Do people who have been adopted blame others all their lives for their adoption? I see it a lot on this section where a person will put the blame on others who choose to adopt, for themselves being adopted and having a bad experience. I also see a lot of I was treated like this, or THEY did me like that. And most of it is coming from adults. Why can’t they learn to forgive the people who hurt them and move on with their lives? When someone has done something bad to you, its not them who goes around letting it be a chip on their shoulder, its you. And that is not healthy regardless of rather you are adopted or not. To always play the victim card gets you no where in life, regardless of who you are. So why do it? [Originally asked at Yahoo! Answers]
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Transracialeyes 
The trouble with this question is what is implied by it, and therefore what it requests of someone who answers—namely, that they defend themselves against this implication whether it is true or not.
It is like the question: “When did you stop beating your wife?” and therefore is not valid as a question for debate.
Meaning, the implication that someone cannot get on with their lives because they are blaming someone for their misfortune is a loaded question, and is patently illogical from the outset.
Furthermore, it reveals the mindset of the person asking the question, and how they view adoptees. For I don’t think we’d be having this conversation if the people airing their grievances were, say, war veterans, or cancer survivors.
The true question here is why should anyone who goes up against systemic abuses of human rights by those of the dominant discourse—meaning, those who control and maintain power within a given society—are met with abuse, or told to “get over it”, or asked to “stifle it”, which is exactly what this question is attempting to do. It is no different than calling a Black American “boy”, or telling Native Americans to “get over” the genocide that occurred to their peoples, etc.
Anyone who goes up against the dominant discourse as defined by such people is set up for abuse of this kind. This is unfair, unjust, and unbecoming of anyone who in any way believes in the validity of human rights, and the right to one’s person, which, I would argue, includes the right to not be abducted from one’s family and community, as well as the right to not be forced to lose one’s language, culture, identity, and sense of self.
If the “complaining” by adoptees seems personal, it is because there is nothing more personal than one’s identity, one’s place in his or her family, community, society. This, however, does not deny the greater injustice, crime, and violence of adoption, nor does it give those who see adoption as a wondrous thing the right or the ability to shut down the debate, or to tell adoptees that they should get over it.
Daniel couldn’t have been more eloquent if he’d tried.
I will also add that laying blame is looked down upon in our society when those who have power act helpless so they get more breaks. THAT is playing the “victim card.”
Adult adoptees are not asking for more breaks. A fair shake would be nice, but we don’t even expect that. What we ARE doing is discussing what was once kept to ourselves (in silent suffering) to raise consciousness of things that need to be changed. THAT was unhealthy. We are not acting helpless but are instead taking control of our own lives. We are the antithesis of playing the “victim card.”
We WERE victims and now we are finding our voice and representing those who are currently the helpless pawns and commodities of gender, race, and imperialist policies. This is not just a “chip” on one’s shoulder. This is not being a spoiled brat. This is a civil rights/human rights issue. We are the bearers of unhappy news and people want to shoot the messengers.
It is deeply offensive to have valid grievances diminished. There is nothing petty or trite about having ones identity, culture, and language obliterated. This is profoundly and utterly disturbing to the depths of our souls. And we didn’t do this to ourselves. Then or now.
So whoever originally posted this question on Yahoo — do adoptees always blame others — as you can see by these two answers. Yes. Many do, as these do. And they pat each other on the back when they find a fellow blamer who states the blame very well and makes the blame sound intelligent.
Others, however, don’t. My cousin and I were both adopted. By some stroke of luck, we missed that blame train. There’s a spark of consciousness in everyone that tells us we’re wanted and belong regardless of anything in form. Those who connect with that, regardless of how they connect or what they call it, are aware of life’s imperfections and have great compassion for suffering, but don’t continue to be victims. In the case of adoption, it’s sometimes called Adoption Transference. They become masters at it. Perfecting their art of blaming to where almost a third entity oversoul forms around those who thrive on it.
Those from other types of trauma, (rape, cancer, holocaust, etc. some of which I’ve had experience in my own life), do in fact stop blaming and become free. Holocaust Jews hugging and forgiving Germans. Native Americans inviting white people to their celebration ceremonies. Irish releasing their hold on those who represented authority to their detriment. Freedom is happening everywhere, but for many adoptees, it’s just too stimulating to keep on blaming — the same blame energy that fed Hitler, that fed invading tribes, and others who carry an inner rage that they are victims and therefore deserve to impose their anger on others. The same poor-me I’m not accountable rage that feeds the very authorities they blame.
A beaten dog wagging its tail in the sight of its oppressive master would not be told unsympathetically to “get over it”. Yet adoptees are, and by other adoptees at that. Stunning, really. And the willful ignorance of the arguments made here, with accusations of self-victimization, reveal the true solipsism that cannot imagine communal or societal injustice as ongoing, much less the will of people to overcome this with great risk to their own personal safety and/or physical/mental well-being.
To pretend that the Jewish holocaust, the “troubles” in Ireland, or the decimation of Indigenous peoples were “one-time” events that are in the past now and thus worthy of being “gotten over” is an acceptance of ongoing systemic destruction and violence that is, in the end analysis, rather obscene. There are no rewards for pointing out such injustice. There are, however, great rewards for those who pretend to have reached some kind of transcendent state of virtue that aligns them with the power structure that was the cause of such displacement, dispossession, disinheritance, and death.
In terms of the examples given here, these were referred to as “collaborators”. They identify with those in power in order to selfishly save their own skin, as it were. As much as this is an understandable psychological reaction, this is not “freedom”, in fact, it is quite the opposite. This is the colonized mind as described by Frantz Fanon, hardly “self-victimizing”. The original question as well as this answer can only imagine reality in individualistic terms–this is the true success of the dog beaters, the oppressors; the true projection that is worthy of deconstruction and further elaboration.
And the acceptance you demand has much more horrifying consequences—Zionists perpetuating what they suffered on Palestinians, Sephardim, Mizrahim, Arab and Ethiopian Jews, etc.; converted American Indians working to perpetuate the cultural suicide of the Cultural Schools and Indigenous adoption; the completion by the very sufferers of the original desire of Anglo-Saxon dominance to destroy Irish, Scot, and Welsh family structure and culture; etc of that heinous task. In this light, those who critique along these lines—with the full weight of society behind them—have much more to answer for.
I think that Daniel and girl4708 have summed it up accurately and with great integrity. Syntax and vocabulary are in some senses at the heart of this too: BLAME is neither the ‘right’ word or an apposite way to even begin to describe what many adoptees have to endure. For sure I accept that there are those adoptees who do not “blame” their adopters because in their eyes they have grown up like any other child. Who am I to disrespect and ignore those adoptees whose experience is positive? In the same manner those that pour scorn and doubt on the many accounts from adoptees where their early life experience has not been positive, who are they who and what “right” do those people have to disrespect or denigrate those adoptees? Adoption is a complex and compound issue. It affects not only pragmatic issues but deeper and far more intricate states of being. It effects the very cultural, social, political and racial DNA of not just one individual but of a person to community, state and country. Blame is too trivial a word and as Daniel pointed out the question reveals more about the questioner and how many in the wider society still perceive adoption and adoptees
I, too, was having second thoughts about the word, “blame” – it’s not quite right.
I can imagine people like Josi perceiving someone like me as “self-victimizing” because I recognize the role that I and others have played in my adoption, the adoption industry, and societal relations crossing international borders, continents, racial bloodlines and economic strata. I became more free and stronger in myself philosophically, spiritually, emotionally (much less a victim) once I understood “my place” in this world.
It’s a pity that others don’t recognize or respect how much many of us know about our histories and lives, much better than those, like Josi, who don’t know us or at least me.
And I think it’s interesting that Josi suggests that the “victimized” populations should be forgiving their “perpetrators”, not that the “oppressors” should recognize their role in oppressing and taking and take steps to stop taking from others and oppressing. Some types of people haven’t yet earned forgiveness, because they still have no intention or desire to stop their oppressive and entitled behavior. Acknowledgement comes before forgiveness. Some haven’t reached the state of acknowledgement yet.
My Adoption is not my fault………………..