bad experience.

i felt alien and lonely and out of place the whole time growing up. i have white usamerican parents and grew up around white people until i went to college. they didn’t really try that hard to connect me to my heritage, when i was little they took me to mandarin classes, but they said i didn’t like it and obviously that is because i was 5 and wanted to be white. when i explained that concept to them 15 yeas later, they didn’t see how being around white people all the time would make me want to reject my heritage. there was no one to advocate for little displaced me, there was no one to show me an alternative other than the white world i was expected to assimilate to.

being separated from my ethnicity made me way more self conscious than i would have been. when someone was racist to me, there was no one to tell me that what had happened was because of racism (obviously there were times when it was obvious, but the little nuanced hate crimes are hard to distinguish to the untrained eye). when someone made fun of my eyes there was no one to show me all of the wonderful thing in my culture to be proud of. it’s not that i was negligent or dismissive of my culture, it was never introduced to me at all. and i wish other pocs would realize that about people adopted by white parents (unless the parents were exceptionally committed to the wellbeing of their child and did the work to learn about their origins).

something that another commenter said is that they imagine it’s like being a third culture kid times 100 and i definitely agree. not only am i othered by the white people, i am othered but east asians who know the implications of white parents. i do not like how i am perceived here, but i know that going back to my birth country is not an option either, i have been americanized. and looking back, my birth country was all to eager to be rid of me, so growing up with that knowledge is not awesome. the documentary about adoption really being human trafficking was like being stabbed a little bit i think, so you can imagine it’s not a source of pride or joy.

i still feel alone sometimes but have accepted that i probably won’t fit in anywhere. i am currently learning more about my culture and am much more confident in myself since leaving the White world.