Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race: Korean Adoptees in America

Chapter 2: Historicizing Korean Adoption

CHAPTER 2 Historicizing Korean Adoption Before turning to the interviews, we believe it is important to situate Korean adoption within the context of U.S. race relations. The history of the practice coincides with momentous social, political, and cultural changes in the United States that have had significant bearing on the lives of Korean adoptees. The first wave, those who came in the 1950s and 1960s, joined their families as the civil rights movement was gaining momentum. The evening news was dominated by accounts of protest marches, unrest, and legal action contesting the prevailing racial order. At the same time, adoptees were influenced by popular television shows that idealized white, middle-class, and suburban family life, such as Leave It to Beaver, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and The Donna Reed Show. In short, the pioneer generation of Korean adoptees came of age at a turning point in this country’s racial history. They, more than any other adoptee cohort, were subject to mixed messages concerning race, assimilation, and identity. In contrast , contemporary Korean adoption occurs within a period of race relations characterized by a contested but institutionalized belief in the value of multiculturalism (Shiao 2005). Adoptees coming of age today are encouraged to pursue cultural exploration and to embrace their multiple identities. Unlike earlier generations, young adoptees today may avail themselves of social and material resources such as support groups (online as well as in person), heritage camps, motherland tours, and consumer items (food, books, dolls, clothing). Similarly, HISTORICIZING KOREAN ADOPTION 21 adoptive parents have abundant resources for emotional and practical support. Advice and fellowship are available twenty-four hours a day and at the tap of a keyboard. One of the main points we make in this chapter is simply that racial history matters in the study of Korean adoption. Not only does the experience of growing up a Korean adoptee vary depending on the historic period when the adoptee arrived, but the ways in which white parents relate to the differences (adoptive, cultural, racial) embodied by their children and their reasons for adopting from Korea have shifted over time. While the earliest families were motivated by humanitarianism as well as by a desire to raise children, contemporary couples, and now even individuals, are more likely to be motivated by the latter reason. Today many couples delay having children to pursue careers, there is less secrecy surrounding infertility and adoption, and single-parent families have become much less stigmatized; all these changes have made adoption, whether domestic or international, an attractive and socially acceptable choice (Carp 2000, 2002). In this chapter, we historicize the rise and institutionalization of Korean adoption in the United States. The first section introduces Harry and Bertha Holt, the Oregon couple responsible for popularizing the practice. We frame the national embrace of the Holts in the context of the broader international and domestic struggles of the time. The second section contrasts the rise of Korean adoption with the controversies that emerged over black-white adoption . Importantly, this section looks specifically at how and why the two practices have been juxtaposed, both explicitly and implicitly. The third section explores the impact of these historical forces on our respondents’ families and their adoption decisions. We focus on why their parents chose to adopt Korean children and whether they ever considered adopting an African American child. THE HOLTS MAKE HISTORY In 1955 Harry and Bertha Holt transformed U.S. adoption practices by adopting eight Korean children orphaned by the Korean War. Three years of military conflict between the Communist North and the democratic South had left “hundreds of thousands of lost, abandoned, neglected, and orphaned children both in the North and South whose needs for care and support were unmet” (D. S. Kim 2007, 5).1 Added to the numbers of children in need of loving homes were the mixed-race children of Korean women and U.S. and European military personnel, who were ostracized in their birth country. Upon learning of these children’s plight, the Holts, a white, evangelical Christian couple from Oregon with six biological children, felt “called by the Lord” to open their hearts and home (Holt 1995). In the process, the couple made history. Although they were not the first to adopt foreign-born children, the Holts received unprecedented media attention. From small-town evening gazettes to the New York Times, their actions were greeted...