((PKG)) ADOPTION 1 / IDENTITY ((Banner: A Question of Identity)) ((Reporter: Claire Morin-Gibourg)) ((Camera: Arzouma Kompaoré)) ((Map: Seattle, Washington; Albuquerque, New Mexico)) ((NATS: Chad Goller-Sojourner one-man performance)) ((Courtesy: Vimeo / Chad Goller-Sojourner)) ((Chad Goller-Sojourner, Adoptee, Performer)) Black people scared me. And since I wasn’t a fan of being scared, I would do my best to avoid them at all times possible, going so far as to cross the road when encountering multiples of them. Raised on Lawrence Welk and Amy Grant, I would be shy of 25 before I could hear rap music and not think something bad was about to go down. ((NATS)) ((Chad Goller-Sojourner, Adoptee, Performer)) I was this black boy who didn’t want to be black. From an identity standpoint, I identified with the people around me. So, I knew I wasn’t white, I looked at my skin, but I certainly identified as a white child. I identified with my white peers as opposed to black people either I saw on TV or didn’t know. So, yeah, and I think this is very common with transracial adoptions. You know, with transracially adoptees, your first identification is that of your surrounding. ((Megan Walsh, Director, La Familia-Namaste Adoption)) A lot of adoptive families struggle when they adopt transracially, because they are maybe not so comfortable stepping outside their comfort zone. And I think it's really important for adoptive families to be able to realize that when they adopt transracially, they're asking their child to often be the minority even in their family. And that's really challenging for kids. ((Locator: Albuquerque, New Mexico)) ((Lizelle, Adoptee)) Sometimes, I’ll walk into a class, and the first, like, thing that comes to my mind is there another black person in this room that I could relate to and that looks similar to me. ((NATS : Gym)) ((Megan Walsh, Director, La Familia-Namaste Adoption)) It's really important that kids that are adopted transracially have adult racial mirrors. I think the first thing that families need to do when they're raising a black child or a child of an ethnicity different than theirs, is that they need to find professionals in their community that share ethnicity with their child. ((Neema Hanifa Kamaria, Founder, Creations Spa)) With most families what I found is that they start by coming in and asking about, you know, hair. That’s the initial referral. “I need to know about how to take care of this child’s hair.” But the truth of the matter is that it’s so much deeper than that. You know, self-esteem, of course, you know, how a child feels being in a place like New Mexico, where we have such a small population of people of African descent. ((Deborah Hill, Lizelle's Adoptive Mother)) That’s interesting. That’s interesting for moms, I think, and families to know that bit of hair culture. ((Kamaria, off-camera: Absolutely.)) ((Deborah Hill, Lizelle's Adoptive Mother)) Because, you know, hair is a social, socio-political issue in our culture. ((Kamaria, off-camera: It is, it still is.)) ((Deborah Hill, Lizelle's Adoptive Mother)) It will help us as white parents who have not experienced this to understand even going deeper, the issues of race and social and political sort of ramifications of caring for hair and understanding the dialogue around hair. (Kamaria, off-camera: Right, absolutely.) ((Deborah Hill, Lizelle's Adoptive Mother)) And beauty, standards of beauty. ((Megan Walsh, Director, La Familia-Namaste Adoption)) Learning to value everyone of every ethnicity, and not to be afraid of what we don’t know. I think that's what's really important. People that get really stuck on being colorblind, I feel like they're doing their kids a disservice because they're not teaching them that how they are is wonderful and how they came into this world is important and vital for everybody. ((Chad Goller-Sojourner, Adoptee, Performer)) So, what we know, once again, all the statistics we talked about, there are all studies, a lot are government, it says that around 13 years old, that black boys are seen as adults whereas white kids are well into their 20s before they're held accountable. How did that play out? Did you have like a plan? Like how did that play out for you? ((Malia Fullerton, Adoptive Mother)) Yeah, so this has been a huge issue for us. My son, he’s 12. He’s 6-foot-1 (1m 85 cm). People think that he is 17 right now. We’re already talking to him about, you know, what you do if a policeman stops you, you know. How you have to assume that people are going to question you and assume the worst of you. And at the same time, we were appealing to a lot of things in African-American heritage. Martin Luther King, Junior, you know, a lot of things that were really positive about social justice, and helping him to understand that he had a lot of tools available to him. ((Chad Goller-Sojourner, Adoptee, Performer)) I firmly believe that as transracial parents that they have a duty to prepare their child not just for the world they live in but most importantly for the world they will age into. So, it’s not fair to raise them when, and turn them out at 18 and say, “OK, go live in this world that is foreign to you, that is hostile to you.” Certainly, when I do their coaching in adoption, that’s the message I send. When you decide to adopt children of a different race, you've made a conscious decision to expose your family to being uncomfortable. ((Popup Banner: Chad’s birth mother was an actress who died in 2011)) ((Chad Goller-Sojourner, Adoptee, Performer)) It was very interesting to see for the first time, at 44, somebody who looked like me and to end up in the same profession as she did was just crazy, you know. A lot of people forget that adoptees have a story before they come to you. Whatever it is, we have our own story and this was my story. To know that I could like run my fingers over here and I’m touching her! When I’m putting my hand under the cellphone, we’re touching. This is her work, her fingerprints are on here. My fingerprints are on here. Although she’s deceased, I’m actually touching my mother. Not metaphorically but really. And certainly that is something beyond what I ever thought possible.