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.  

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Music Credit: Michael Ashworth

Image Credit: Kindel Media