transracial adoptees and marriage

I’ve been silent for awhile… many sleepless nights and draining days with little children.  I love them intensely and they completely exhaust me.  And I’ve been mesmerized – along with the rest of the world – by the Obamas. Barack, Michelle, Sasha, Malia.  I just finished reading Dreams From My Father.  It was engaging and surprisingly caused me some anxiety.  Much of the book deals with Obama’s need to belong, and the shaping of his identity as a biracial black man.  I related to some of his early experiences: his deep love for the white family that raised him, in spite of some unsettling comments and emotions from his white mother and grandparents over race; his longing for acceptance by blacks and for belonging within a black community; his painful rejection of a black girl when he was a high school student in a predominantly white school.  He also deals with the question – asked by himself and others – of whether he is ‘black enough’.  Raised by his white mother and grandparents, Barack had to figure out his identity as a black man more or less on his own.  How did he do this?  Well, for one thing, his drive and determination, his intense self-examination at a young age are extraordinary.   Obama, of course, is the ultimate success story of a mixed race person coming to terms with the disparate elements of his racial and cultural heritage.   And he made some important choices:  he was a community organizer in a black community; he joined a black church; he married a black woman with deep roots in a black community.  Many people have commented on Obama’s choice of wife.  Would he have the same credibility with blacks if he had married a white woman or even a light-skinned black woman? It doesn’t seem likely.

All of this makes me question my own choices in life.  Why have I not tried harder to fit into various black communities? Would it help me to join a black church (even though I am not very religious)?  Would my longing for some black family have gone away if I’d married a black man? Should I have married a black man? Would that have re/solved my anxieties over belonging, of being a cultural orphan?  Or is even thinking that just an excuse for what I haven’t done personally to resolve these issues?  Was I being naive or in denial when I married a white man?

I should say now that I love my husband dearly and I am not saying I want to leave him – I don’t!  He knows I question everything and doubt myself.  He accepts me and my insecurities and that is one of the things I love about him – that he just accepts me.  Even when I do things that would seem to push him away.   I suppose it is the child in me testing and testing.  But I can’t deny that I have these thoughts from time to time.  When I am feeling calm and clear, I think that no, marrying a black man would not have resolved my longing for birth family, particularly knowledge of my own black ancestors.  Perhaps it would have made me less self-conscious, but I don’t see how I will ever get around, over, through, not knowing where I come from.  When I read about Obama’s trip to Kenya to meet all of his Kenyan relatives for the first time, I felt pangs of envy.  Although Obama grew up without his African father present, he certainly knew his identity and where he came from and had the ability to seek out and get to know his extended family, something he did as a young man.  In fact, getting to know his father’s family, visiting his home in Kenya, seemed to be a turning point in Obama’s life.  He was filling in all those gaps, gathering all those lost pieces.  It grounded him and gave him confidence.  I think he was able to embrace his black and white heritage in a more rounded way.  I want those missing pieces.  I want to know if I have half-siblings, if I look like anybody else in the world, if my birth mother’s family was really Danish, if the blacks in my birth father’s family had been slaves in the Maritimes or migrated here from somewhere else.

Having children is the closest thing to knowing my biological parents I think: I can see myself reflected in my kids, at least partially.  My children – like me – are mixed race and in that way we are alike.  I suspect my birth father was mixed race, perhaps even raised by a white mother.  But since all of our relatives are white, I have to work harder to make sure that we get enough contact and connection with black people and culture.  I do my best, but is it enough?  If I had married a black man would I be worried about this?  Perhaps not.

I often go back to read Harlow’s Monkey on “Being Married to Harlow’s Monkey” – a piece that eloquently summarizes some of the difficulties transracial adoptees have in marriage and why it can be difficult to be married to them (something my husband knows well)!