Understanding Race & Racial Identity

Transracial Adoption and Fostering: Understanding Race & Racial Identity

Are you a transracial adoptive or foster parent? Have you wondered how you can help your child form a healthy racial identity. Does racial identity formation change depending on the race of the child? Today we talk about understanding race and racial identity with Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels, a professor at the University of Chicago and Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. She is a transracial adoptee and co-author of the book Multiracial Cultural Attunement.

In this episode, we cover:

How do children in the US come to understand race at different ages and developmental stages?
How early do children develop a racial bias? How early do children associate certain characteristics to race and show a preference towards a person of a certain race?
How does transracial adoption or fostering or kinship care impact a child’s understanding of race?
How does transracial or transcultural adoption or fostering or kinship care impact children? “Transracial or transcultural adoption or fostering or kinship care can impact children in a number of ways, including how the develop a racial identity and learn to handle racism.”
- Racial identity formation: How does being adopted transracially impact the adoptee’s racial identity formation?
- Coping with racism
In your research and in your experience, do you see a difference in the experience of race is perceived by both transracial adoptees or adoptive or foster parents depending on the race of the child? Asian, Latinx, Black, Bi-racial?
Why is taking the colorblind approach to parenting not helpful?
“It’s About More Than Hair”
Transracial parenting requires the family to be fluent in “race talk” – socialization is not a conversation, it is a daily, incremental, and developmental family process.
As our kids age, what is it like for our tweens, teens, and young adults to have parents of a different race?
How does transracial adoption or fostering impact siblings in the family who are the same race as the parents?
How does transracial adoption or fostering affect extended family members, such as grandparents and aunts and uncles?
Practical tips for parents raising a child of a different race or ethnicity.

Additional Resources:

Diverse Book Finder
The Brown Bookshelf – highlights Black voices writing for young readers.
The Conscious Kid
Multiracial Cultural Attunement by Gina Miranda Samuels and Kelly Faye Jackson, 2019
Tips for parenting your transracially adopted child by Dr. Gina Samuels
EmbraceRace was founded to create the community and gather the resources they needed (need!) to meet the challenges faced by those raising children in a world where race matters.
Dr. Erin Winkler, Children Are Not Colorblind: How Young Children Learn Race
Hamilton ER, Samek DR, Keyes M, McGue MK, Iacono WG. Identity Development in a Transracial Environment: Racial/Ethnic Minority Adoptees in Minnesota. Adopt Q. 2015;18(3):217-233. doi: 10.1080/10926755.2015.1013593. PMID: 26300622; PMCID: PMC4540225.