For decades national conversations around race and related subjects, including racism and white privilege, have been evolving forward in the United States and in many other countries. In the wake of recent social and political developments in numerous societies of late, those discourses have taken on an edge of urgency.

How is it that the United States and numerous other countries have seen a massive surge in the overt expression of and support for racism and for racialized xenophobia? How is it that many nations have seen an explosion in active voting for and activism on behalf of, overtly white nationalist politicians, political parties and movements? After making significant incremental social progress since the advent of Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, the hopeful idea of continuous upward progress around race has seemingly been shattered in the United States and in most Western and developed nations.

Meanwhile, even as leaders of color have gained greater prominence in public dialogues around race, immigration, and identity, one group of individuals has finally seen its collective voice begin to be widely heard—the group of people known as transracial adoptees, the vast majority of whom are individuals of color adopted in infancy or childhood by white people. There are also relatively very small numbers of white individuals adopted by parents of color but, for purposes of this article, we will be referencing only people of color adopted by white parents.

How many transracial adoptees, of all ages, are there in the United States? No precise figure has ever been made available. But, given that there are tens of thousands of transracial adoptions that take place every year in the United States, and given that the largest group of transracial, international adoptees in the U.S.—people adopted from South Korea, generally estimated to be around 150,000—the widely cited figure of at least 700,000 total transracial adoptees of all ages, would be considered by most people to be a reasonable estimate. In any case, there are enough transracial adoptees of all ages to consider the overall group a statistically significant one, even as it is extremely diverse by age, place of origin, race(s), and family situation.

Conceptually, transracial adoptees spent numerous decades in the shadows, with adoption professionals and adoptive parents speaking for their transracially adopted children. But in the past two decades, the voices of adult transracial adoptees have gone public in a big way, with adult transracial adoptees (both domestic and international adoptees) evolving forward an entire literature of their own, from books and film documentaries to blogs, newspaper, magazine, and online articles, videos, and even poetry, visual artwork, rap music, and other forms of music—all of these things being created by adult transracial adoptees themselves. Adult transracial adoptees are also hosting and participating in conferences, and becoming acknowledged as experts not only in their lived experiences, but as experts in the fields of psychology, social work, sociology, anthropology, medicine and health, public policy, and journalism, among other fields, with significant contributions being made that are connected to transracial adoptees’ lived experiences.

Race, racial identity, racism, white privilege, culture, and connections with birth cultures and communities are among the key subjects adult transracial adoptees are speaking out about. And it is in that qualitative arena that adult transracial adoptees are being heard as unique voices. For the most part, adult transracial adoptees in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, grew up in total, near-total, or overwhelming whiteness, in white American culture. At the same time, they experienced racism and social marginalization based on race, as they grew up in white families and white communities. In that respect, adult transracial adoptees have a unique set of experiences.

Unlike their brothers and sisters of color who grew up with parents of color in communities of color, transracial adoptees grew up largely in whiteness, and yet with the lived experiences of discrimination, racism, marginalization, and intolerance. In short, they have lived the experiences of people of color, while ingesting and internalizing the norms and understandings of the dominant white culture.

And what significance does that specific element of the transracial adoptee experience have, with regard to the broad societal discourse around race? It has been said time and again that, for example, white people and Black people in America grow up on opposite sides of an unbridgeable chasm around race. But what of Black and Black/biracial adoptees raised in white families? And what of East and South Asian, Latino, Native American, and other transracial adoptees raised in white families? What kinds of experiences do those adoptees have?

Largely, transracial adoptees experience a kind of “split-screen reality,” with the marginalization, discrimination, and identity struggles of people of color on the one hand, but with the integration into white culture and its norms on the other. And therein lies the contribution. A Black, Native American, Latino, Asian person raised in whiteness can share with white people, in language that they can understand, about what the fundamental experience of non-whiteness is, as a lived experience.

Discourses with Impact

One of the key areas in which adult transracial adoptees have been participating in broad discourses around race in the past decade has been through dialoguing with all members of the transracial adoption constellation, around issues of race—particularly through deliberations with white transracially adoptive parents and with adoption professionals. This conversation has evolved forward through their participation in in-person conferences and online discussion groups, as well as through their participating in the development of books, documentaries, and other forms of literature.

Among the numerous examples of such output have been the books Outsiders Within, Parenting As Adoptees, The Unknown Culture Club, and The Harris Narratives, as well as documentaries including “The Side X Side Project,” “First Person Plural,” “In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee,” and in innumerable blogs, articles, essays and other informational, media, and literary output.

Fundamentally, what are the messages being conveyed? They are both conceptually and ideologically diverse, based on the lived experiences of adult transracial adoptees. But, when it comes to race, they share an important commonality: the ability to frame race in the United States, and other countries, from lenses based on actual experiences as people of color, but with a full understanding of the norms and assumptions of white culture.

What are the implications of all this, for the onward progress of American society’s discourse around race? There are several fundamental ones.

First, there is the opening to shift the frame of the discourse away from the simplistic white/non-white binary. This is extremely important, as that binary frame has strongly limited the potential expansiveness and adaptability to change, of the core racial conversation in the United States and elsewhere.

Second, as that discourse moves forward into greater nuance and complexity, adult transracial adoptees can share their insights around what it’s like to live in a racial-identity complexity. We need that kind of discussion, because until very recently the simplistic, binary nature of our dialogue on race has reigned, Black/white, monoracial/monoracial framings of race, racial identity, and racism have already become outdated in the second decade of the twenty-first century; and yet the public discourse around race has largely been mired in the binary and the simplistic.

The fact is that the future of race in the United States, as well as in virtually every multiracial country in the world, is shifting fundamentally. Multiracial identity is becoming both far more common and, gradually over time, more visible and present. Meanwhile, the diversity of lived experiences of people of color of many backgrounds is finally becoming both more visible and at least somewhat more listened to.

Those of us who are adult transracial adoptees have now spent at least two full decades creating a literature based on our personal experiences, unique and different accounts neither purely POC nor purely white. Isn’t it time for our society to begin to acknowledge and absorb the understandings and perspectives of transracial adoptees, as well as of multiracial individuals (with strong overlap between the two groups)?

The potential exists for a far richer, more nuanced, multi-layered discourse around race in the United States and elsewhere. Change is on the horizon, and it is realizable. One would hope in a decade from now – for the benefit of our entire society - that the robust participation of these groups will have altered that overall discourse in robust and fruitful ways.