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45 ◆ chapter 3 ◆ Opening Pandora’s Box Dancing in Between and Nowhere at All Tori: I felt even more out of place and this sense of loss. I don’t fit in with all the White folks that I’ve always known. And then culturally I don’t feel like I fit in with all these Asians that I supposedly blend with physically. And so that left me with a whole lot of nothing. Cathy: I think everybody [Korean adoptees], whether they’ve had an identity crisis or not, [has] had the experience of we look Korean but we’re not of the Korean community, we’re not from a Korean social background. But on the other hand, we are from a White social background, but we’re not White. At some point in their lives the Korean adoptees of this study encountered a racial experience that sent them into a spiral of angst and uncertainty. Underlying this debilitating pain from being called a “gook” or “chink” was the shattering of their sense of reality—that the world is not colorblind. In 1903 W. E. B. DuBois stated that Blacks were constantly compelled to develop and struggle with “second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world” (2004 [1903], 38). The individual develops what DuBois coined the “double consciousness,” where there is “this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (38). Thinking about identity journeys in this way, Korean adoptees are typically compelled to accept and recognize that most of the world perceives them through their Korean racial identity, while generally ignoring their White cultural identity. However, the adoptees are generally not accepted as “authentic ” Koreans/Asians within the Korean, Asian, and Asian American communities because of their culturally White upbringings. This identity confusion is often deemed a “crisis” because it causes a great deal of pain and anger when adoptees’ worldviews are contradicted and destroyed. Having lived within the cultural racism that promoted strict delineations of racial and cultural categories, most were forced to choose 46 ◆ chapter 3 between being White or Korean/Asian; they could not be both. Rosaldo confirms these feelings. Race relations in North America involve a blend of assimilationist efforts, raw prejudice, and cultural containment that revolves around a concerted effort to keep each culture pure and in its place. Members of racial minority groups receive a peculiar message: either join the mainstream or stay in your ghettos, barrios, and reservations, but don’t try to be both mobile and cultural. (1993, 212) Most adoptees succumbed to the pressure to deny their racial and transracial adoptee identities because they wanted to fit in with their families and communities , and because they viewed Korean/Asian culture as abnormal and inferior to White culture. When acts of racial harassment and discrimination forced them to see that assimilation did not always lead to full acceptance, they felt they had been deceived into believing in a colorblind society. Several adoptees, however, did not view these experiences as an identity crisis. This collision was not a negative; rather, it was the spark that sent them on their journeys to discover their unique identities. Instead of using the phrase “identity crisis”—a negative term that implies a destructive time in one’s life—several adoptees called it an “identity awakening.”1 For them, an awakening signified the initiation of understanding their White cultural identity, as well as the beginning of a critical exploration of their racial and transracial adoptee identities. “Oh, My God, I’m Really Korean!” In retrospect, the adoptees realized that their parents had not always lived up to a colorblind philosophy. Specifically, the adoptees saw that when their parents attempted to introduce aspects of Korean culture, they recognized that race does indeed matter. A few adoptees also concluded that most of their parents’ attempts to bring Korean culture into their lives reinforced the attitude that Korean culture is secondary to White culture, is inferior and exotic, is solely for the Korean adoptee, and should be experienced only outside of the home. In other words, even though parents claimed that they did not recognize racial differences, sending the adoptee to Korean culture camp or language school was something done only for and by the adoptee...

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