Mixed Race Studies

Into the Arms of America: The Korean Roots of International Adoption

The University of Chicago
August 2008
248 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3322621
ISBN: 9780549742289

Arissa Hyun Jung Oh

A Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the division of Social Sciences in candidacy for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of History

This dissertation locates the origins of the phenomenon of international adoption in Korea in the 1950s, when Americans began adopting mixed-race ‘GI babies’ produced through liasions between Korean women and foreign military personnel during the Korean War. Seeing no other solution to the existence of these children than their mass emigration abroad, the Korean government cooperated with allies in Korea and in the United States to establish an intercountry adoption system.

Americans had adopted children from Europe and Japan prior to the Korean War, but there are a number of reasons why intercountry took off from Korea. First, the supply of unwanted mixed-race GI babies in South Korea converged with a demand for them in the United States. The newly established Republic of South Korea sought to to redefine itself through a nationalism centered in large part on its sense of itself as an racially homogeneous nation and was therefore eager to send its mixed-race children overseas. At the same time, Americans expressed interest in adopting Korean GI babies for a number of reasons: humanitarianism, a shortage of adoptable children in the U.S., or because they wished to avoid the doctrinal investigations of social workers required under state adoption laws.

Second, a ‘culture religion’ or ‘civic religion’ that I call Christian Americanism emerged in the 1950s to power the early movement to adopt Korean GI babies. Christian Americanism combined patriotism with vaguely Christian principles to form a powerful ideology that promoted U.S. responsibility in the new world of the Cold War. The adoption of Korean GI babies became a Christian Americanist missionary project, and although not all adoptive parents of children from Korea were Christian Americanists, the language of Christian Americanism became the language of the Korean adoption movement. Christian Americanist adopters saw adopting a Korean GI baby as a way to participate in their country’s new Cold War project of proving its racial liberalism and winning the hearts and minds of newly independent countries around the world. Third, Harry Holt, a farmer from Oregon, emerged as a leader of the Christian Americanist Korean adoption movement. Holt founded the Holt Adoption Program in 1956, made Korean adoption available to the masses, and was a crucial catalyst in the establishment and development of international adoption.

In the early 1960s, the composition of the Korean homeless-child population changed such that mixed-race children no longer represented the majority of the Korean children being adopted internationally. The institutions, procedures and laws that had been erected to facilitate the removal of mixed-race children became a convenient system through which to send full-blooded children abroad.

Korean adoption has been a dynamic and ever-changing phenomenon reflecting some of the major trends in Cold War politics as well as shifting ideas about race, family and nation in both Korea and the United States. What began as a race-based evacuation evolved into a Cold War missionary project, and has now become an increasingly common way for Americans to build their families.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• VOLUME ONE
  • LIST OF TABLES
  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • ABSTRACT
  • INTRODUCTION
  • CHAPTER 1. Soldiers, Missionaries and the Kids of Korea
  • CHAPTER 2. Creating Intercountry Adoption
  • CHAPTER 3. A New Kind of Missionary Work: Christian Americanism and the Adoption of Korean GI Babies
• VOLUME TWO
  • CHAPTER 4. Making Orphans, Making Families
  • CHAPTER 5. Harry Holt Versus ‘The Welfare’: The Fight Over Proxy Adoption
  • CHAPTER 6. The Turn In the Road
  • APPENDIX U. S. Immigration Laws Pertaining to Korean Adoption
  • BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF TABLES

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Critical Narrative of Multiracial Women’s Personal Journey: Negotiating the Intersectionallity of Race and Gender Issues in a Monoracial Paradigm

Georgia Southern University
June 2011
264 pages

Geralda Silva Nelson

A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Georgia Southern University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Education

The aim of this study was to examine how three women of color, mothers of Multiracial children, experience gender and racial identity issues in the context of United States; explore their choice of racial indicator for their children and the impact that raising multiracial children would have on their own racial identity. This study was informed by critical race feminist thought, framed by qualitative inquiry and oral history as research methodology. Throughout this study I have attempted to demonstrate that gender and race are significant factors in these three women’s lived experiences. The participants’ accounts revealed how different aspects of sexism, racism, heritage pride, and racial invisibility have been a part of their lives, and influenced the choices of racial indicators for their multiracial children. There was ample evidence from the stories of these three participants that the racial identity indicator of their multiracial children and the consequences of these choices, provided a more significant set of apprehensions than the concerns these three women had for their own gender and racial identity issues. Data was collected through semi-structured open ended interviews.

Table of Contents

• 1. INTRODUCTION
  • Multiracial Individuals in the United States
  • Exploring Adequate Racial Identity
  • Educational Significance of the Study
• 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
  • Racism as a Factor in the U.S. Society
  • Gender as a Determinant Factor
  • Gender and Race Intersection
  • Study Framework: Critical Race Feminism
  • Issues of Ethnic Identity
  • White Mothers of Multiracial Children
  • Racial Labeling
  • Children‟s Perception of Their Racial Identity
  • Racial Identity via Peer Pressure
  • Social and Racial Power
  • Racial Categorization
  • Politics of Education and Language
  • Literacy and the Development of Identity
  • Themes Presented in the Literature Reviewed
• 3. METHODOLOGY
  • Oral History
  • Oral History Interviews
  • Listening to One Story at a Time
  • Context of Research
  • History of Turmoil
  • Narratives
  • Researcher/participants‟ Roles
  • Participant Selection
  • The Rules of Disclosure
  • Data Analysis
  • Synthesized Dominant Themes
  • Dominant Interview Themes
  • Recurrent Themes
  • Ethical Consideration and Possible Limitations of this Study
  • Conclusion
• 4. NARRATIVES
  • Maria
  • Jane
  • Sonia
• 5. RACISM
  • The Impact of Racism in the Lives of the Participants
  • Situated Race Relations in Country of Origin
  • Racial Awareness Before Relocating to the U.S.
  • Dealing with Racial Constructs Upon Arriving in the United States
  • Navigating the Complex Racial Landscape of the United States
  • Racial Interaction and Group Membership
  • Racism in the Form of Invisibility
  • Race as a Confounding Issue
  • Contesting Static Racial Construct
  • Breaking the Racial Conventions and Rethinking the Color Line
  • Exploring Racial Interactions
  • Situated Racial Awareness and the Construction of Difference
  • Becoming Aware of Multiraciality
• 6. THE IMPACT OF SEXISM IN THE LIVES OF THE PARTICIPANTS
  • Sexism as it Relates to the Oppression of Women of Color
  • Sexism in the Form of Patriarchy
• 7. FACTORS INFLUENCING THE PARTICIPANTS‟ DECISION TO CHOOSE A PARTICULAR RACE INDICATOR FOR THEIR CHILDREN
  • Responding to Institutions‟ Request for Racial Labels for Multiracial Children
  • Cultural Currency as a Factor
  • Checking Monoracial Boxes for Multiracial Children
  • Racial Heritage Pride as a Racial Identity Determinant
  • The Impact of Racial Indicators on the Educational Experience of Multiracial Children
  • Awareness of Self Racial Identity as Result of Having Multiracial Children
• 8. DISCUSSION
  • A Final Consideration
  • Recommendations for Further Scholarship
• REFERENCES
• APPENDICES
  • A Summary of Respondents‟ Information
  • B Participant Data Sheet
  • C Survey
  • D Interview Procedure
  • E Interview guide – English
  • F Interview Guide –Spanish
  • G Participant Informed Consent

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Kept In, Kept out : The Formation of Racial Identity in Brazil, 1930-1937

Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
November 1996
95 pages

Veronica Armstrong

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Latin American Studies Program

This thesis examines the roles of historian Gilberto Freyre and the Sao Paulo black press in the formation of racial identity in Brazil. In Casa Grande e Senzala, published in 1933, Freyre presented a hypothesis of Brazilian national identity based on positive interpretations of slavery and miscegenation. His emphasis on racial harmony met with the approval of Getúlio Vargas, a president intent on the unification of Brazilian society. With Vargas’ backing, racial democracy became Brazilian national identity. Supporters included the black press which welcomed an idea that brought blacks into definitions of Brazilianness. Yet, blacks were embracing an interpretation of Brazilian identity that would replace a growing black racial awareness. Reasons for the undermining of black racial consciousness and the enshrining of racial democracy as Brazilian national identity emerge in an overview of shifts occurring during the first decades of the twentieth century. The forces of mass immigration, negative evaluations of Brazil by scientific racism, and the nation-building politics of Vargas affected the elite minority and the poverty-stricken majority of Brazilians, but in differing ways. For while economic stability and national pride were the goals of the former, research suggests that survival was the paramount aim of the latter. Addressing the needs of both groups, the adoption of racial democracy as national ideology in the late 1930s maintained elite privilege, defused the potential of racial unrest, and promised social mobility to the masses.

Benefits to the largely-black masses, however, had strings attached. Social mobility depended on their acting “white” and becoming “white” through miscegenation. In the face of desperate poverty, blacks had few options and assimilation seemed a way to move beyond their low socio-economic status. Furthermore, contrasts with American segregation convinced black writers that battling discrimination had to be secondary to the economic survival of their community. The thesis concludes by seeking to explain the paradox of a society characterised by many foreigners and most Brazilians as a racial paradise from the 1930s to the 1970s even though Brazilian reality evinces gross inequality between the small Europeanised elite and the large black and mixed-race underclass.

Table of Contents

• Approval
• Abstract.
• Acknowledgments.
• Preface.
• Introduction kept in, kept out:the question of brazilianness and black solidarity 1930-1937
  • The March for national identity
  • Brazilianness vs. Blackness
• Chapter 1. Ideology and Identity
  • The dawning of a new era of national thought
  • A historic moment
  • Whitening
  • A New Era
• Chapter 2. Race
  • Miscegenation and Racial Terminology
  • Racial Democracy: Theory and Revision
• Chapter 3. The Making of a Cultural Hero
  • Freyre: the child and the man
  • Freyre s “Old Social Order”
  • Ciasa Grande e Senzala
  • Freyre, the Intellectual
  • Freyre, Father of National Identity.
• Chapter 4. The Politics of Identity
  • The Black Press in Brazil
  • The Meaning of Language
  • From the mulato to the black press
  • The Black Press: an alternative path
  • Assimilation vs. segregation
  • A Frente Negra
• Chapter 5. Only we, the negros of Brazil, know what it is to feel colour prejudice
  • A Voz da Raza
  • Conclusion: We are Brazilian
  • Intellectuals and Ideology
  • Searching for identity
• Epilogue
• Bibliography

List of Figures

• figure 1: Roquete Pinto’s prediction of the racial make up of Brazilian populations based on official statistics 1872-1890
• figure 2: System of values within the miscegenation process

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