“In My Heart, I Am Cambodian”: Symbolic Ethnicity among Parents Who Adopt Transracially

Abstract

Research finds that white Americans primarily draw upon ancestral ties to assert symbolic ethnicity, often relying on figurative elements to create identity. Through 47 interviews with 56 white adoptive parents, who attend culture camps, the authors find a new avenue through which whites may exercise their ethnic options: domestic and transnational transracial adoption. Drawing on their experience of parenting transracially adopted children, we find that some adoptive parents claim identification as members of their adopted children’s racial and/or ethnic group. In explaining their newly acquired ethnicity, we identify three discursive strategies deployed by adoptive parents—cultural integration, transformative inclusion, and racial diffusion. While adoption of their child’s racial and/or ethnic group identification may seem unexpected, it allows for the reframing of parents’ identity, creates notions of shared racial experience, and deepens commitment to symbolic elements. These findings have implications for contemporary understandings of white Americans’ symbolic ethnicity.