What Color Am I?

I was adopted from China, ethnically I am Chinese but I was raised “white”. I lived in a “safe neighborhood” and all my neighbors were predominantly white. I went to a “good public school” which was predominately white. To a certain extent I felt like I had white privilege especially if I was with my white parents. Some days I forgot that I was not white while other days it was blatantly clear that I was not white.  Understanding my racial identity was confusing growing up because of the ambiguous position of the transracial adoptee.

 As a person of color with white parents I have experienced gatekeeping from both the white and Asian American community. I was not always accepted as someone who is Asian nor was I always accepted as someone who was American. I didn’t grow up in a Chinese American household so I don't necessarily have a relationship with certain mannerisms and cultural understanding that people associate with “being Chinese or Chinese American.” I didn’t understand or speak Chinese but ethnically and physically I look Chinese.

 Growing up people would sometimes point out that I was not white like my parents. There was a continuous relationship of debt, impostorism and assimilation. They would point out how grateful I should be for being saved from the country that is my motherland. With the continuous redirect of “it was so kind of them to have adopted you”, “you must feel so lucky to be alive”, “ your parents are such angels for doing that”. With those words they placed an invisible debt on my shoulders, the debt of needing to prove my worth as someone given the opportunity to navigate a white reality because remember I’m lucky. After all so often we look at adoption as a thing that can only be good and happy without addressing the trauma, the history and the complex reality of it.

 So often the question of race in transracial adoption is the elephant in the room because remember "it doesn’t matter what you look like you are my child". With the relationship of having upper middle class white parents sometimes people especially people who care about you see your parents whiteness and privilege as extension of me.  There is this concept that my parents' privilege will protect me and erase my Asianness because after all I’m not a “real Asian”. I’ve been told that I'm like a twinkie or like a banana yellow on the outside and white on the inside. I’ve been told that I'm practically white, does that make me white? And yet although I am not a “real Asian” although I'm “practically white” I am still foreign, I am still an imposter. I still remember all those parents telling their child to be nice to me because I'm adopted. The continuous stares and the questioning of the legitimacy of my family.