Jen’s Experiences with Name Calling
“Adopted: The New American Family” follows Jen, an adult Korean adoptee, as she confronts issues of race and identity. In the video clip below, Jen has frank discussions with her parents about being teased as a child because of her race. Watch the video and tell us about your experiences with your child’s racial identity. Or if you’re an adoptee, let us know what it was like to grow up confronting racism and how you discussed your feelings with your parents.
Hm, I can relate to the stigmas which I’d like to consider as a “norm” for ethnic minority adoptees growing up.
However, what is critical is how we as adoptees deal with the everyday and often chronic negative encounters that are present in our early lives.
I found, from my experiences that most of the negativity I encountered began in Elementary School and exponentially grew in High School.
Through these times, other kids of the majority (I sincerely despise using words such as race, minority, etc.) would often gang up in groups to assault me, both verbally and sometimes physically.
Rarely if ever did things resolve via a simple exchange of words. If the racism you encounter is not directly treated, like most wounds and injuries as an example, they will fester and eventually worsen.
To keep this comment bar as short as possible, I feel that one of the strongest ways of confronting this frequently occurring problem in most schools is to inform the administrative branch (principal, school counselor, etc.) IMMEDIATELY and your parents.
Inform your parents of the trauma you are experiencing from your peers and that you had reported this activity to the administration. Don’t be afraid of people calling you the “tattle-tale, etc.” In the long run, it will benefit you and also teach your harassers a well-deserved lesson.
The school administration most likely will take immediate action, however preemptive it might seem. Again, this might also reassess the concept that you are not alone and that there are people who will ALWAYS back you up no matter what.
To the adoptees who are undergoing this currently: Don’t ever let ANYONE make you feel inferior. Trust, me I used to be a fragile kid.
But remember this:
Out of a speck of dust which represents all of the small-minded people in the world, the REST of the ENTIRE world is understanding, embracing, and if anything accepting of you.
-Tommy
i have just watched jen’s video and it made my cry. i have an adopted chinese daughter who is 8 years old and is experiencing the chinky, fingers to eyes going into slits etc at her school. Her behaviour has been dreadful in the home, but she told no-one. It has all come about now and the right people have been informed, hopefully this might stop. She is now saying no-one likes me because i am chinese. She doesn’t really understand her feelings at the moment but she is definately a very popular member of her class. I will be there for her and protect her as much as i can. On the other hand her adopted chinese sister who is 5 half reacts in completely the opposite way and just roars with laughter at this!!! one is not bothered one is very bothered.
Jen’s video made me cry because I had same experiences than her 30 years ago. Daily, kids were saying “Chinese!Chinese!” or “Chineses are dirty!”, “she has yellow skin”. Not knowing the word “chinese”, I though that kids were laughing at me, not at a race. A year after my arrivail (I was 9 when I was adopted), I hated my yellow skin and my chinese eyes. White parents can’t understand anything about what their coloured kids are going through. I cried alot at the begining but I have stopped talking about it after few weeks when I realized that my a-parents couldn’t understand me. It was better laugh and pretend that I was OK than cry. For them, there was no problem, saying things such: “we could have adopt a black kid but we prefer to adopt a korean girl because black girl would have suffer too much of racism, more than you at the beginning.” or “I don’t see that your eyes are different than mines”. And how about the teachers and adults at school? They didn’t do anything to help me. After being threatened by teenagers (very tall compare to me) in a street for my slant eyes, I have stopped going out completely but I have never talked about it to my a-parents. At high school, it was better because I was in a private school for girls only.
That was about 30 years ago and I still hate my “chinese face” but sometime, I forget that I am asian. When my white parents adopting me, I wonder why they didn’t give me a white body before assimilating me. They changed my inside completely white but they didn’t make any effort to change my yellow outside. I hope that someday, interracial and international adoption will become a crime. Maybe the best way for the international adoption to stop is to send white kids to “yellow” or “black” parents for adoption to make white people realize that Int adoption is wrong.
I just finished watching Jens clip and have to say she is the most wonderful person I have every met. I have known her since the day she came into her adopted family as she is my cousin and one of the best friends I could have. I am currently living in Maine when will the movie be released in this area so I can see it.
Thank you so much for making this movie I think it is such a wonderful thing to make people more knowledgable how everyone is the same and even when they are adopted they are loved as much as anyone in the family.
It is a bit surreal to read comments about an emotional dialogue I had with my father for the first time…on video..yikes.
Yes, I am Jen from the video clip and this documentary is following my family as we discuss race for the very first time in my life. Culture is always the safe haven, as I come from a place with a different culture…however, like all inter-racial, international adoptees, my culture is the SAME as my parents, as they constructed it for me. What is DIFFERENT is race. America does not like to talk about race. We are the most racially diverse country, known for our American Dream of hope and opportunity for all. However, we have socially constructed and institutionalized within our culture a caste system, based on race. This is the unspeakable…because it contradicts all that is said to be “American.”
Are you ready for this conversation? Inter-racial adoption is only one facet.
I am so interested in examining this further. I have the luxury of seeing different angles while being a stakeholder in more than one perspective. I know my privilege of being part of the dominant culture (although disguised by my race). I know what happens when my White parents and White family leaves and I am alone…seen not like they are seen when alone, but categorized and stereotyped.
I write on this blog to entice others to challenge their way of thinking…and mine. I’m curious.
Today, I read a letter by someone who described me within my family as the “adopted” daughter. Why do you think that stung so hard?
I am not an adopted asian american, but an immigrant and now an American citizen and I believe she may be pointing the finger at the wrong thing: overseas adoption. I faced the same racism because I was different. I’m sure people of ethnic minorites go through the same thing. Everyone, including my caucasian friends get teased–them for being poor, me for being different. I had a double standard growing up. My conservative parents who expected me to abide by their foreign rules and retain our culture where women were inferior to men and while America wanted me to assimalite. I was disconnected towards my parents. In our culture, there is no words exchanged unless it was important. Like, make sure you pay your bills today. They didn’t ask me if I got teased at school. I was told to brush it off. I mean, what could they do? My dad told me, it’s just words, where we come from, they kill you for being different. How could I complain to that? I don’t want to get buried in a foreign land. I wouldn’t mind visting but America is my home now and forever.
I am so grateful to Jen for being so open about her experiences! My husband and I are in the process of adopting a child from Korea and she has opened my eyes to a very big part of our child’s life that we are completely inadequate to prepare them for. She is absolutely correct in her statement above that we do not like to talk about race. It is an ugly and sickening thing to think about but I now see it as my responsibility as a parent to learn and speak directly to it with my child. Jen, I hope you get to read this because I want you to know that you have inspired my husband and I as we begin the adoption journey in our own family. What you have revealed in that clip is bigger than just a movie. You have changed us as parents so that hopefully we can equip our child for their unique challenges. God bless you!
I was one of those kids that tried to hold it in, when I could no longer I told my parents. I got the old line, “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” But they did hurt. When I tried saying it, the teasing got worse and worse. The adults wouldn’t believe me and the children didn’t relent.
It got it from African Americans *and* whites. People say racism can only come from the privileged class, but in my case it didn’t matter.
What do you do when your parents don’t believe you no matter what you say? What do you do when you hear your parents say, “It was just a little teasing” through their dressing room door? What do you do when your mother refuses the existence of her child being teased and chronically “forgets” that her child is being hurt every day with teasing? What do you do when you’re five and don’t understand racism, when you personal pride in your identity is crushed on a daily basis?
What would you do when the teachers see you getting teased, but won’t step in and sometimes side with the other kids? What would you do when you speak out you are trampled by 10 naysayers? What would you do when a teacher *joins* in the teasing and it’s so traumatizing that you *can’t* tell your parents because for years already they won’t listen to you? They dispute your every word?
Immigrating to this country of your parent’s will is one thing, but it’s yet another to feel like you are something else on the inside, have it renounced on a daily basis and have it reaffirmed at home. It’s different when your parents are of a class that has the privileged and they don’t experience the same kind of identity issues and crises and be teased. But I was immigrated without choice. I wasn’t old enough to make that choice. For adoptees its an identity crisis of great magnitude.
For me what I did was go from a shy extreme extrovert to an introvert that showed signs of trauma. I barely spoke at all. I started to not listen to adults, especially when they yelled at me, even if it was calling me for dinner, I started to tune people out and live in my own world. My parents were convinced that I had ADD, but all those years of not listening to me, I hadn’t been listening back. All those years of holding it inside and thinking I was ugly because what was said in the home was not said out of the home built up. I lived inside of myself and flinched, expecting attack.
The real change came when they switched schools for me on the ADD specialists’ suggestion. He said I needed “personal” attention and didn’t have ADD, but for them it was easier to ignore the truth. At the new school, I was teased and picked on again, but the difference was that adults stepped in like my parents never did, which shocked me and allowed me to grow into myself. If not for that, I don’t know what kind of person I’d have ended up as… not trusting authority, adults, and ultimately myself. The lesson from this is that the first words out of a AP’s mouth should be, “I believe you.” Because those are the words I long to still hear. I know one AP that moved *for* her kids because of the racial issues. I see her as awesome. She listened and did something about it.
Jen you rock! You are a beautiful person… I hated the way I looked when I was a kid also. The jet black hair that glistened in the hot August sun. referred to my jaundice skin…even though I am tan. I thought about platic surgery or wished I was bigger or taller so I could fit in. Now with my own kids… I see how beautiful we all are as people and no longer races.
I remembered one time where a person called our house and got directions on how to reach us. When he drove up I greeted him and he asked if he was at the right place and if I knew hoe to get to my fathers house. I told him that he was at the right location and he was a bit taken back. He then told me that he spoke to my fathers son on the phone and when I told him that I was his son he seemed confused… he was expecting a caucasian boy instead a skinny Korean kid.
Later in my adult life a woman was rude to me when I worked a video rental store in Austin Minnesota. She comment on my accent… and asked me to speak clearly to her. I came to the US when I was four and recieved all my education in the United States and at the time I was attending a community college. These tiny shards of painful memories get lodged in our hearts and the pain surfaces from time to time. I remamber all those times like it was yesterday. I use them to become a better person and will share them with my own children as they learn how to cope as they too grow up.
Parents of adopted children: speak to the teachers (seperately) so that this behavior is not tolerated! Learn to listen to your child and do not offer goofy comments like “call the other kid names in return”… gee fight fire with fire… you need to read books, learn about some things they may face and let them come to you for advice.
Jayme-