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T W O Navigating Racial Routes Elisa: So like when I got to college that’s when it was like such a huge culture shock. It’s like suddenly realizing you’re Black, but not knowing what that meant. Or hav­ ing to interact with other Black people. It was really re­ ally hard. And that’s where a lot of the anger came from, ’cause I suddenly was faced with everything I missed out by being with White people and not knowing who I was or having cultural identity. It’s like even now, as much as I’ve grown it’s something I’ll never be able to get back. And I think, you know, I go back and forth about this. Obviously I’m grateful for them giving me a home. And I’m successful and I wouldn’t be here, most likely if I was bounced around in foster homes. That’s what my mom always says. [inaudible] I definitely believe Black kids should be adopted by Black parents. I mean, there’s just such a huge hole. And there’s just so much—no matter how much I read or learn or study I’ll never get it back. And I just hate that. Sandi: What things were a culture shock to you? Elisa: You know, the way people talk, the way people acted. It’s hard to explain. It’s just like this confidence—I don’t even know if confidence is the right word. . . . Like I’m real shy and reserved, whereas my friends and my boyfriend they just don’t—there’s like an inner strength. I’m missing that I think for a lot of reasons. Culture shock is a term used to describe the bewilderment and distress individuals often experience upon traveling to a foreign land. It occurs when a person’s assumptions and expectations about self, others, and| 62 | Navigating Racial Routes reality fail to provide the information necessary for cultural interaction and survival. Elisa experienced this sort of disorientation on several lev­ els. The assumptions she had learned to make about herself while living in a White family and community were inconsistent with others’ social expectations of her as a Black woman in her new college setting. There was a dissonance between her social expectations—“the way people talk, the way people acted”—and the skills she needed to comfortably inter­ act with the Black community at her college. She felt like a foreigner, an outsider in the cultural group to which she was supposed to belong. This sense of dislocation stemmed from her rather unique social location as the Black child of White parents. Transracial adoption violates what we typically think of as the normal familial channels of socialization and enculturation. What does it mean to have a racial identity? What cultural skills and cognitive maps does a person need to successfully navigate through con­ temporary U.S. society as an African American? How is identity—one’s conception of self—connected to cultural knowledge and social policy? What does Elisa’s sense of culture shock say about the way race is con­ structed in the United States? Culture shock points to the sense of dis­ placement at the heart of transracial adoptees’ identities. Their existence as African Americans in White families disrupts mainstream assumptions about race, family, and identity. Their self­definitions often challenge the way other people classify them with regard to racial identity. Indeed, their sense of self testifies to the hybridity of identity. In this chapter I consider the identities of transracial adoptees in light of the social controversy over this issue: the development of a positive sense of racial identity and the acquisition of survival skills for dealing with racism. However, important as these questions are in considering the effects of adoption and welfare policies in the lives of children, the lives of Black children raised in White families are profoundly significant in broader ways as well. I argue that, though the social locations of tran­ sracial adoptees are somewhat unique, their life stories raise challenging and intriguing questions about how race is structured, how social policy shapes individual identities, the way kinship is socially structured and made meaningful, as well as how individuals—whether adopted or not— construct a meaningful sense of self in a swiftly changing society rife with contradictory prescriptions for self­definition and presentation. I argue| 63 | [3.16.15.149] Project...

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