Choosing Ethnicity, Negotiating Race: Korean Adoptees in America

Chapter 5: Ethnic Explorations in Later Adulthood

CHAPTER 5 Ethnic Explorations in Later Adulthood Years before, I was in an elevator, and the flight crew from [a] Korean airline got on. And [then] these two white guys got on. And they started talking. They were very rude. All of a sudden, I realized that they thought I couldn’t understand [them] because they figured I was Korean. And I thought, “This is the first time I have ever felt like I was a majority in my whole life.” I just stood there going, “This is the weirdest feeling I’ve ever had in my life.” [laughs] I felt so much like going, “Excuse me! [laughs] I’m as American as the rest of you guys. Knock it off!” [laughs] So, going to the Gathering1 and realizing [again that] I was the majority and that there [were] no rude people there, was the weirdest thing of my life. My husband had encouraged me to go, and I said, “Oh, I don’t know,” you know? But to go and be the majority was just phenomenal. [laughs] I’ve never been, like I said, I’ve always been with [adoptees who were] little kids. [But] to be with people my age! [laughs] —Margaret Houston, forty-three years old In chapter 4, we showed that ethnic exploration occurs not only during adolescence but also in early adulthood, when most Korean adoptees become independent from their adoptive families. If we were to stop our examination there, we might assume that those explorations established adoptees on particular ethnic paths through their later adulthood and into their present circumstances. And yet, cases such as Margaret Houston’s call that assumption into question. Prior to attending the Gathering, Margaret had only a modest interest in ethnic exploration. Although she was initially hesitant to attend, the experience shifted Margaret’s attitude toward learning about her roots and set her on a course for further exploration. By following our respondents into later adulthood, we are able to examine several questions about the continuing salience of ethnicity. To what extent do the non-explorers of early adulthood remain in their culturally and socially white worlds? How long do social exposure explorers remain in the company of non-adopted Asian Americans? How do former cultural heritage explorers continue to balance their cosmopolitan travel experiences and white social worlds? In brief, when do adoptees continue their ethnic explorations into later adulthood, what life events facilitate or inhibit exploration, and what are their ethnic practices, if any, in later adulthood? In this chapter, we examine whether and how adoptees and non-adoptees in our study have explored their ethnicity since early adulthood. Overall, we found that Korean adoptees and non-adopted Asian Americans varied in whether they explored their ethnicity in later adulthood. While seven out of ten non-adoptees pursued exploration, fewer than half of adoptees did so. Part of the difference originates from the smaller fraction of adoptees who had explored in early adulthood; individuals who explored in early adulthood were more likely to continue exploration in later adulthood. Adoptees were also more likely to remain non-explorers or to discontinue exploration after early adulthood. Nevertheless, more than one-third of adoptees who had been nonexplorers after adolescence began exploring their ethnicity during later adulthood , and fully half of adoptees who had been explorers continued to examine their ethnicity in later years. NON-EXPLORATION IN LATER ADULTHOOD Adoptee non-explorers voiced four reasons for not exploring their ethnicity in later adulthood: (1) they felt an aversion to the prospect of ethnic exploration; (2) race, ethnicity, and adoption were no longer salient in their adult lives; (3) they were already immersed in ethnic networks and activities; and (4) they were interested but lacked the opportunity to act on their interest. The early adulthood experiences of the adoptees who cited one of these four reasons reveal how later exploration is channeled by earlier experience. Almost all of those who were averse to ethnic exploration in later adulthood had been 98 CHOOSING ETHNICITY, NEGOTIATING RACE averse in early adulthood. Almost half of those who lacked opportunities for ethnic exploration in later adulthood had also lacked such opportunities in early adulthood. Most of those who were immersed in ethnic networks and activities in later adulthood had been explorers in college settings. We did not find a clear pattern among the earlier experiences of those who perceived race, ethnicity, or adoption...