CVK
(Thanks to Tomoko and Philip for the tip!) The New York Times published a very thoughtful article profiling several first-generation Chinese-born girls adopted by white American families. But blog Twice the Rice expressed dismay at a quote from one of the white mothers interviewed in the story:

“With an African-American child we had no guarantee that the mother or a social worker wouldn’t come and take the child away,” McKenzie’s mother, Maree Forbes, said. “With the children from China, we felt safe that there wouldn’t be anyone to come back to get them.”

Ji-in bristles at the implication that Chinese babies are all unwanted. I would definitely recommend you read her post in its entirety because she talks about her personal experiences as an adoptee and they really illustrate why this myth that Asian (particularly Chinese) babies are “neatly severed, authorized, safe, emotionally sanitized and packaged for adoption” is so wrong. And of course, how painful it is for adoptees to hear the implication that essentially, they were completely unwanted by their birth mothers or birth country:

Who is safe? Why is choosing international vs. domestic adoption about feeling safe? Is that what they tell their adopted children? We wanted you. We chose you. Because if we had chosen an American child, we might not have been able to keep him. But not you. You were safe. Because nobody would want you back…

White privilege, class privilege blinds adoptive parents like Forbes to the point where they reject that the child had a history, a birthright, and a life before they signed on the dotted line. Is there anything more elitist? More selfish?…

Inevitably, as adoptees speaking out about our experiences, we’ll have to field defensive white adoptive parents thrusting the question back in our faces, “Would you prefer it if we left the children to rot in an orphanage? Would it be better if they (you) hadn’t been adopted at all?” But in my eyes, shifting the focus to dirty orphanages and an alternate future of neglect is nothing but a kind of red herring thrown out in a desperate attempt to deny responsibility for rewriting a child’s identity. To invalidate our experiences as transracial, transcultural adoptees. To silence our voices.