Baby Janay and Naomi Pabst: Negotiating Race Mixing, Adoption, And Transnationality (Viewpoint Essay)

THIS IS A WORLD OF CONTRASTS, among and between people. It is a world of variation, often in our own backyards. Fittingly, then, my life, like that of many others, unfolds in a vortex of complicated juxtapositions, a veritable mish-mash of identity factors and socio-cultural forces. I am black and white, interracially adopted, and I have geographical affiliations in Canada, Germany, the United States, and other places as well. I have also spent many years studying race and culture. All this has convinced me that it is well worth trying to explain the complexities and the conundrums of this existence of mine, with hopes of increasing people's level of awareness and understanding. Many people do accept the pervasive hybridity of things and, over the past decade or so, a number of academics have fixated on this aspect of social reality. Many, however, still struggle with and find troubling the particulars of a hybrid social location, judging mixed-race people as being unnatural and outside the desired order of things. The variety of takes on a particular social phenomenon is an expected part of the human condition--the mass disagreement among people makes things interesting and illuminating, even entertaining. And yet, nobody wants to be alienated, judged harshly, insulted, or misunderstood, especially for matters of identity that cannot be helped. Most people would not hesitate to participate in a debate on whether black and white people should date or marry. Though even to argue in favor of it is, in a way, to consent to the legitimacy of a debate that, in this day and age, has little legitimacy. The same goes for the hotly contested topic of interracial adoption. The September 2008 issue of Ebony, for instance, features an article entitled, "Should Black Children Only Be Adopted by Black Parents?" The piece earnestly weighs both sides of the argument. And some also question whether transnational adoption should be discouraged or allowed.