“Transracial” for the adoption community means someone who is adopted into a different race (so, for example, someone who adopts a Chinese child and they are Cuban). There is the adopted community but the transracial community is a sub-community of this community. They face their own unique challenges.
I am a transracial adoptee. One of the biggest struggles I see in the transracial adoptee community is having their adoptive parents superimpose a different race or culture on the adopted child (and/or attempting to “erase” their “original” culture and heritage). Adopted children often live in a “cultural limbo” type phenomena as it is (not feeling quite connected to their biological family and their heritage and their adoptive family’s culture and belief system).
For me, I am Eastern European, Indian (not indigenous to the Americas), and Middle Eastern (DNA sites say I also have some Sephardic Jew in me). I am Ruska Roma (the Russian tribe of the Romani people). My adopted parents’ would always say “You’re white” while I was growing up. Instinctually, I knew that was not right. But I didn’t even have the slightest idea of what exactly I was until my late teens (I’m in my mid-20s now as of writing this article).
Transracial adoptees often get spoken over by their adoptive families, which is wrong. The voice of the transracial adoptee often gets “lost” when it comes to any discussion regarding culture, heritage, and race. This is wrong. They need to be at the forefront of discussions because of their unique cultural experience in life.
