JC
I caught a quick profile of Toby Dawson on TV the other day (sorry — I was out of town and don’t remember what I was watching — I think it was a local news show). He will be representing for the US Ski Team in the Winter Olympics. He talked a little bit about his experience growing up in Colorado being one of few Asians. He was adopted by his white parents at the age of three from South Korea.

If you want to read more on Toby, here’s an older article I found from the Washington Post.

To this day, Toby Dawson said, he isn’t sure whether his discomfort grew out of others’ perceptions or whether his perceptions grew out of his own discomfort. Hoping to smooth over such confusion and frustration, the Dawsons had tried to be open with their sons about their backgrounds, immersing them in not one, but two cultures, as they grew up.

“We told them, ‘Don’t forget your roots,’ ” Mike Dawson said. “You have two roots: here and in Korea.”

The family traveled occasionally to a Korean market in Denver, loading up on foods their sons devoured: kimchee, noodles, seaweed, anything spicy. They attended gatherings of Korean children through their adoption agency and even threw Toby an all-Korean birthday party when he turned 7. The Dawsons told their sons as much as they knew about their pasts, showing them documents and photos.

Toby, however, generally wriggled out of such conversations.

“K.C. always wanted to be told about his adoption,” Deborah Dawson said. “Toby always would say, ‘Mommy, can we be done now?’ ”

In recent years, Toby Dawson has made a number of trips to South Korea and, he said, he has begun to embrace the very things he used to rebuff. He said he has studied the language a little, and hopes to become fluent someday. He is a counselor at the Korean Heritage Camp for Adoptive Families, eager to ease the transitions of kids facing the same issues he did.

The show I was watching mentioned that Toby has some people helping him to find his birth parents. He has asked that they wait to tell him about any findings until after the Olympics comes to a close.