention:

1) “McRoy and Zurcher (1983 … observed that White adoptive parents of African American children who were color-blind (i.e. did not perceive racial differences and racism as salient issues) were less likely to live in racially integrated neighborhoods and to make an effort at teaching their adopted child about what it means to grow up as Black in the United States.”

2) “Enculturation refers to both the belief in and practice of promoting ethnicity-specific experiences that encourage the development of a positive ethnic identity, which has been found to serve as a protective factor against racism and discrimination (R. M. Lee, 2005).

3) “… racialization refers to both the belief in and practice of promoting race-specific experiences that help children develop coping skills to protect them from racism and discrimination (Crocker & Major, 1989.)”

The impact of growing up without a positive ethnic or racial identity lingers. It seems quite obvious to see that on paper, and yet I don’t think I grasped until now how learning about the country and culture of my race helps overcome my own negativity toward it. It’s hard to acknowledge the negativity I have felt, off and on — it’s a reminder of racism I’ve personally experienced, and I feel ashamed of my own prejudice. Knowledge of Taiwan is knowledge of myself. Pride in Taiwan is pride in myself.