So hip to adopt. A new generation of rainbow family. Am I being too cynical, or what?
Adoptees, what are your thoughts on this millennial web t.v. fare?
https://fusion.kinja.com/the-viola-davis-backed-racism-battling-detective-sitco-1796256983
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Transracialeyes 
Oh, and NO, you aren’t being too cynical. It’s fatiguing to have to even ask if it’s cynical to be suspicious of all the Adoption storylines with which we seem to be bombarded lately. Cute, seemingly light, fun shows like Kimmy Schmidt and Silicon Valley, and even the consciousness-raising Transparent, hit us with jokes, one-liners, and b-storylines that challenge us (in the bad way) and put us down again and again. It’s constant. And it’s demoralizing. It’s pissing in the wine. I look forward to the Token Adopted Character to being as unwelcome and horrifying and DATED as seeing Bing Crosby (or Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, etc, etc) in black face.
(Did my previous thing post? I’m in the woods with crappy cel access…)
This is what I responded with first–not sure if it showed up. (Sorry if I’m double-dipping).
Normalizing adoption sucks.
That’s my short version.
Maybe the culture at large plays with ideas of inclusion and color-blindness, but I just don’t see it tackling the real life consequences of Adoption, Commercial Surrogacy, etc. from the conscious, thoughtful point of view of real Adopted People engaged with their adoptions.
As an Adopted Person myself, I find resonance with narratives of bleak, hopeless, impossible worlds. Worlds that the general viewing public find frustrating because they don’t offer clean answers. The Leftovers was great for that. For once I felt like, yeah! Mysterious Loss you can never get to the bottom of! Endless grief! Inexplicable departaure! As yet I don’t see a lot of adoptee-written think pieces about The Leftovers.
If this show presents transracial adoption as some sort of norm to be navigated, not with color blindness but with sensitivity, I guess that’s something. But I’m an adoptee who looked like my adopters, and still felt like “passing” was my job.
Products of adoption and commercial surrogacy, whatever race, ethnicity, culture, are still considered blank slates. Gratitude is required of us. And our deep and real losses are never, NEVER, part of the narrative.
Always the object; never the subject.
I don’t know about hip. Transracial adoptions may be viewed as rainbow but it doesn’t erase the fact that it’s cultural genocide.
It’s kind of mind-boggling to me at this point how this country still maintains that racism is simply functional to people’s “wayward thinking”. The same liberal mindedness that thought All in the Family was going to “change America’s mind”; that gives us identity politics as a substitute for actually confronting the economic and political structures that require racism; that promote and inculcate it. It’s really a hopeless place.
I am so glad I don’t watch TV.