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MULTIRACIAL AND ADOPTED ASIANS

 C. N. Le
State University of New York at Albany 
U. S. A.

All Mixed Up?
All Asians Alone or with Other Races
Room to Grow
Much More Than the Sum of the Parts
References
Editor's Note

All Mixed Up?

Multiracial/biracial/mixed-race Asians (those who have at least some Asian ancestry) and Asian Americans adopted from Asia share the commonality of being considered by some in the "conventional" Asian American community as not really being "real" Asian Americans. However, the growing number of multiracial and adopted Asian Americans are beginning to articulate their identity not as limited and fragmented, but as expansive, comprehensive, and inclusive. [paragraph 1]

For the first time, the Census Bureau allowed respondents to identify with more than one "race" in the 2000 census. Therefore, for the first time, we got a picture of how many multiracial Asian Americans there are in the United States.  According to the 2000 census, out of the 281,421,906 people living in the United States, 11,898,828 (4.2% of the total population) identified themselves as Asians, either wholly or partially; 10,242,998 (3.6% of the total population; 86.1% of all Asians) as just Asian; and 1,655,830 (0.6% of the total population; 13.9% of all Asians) as part Asian mixed with one or more other races.  The following table breaks down the other races that Asians identify with:

Table 1
Census 2000 Statistics on Multiracial Asians

(Source: U. S. Bureau of Census, 2000) [paragraph 2]

All Asians Alone or with Other Races

As Table 1 indicates, the largest group of multiracial Asians are half Asian and half White. Historically, many of these mixed-race Asians have been called "Amerasians." This was because the first multiracial Asians to have received notable attention from American society were the children of U.S. military personnel stationed in countries such as Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Viet Nam. After World War II, interracial marriages between mostly White U.S. servicemen and Asian women in these countries became common (Chan, 1991; Chideya, 1999).  [paragraph 3]

As a result, there are tens of thousands of "Amerasians" born to White U.S. servicemen and Asian women and many eventually settled in the United States. In addition, rates of interracial marriage have increased significantly in the last few decades, especially among Asian Americans (Arboleda, 1998; Espiritu, 1996). More recently, mixed-race Asians have been referred to as "Hapa," a Hawaiian term that originally meant half White and half native Hawaiian. Today, Hapa refers to any Asian of mixed-race ancestry.  [paragraph 4]

The Hapa Issues Forum quotes a Congressional Record report which indicates that between 1968 and 1989, children born to parents of different races increased from 1% of total births to 3.4%. Further, as  the statistics above indicate, multiracial Asians constitute 13.9% of all Asian Americans.  As intermarriages involving Asians increase, multiracial Asians are becoming a more prominent group within the Asian American community.  [paragraph 5]

Traditionally, multiracial Asians, like many other multiracial individuals, have been looked upon with curiosity and/or suspicion by the both sides of their ancestry and the rest of society. In the past, the racist "one drop rule" dictated that anyone who even had any trace of non-White ancestry (i.e., a single drop of non-White blood) was "colored" and therefore non-White (Takaki, 1998).  Even today many Whites unfortunately see mixed-race Asians as "half-breeds" and do not consider them to be truly "White."  [paragraph 6]

Many in the "conventional" Asian American community also do not consider Hapas to be truly "Asian" and rather see them as "whitewashed." More politically, many worry that the Asian American community will lose government funding if people who previously identified themselves as solely Asian now identify themselves as multiracial, therefore decreasing the size of the Asian American population (Ancheta, 1998). Intolerance and suspicion can exist on both sides of the identity equation. While things are changing, many Hapas still face distrust and even hostility from both their Asian and non-Asian communities.  [paragraph 7]

Room to Grow

In a similar light, there is an increasing number of those who look "100%" Asian but who also struggle to fit into two different cultures -- Asian Americans who were adopted from Asia and raised by non-Asian parents (usually White). While comprehensive statistics on Asian adoptees are very difficult to find, the most accurate information comes from the U. S. Department of State that keeps track of all immigration visas issued to orphans, which are required for international adoptions.

Table 2
Immigration Visas Issued to Orphans 

(Source: The U. S. Department of State, 2000) [paragraph 8]

As Table 2 indicates, China sent the most numbers of adoptees to the United States in 2000, followed closely by Russia and South Korea a distant third. However, since 1989, South Korea has sent the most adoptees to the United States, followed by Russia and China. Viet Nam, India, Cambodia, and the Philippines have also sent significant numbers of adoptees.  [paragraph 9]

Interestingly, the vast majority of these Asian adoptees are girls. Therein lies one of the criticisms surrounding such Asian adoptions. Many people (not just Asian Americans) feel that centuries of deeply-ingrained patriarchy and discrimination against women caused these Asian countries to continue to systematically value the life of a girl much less than that of a boy (Croll, 2001). Boys are valued more because they can supposedly contribute more labor and have more legal rights.  [paragraph 10]

The result is that when there are too many girls being born, they are too quickly considered "excess property" that needs to be disposed. Many claim this is the reason why so many Asian girls are adopted each year. Of course, this criticism is directed toward the cultural, political, and social systems of the Asian country and not at the little girls themselves or their American adoptive parents. Nonetheless and unfortunately, parents who adopt children from Asian countries still face criticism and hostility from some parts of the Asian American community.  [paragraph 11]

Many Asian Americans seem to feel that non-Asian adoptive parents will "whitewash" these Asian children into White society so that they will quickly and perhaps permanently lose their Asian identity and sense of ancestry. The experiences of many Asian adoptees confirm that because they tended to grow up in an almost all-White environment, they never had to think about their ethnic identity and assumed they were like everyone else until they experienced some form of racial prejudice from schoolmates, strangers, or even relatives of their adopted family (Bishoff and Rankin, 1997; Koh, 1993).  [paragraph 12]

Because their families and parents either could not shield them from this almost inevitable process or could not adequately understand or support their feelings, many of these adopted Asians experienced an "identity crisis." It was becoming clear that they were not White but they had little, if any, connection to their Asian ancestry. To make matters worse, the Asian community often shunned their attempts to connect with their "roots." My personal experience tells me that "conventional" Asian communities often do not accept Asian adoptees and actually make fun of them if they cannot speak their "native" language.  [paragraph 13]

While many Asian adoptees have faced this dilemma, fortunately, this has not been the experience of all Asian adoptees. Many of them have enjoyed extraordinary levels of love and understanding from their non-Asian adoptive parents, who have made concerted efforts to help their adopted children retain their Asian identity by teaching them about Asian history, culture, and sometimes even language. These parents have also sympathized and comforted their children when they have been discriminated against for their racial background. They have also supported their children's attempts to find their birth parents back in Asia.  [paragraph 14]

While many well-meaning parents make sincere efforts at educating their child about his/her Asian roots, they frequently forget to educate the child about Asian American issues. Given that being Asian is not the same as being Asian American, it is just as important for the adopted child to learn about and understand the historical and contemporary issues that Asian Americans face.  Ultimately, these issues will condition the child's social and cultural environment as long as s/he lives in the United States.  [paragraph 15] 

Many support groups have also formed across the country for both adoptive parents of Asian children and for the adopted children themselves. These groups allow parents and children to share experiences, to support each other, and to learn together about both sides of their racial/ethnic identity (Klatzkin, 2001). Ultimately, the fact remains that while the criticisms about the devaluation of girls in Asia ring true, that should not take away from the happiness and love that most Asian adoptees share with their adopted family who have given them a much better life than what they would have had otherwise.  [paragraph 16]

Much More Than the Sum of the Parts

In the end, multiracial and adopted Asian Americans share a unique quality -- the ability to incorporate two cultures into their own identity. As many of them point out, their experiences do not make them half of one culture or another. Instead, their experiences make them double. Rather than being limited and fragmented, their identity becomes expansive and inclusive.  [paragraph 17]

We cannot deny that prejudice and discrimination still exist against multiracial and adopted Asian Americans from both sides of their ancestry. Nonetheless, as we acknowledge the critical need to recognize and understand the rich diversity within the Asian American community in terms of language, history, nationality, and socioeconomic achievements,  we must include the multiple forms of ethnic identity among ourselves. We should look forward to the collective experience of the Asian American community being enriched by the contributions of our multiracial and adopted brothers and sisters for years to come.  [paragraph 18]

References

Ancheta, Angelo N. (1998). Race, rights, and the Asian American experience. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University .

Arboleda, Teja. (1998). In the shadow of race: Growing up as a multiethnic, multicultural and 'multiracial' American. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Bishoff, Tonya and Rankin, Jo. (Eds.). (1997). Seeds from a silent tree: An anthology by Korean adoptees. Glendale, CA: Pandal.

Chan, Sucheng. (1991). Asian Americans: An interpretive history. Boston, MA: Twayne Publishers.

Chideya, Farai. (1999). The color of our future: Our multiracial future. New York: William Morrow & Company.

Croll, Elisabeth. (2001). Endangered daughters: Discrimination and development in Asia. New York: Routledge.

Espiritu, Yen Le. (1996). Asian American women and men: Labor, laws and love. Thousand Oaks, CA: AltaMira.

Klatzkin, Amy. (Ed.). (2001). A Passage to the heart: Writings from families with children from China. St. Paul, MN: Yeong and Yeong. 

Koh, Frances M. (1993). Adopted from Asia: How it feels to grow up in America. Minneapolis, MN: East West.

Takaki, Ronald. (1998). Strangers from a different shore: A history of Asian Americans. San Francisco, CA: Back Bay Books.

U. S. Bureau of Census. (n. d.) Overview of race and Hispanic origin: Census 2000 brief. [Online]. Available: http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-1.pdf [2001, December 10].

U. S. Department of State. (n. d.) Immigrant visas issues to orphans coming the to the U. S.: Top countries of origin. [Online]. Available: http://travel.state.gov/orphan_numbers.html [2001, December 10].

Editor's Note:  This article originally appeared in the website http://www.asian-nation.org/issues9.html. The author revised the original essay for EMME upon our request.  

C. N. Le is completing his Ph. D. in Sociology at the State University of New York at Albany and also working as a Research Associate at the Center for Technology in Government.  (He may be reached at cn_le@usa.net)