Speaker 1: Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith, and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Table Pop podcast all your favorite episodes from the
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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts. On this Red Table Talk, she was
Speaker 1: adopted by white parents in an all white town. But
Speaker 1: I don't identify with black folks, and I'm not comfortable
Speaker 1: even sitting at this table with you now, She says,
Speaker 1: she feels lost cup between two races. I have no
Speaker 1: sense of strong identity without knowing my culture. How am
Speaker 1: I supposed to raise a black child if I don't
Speaker 1: know Black culture? But if you're trying to counsel other
Speaker 1: people want how to do it? Counsel yourself. And then
Speaker 1: an emotional reunion with her birth mother. It's an overwhelming
Speaker 1: moment sitting in between parents. Willow, how do you think
Speaker 1: you would feel if you have been adopted by a
Speaker 1: white family. I literally have this zero idea. What about
Speaker 1: how I was raised. I've always been a very strong
Speaker 1: proponent for black children being raised in black families. Well,
Speaker 1: I know how difficult it was trying to go to
Speaker 1: all white private schools, So I would imagine that being
Speaker 1: raised by white family would be changed. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess living in Calabasas, there's so many yeah, exactly, but
Speaker 1: where you are, don't try it. But being young and
Speaker 1: going out and basically only seeing white people, that's my experience.
Speaker 1: And your mother made sure that you went to school
Speaker 1: with black children, even if she had to create the
Speaker 1: school her dads off, which I did. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's go. Let's go talk to to miss Angela
Speaker 1: and hear her story. So this is going to be
Speaker 1: a fascinating conversation. Angela Tucker, a black woman who was
Speaker 1: adopted by a white family, is at the table today.
Speaker 1: Angela's birth mother, Deborah, was homeless and in poor health,
Speaker 1: barely able to take care of herself, let alone her
Speaker 1: newborn baby, who was just diagnosed with a form of
Speaker 1: cerebral palsy. Even though it tore her apart, Debor made
Speaker 1: the agonizing decision to give Angela up. She was adopted
Speaker 1: by a white couple, eager to give her a good
Speaker 1: life and to take care of her medical needs. They
Speaker 1: moved Angela into their home and they're all white town.
Speaker 1: Angela says she loves her family, but that she grew
Speaker 1: up disconnected from black culture, and that has left her
Speaker 1: feeling more white than black. Now, Angela is using what
Speaker 1: she has learned in her personal struggle to help families
Speaker 1: navigate the challenges of transracial adoptions. I was embarrassed. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't look like my parents. I look different, My
Speaker 1: eyes are different, my skin tone is different. People knew
Speaker 1: I was different. You were a doctor, you were thirteen
Speaker 1: months yes, okay? And what was it like growing up
Speaker 1: in this all white town and and having white parents.
Speaker 1: I have no sense of strong identity. Being a transmracial
Speaker 1: adoptee is really difficult to share what we really feel
Speaker 1: because we have parents who raised us and love us,
Speaker 1: and we don't want to appear that we did. We're
Speaker 1: not grateful for what they've done. For me, to talk
Speaker 1: about transracial adoption honestly is to hurt somebody. I understand
Speaker 1: that keeping me alive and prioritizing my medical needs was
Speaker 1: really important. And look, I'm alive today. I'm alive, but
Speaker 1: dead inside in some ways without knowing my culture and
Speaker 1: not being connected. So for me, I don't feel like
Speaker 1: transracial adoption is the right solution because essentially we're asking
Speaker 1: me as a black woman to assimilate into white culture,
Speaker 1: but to also keep my blackness somehow, even though I
Speaker 1: wasn't raised within it. People often don't admit this, but
Speaker 1: a lot of black transracial adoptees look in the mirror
Speaker 1: and are surprised when we look in the mirror and
Speaker 1: see a black person because we're so used to seeing
Speaker 1: white people, and we see our parents and they're white
Speaker 1: and we love them, and so then when we see ourselves, like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forgot I'm black as a black woman, Where do
Speaker 1: you feel most comfortable? Where I fit in. Where I
Speaker 1: feel like I actually belong is with other transracial adoptees.
Speaker 1: So I feel like white people are comfortable around me.
Speaker 1: I'm comfortable with white people. It's not that I don't
Speaker 1: want to identify as a black woman, but not growing
Speaker 1: up with black culture and feeling fear. When I met
Speaker 1: my birth mother and my whole birth family, I was
Speaker 1: a little bit afraid to meet them because they're a
Speaker 1: black family and I haven't been around that, and so
Speaker 1: exactly I can't consider it alien to you, like completely unknown,
Speaker 1: it was and therefore kind of scary. But then at
Speaker 1: the same time, I was like, this is my family.
Speaker 1: And why am I afraid of my own family? But
Speaker 1: I don't identify with black folks because I I feel
Speaker 1: my own sense of fear or like illegitimacy is how
Speaker 1: I feel even sitting at this table with you, because
Speaker 1: I feel like you three are legitimate black people because
Speaker 1: they were raised by black people. It's like it's embarrassing
Speaker 1: to say that, but that's how. The thing that's troubling
Speaker 1: me just a little bit. I want you to clarify it,
Speaker 1: if you can, is your use of the term fear,
Speaker 1: the fear of black people. Where where is that coming
Speaker 1: from that you choose that term fear. I think about
Speaker 1: all of our implicit biases that we hold, and I
Speaker 1: can feel in my body how I change, how I'm
Speaker 1: not as comfortable. Yeah, when I with all black folks,
Speaker 1: I don't fit in right. What are you doing now
Speaker 1: to try to assimilate into the black community or do
Speaker 1: you even feel the need to do that or do
Speaker 1: I feel like I have the right to do that?
Speaker 1: And I don't think I don't think I feel the right.
Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it just like that. But I
Speaker 1: have embraced my place in the white world, you know,
Speaker 1: like I've chosen to live in a predominantly white neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and I'm just trying to be okay with that right now.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to be like, you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in white spaces, so it makes sense that I might
Speaker 1: feel safe here, I would imagine, I mean even for
Speaker 1: coming from Baltimore, Maryland and then coming out to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's just like the streets of
Speaker 1: Baltimore were familiar to me, and then rolling in the
Speaker 1: streets of Calabasas was just right. It takes a minute,
Speaker 1: you know, people like, you know, you're stepping up. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm stepping up, but this is like, this is right,
Speaker 1: this is not my thing. And people think that's very
Speaker 1: similar to adoption, where it's like, oh, you've gotten a
Speaker 1: better life, Like looking at my birth mother and she
Speaker 1: doesn't have a lot of materialistic stuff, but I still
Speaker 1: long to be close to her with her, And that's
Speaker 1: one thing that adoptees don't feel safe to say I
Speaker 1: wish I had that, because the rest of the world's like, wait, what,
Speaker 1: you have great parents, We're able to afford all these
Speaker 1: extracurriculars for you and all this and you probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have had that there. When I listen to you, it
Speaker 1: sounds like there's a lot of internal conflict all over
Speaker 1: the place. Yeah, I struggle because I'm certainly grateful for
Speaker 1: the life I've been afforded and all the opportunities that
Speaker 1: I've had. But at the same time, it's hard to
Speaker 1: walk around every day and have people see a black woman,
Speaker 1: but for me not to even feel like a black woman,
Speaker 1: and that conflict that happens every single day is is
Speaker 1: it's a huge wait. But what I also know is
Speaker 1: that I was given what I feel like it was
Speaker 1: white privileged by osmosis. A lot of people like myself.
Speaker 1: Once we leave the house and we no longer have
Speaker 1: white privileged by osmosis, it's like an awakening. So I
Speaker 1: chose to go to a predominantly white college because that's
Speaker 1: what just made sense for me. So I was comfortable.
Speaker 1: How were you accepted in that environment and did you
Speaker 1: feel racism? Then when I went to college, I did
Speaker 1: feel a lot of racism, but it was coated in
Speaker 1: this this way that where I was put up on
Speaker 1: a pedestal. Those it's tokenism being in all white school,
Speaker 1: you know, always being chosen to be on like the
Speaker 1: college pamphlets and things like that. I was like, oh, god,
Speaker 1: do you think I'm wonderful? Really like they need that
Speaker 1: token and I don't know if they embraced me. They're
Speaker 1: they're fetishizing me, and I'm like interesting to everybody. Everyone
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, your lips are so big. Here people
Speaker 1: reach out and can't resists touching my hair. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I didn't think of it as racism at the time.
Speaker 1: I just thought it was maybe flattering, And then I
Speaker 1: started to realize what was happening. Token racism is like,
Speaker 1: that's something we don't talk about a lot, and we
Speaker 1: experience a lot in our industry. Not having other people
Speaker 1: to bounce these stories off of is what was really tough.
Speaker 1: So that's when I really started thinking about my blackness.
Speaker 1: You are now helping transracial adoptions by talking to families
Speaker 1: that that adopt black children, And how do you do that?
Speaker 1: Is it a coaching? Is it mentoring? It's a lot
Speaker 1: of education, and it's a lot of talking about feelings. Sadly,
Speaker 1: adoptive parents have really like they've commandeered the whole conversation
Speaker 1: and so unfortunately we rarely hear from adopted people themselves,
Speaker 1: because as we often think about adoption as babies and
Speaker 1: I'm an adult, you know, but reality is that we
Speaker 1: grow up and we are still adopted. Rarely do we
Speaker 1: hear from birth parents. Instead, they're just kind of this amorphous,
Speaker 1: villainized people that are like they're always in the shadows,
Speaker 1: forgotten about. They're scary, you know. So a lot of
Speaker 1: my work is helping adoptive families to humanize their children's
Speaker 1: birth parents. I'm hoping that I lived to see the
Speaker 1: day to where people say when I say I'm adopted,
Speaker 1: they say, gosh, did someone try to keep you with
Speaker 1: your family first? Instead of what we hear is your
Speaker 1: parents must be so great. I never never thought about
Speaker 1: it from that perspective. My birth mom, she gave birth
Speaker 1: to me, and then she walked out the door and
Speaker 1: was homeless again. She said, everybody cares about you, getting
Speaker 1: you somewhere, but nobody cared about me. And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's up with them? We still see that like that,
Speaker 1: that discarding for the life of the woman who is
Speaker 1: having this child. I need to just say this though,
Speaker 1: this discomfort that you have with your own blackness, but
Speaker 1: yet you're counseling others on how to incorporate brown children
Speaker 1: into their families. I feel in a bind because I've
Speaker 1: grown up in whiteness and I have fostered, and my
Speaker 1: husband and I want to foster again, and it makes
Speaker 1: sense to me to foster a white child because that's
Speaker 1: what I'm familiar with. But then I'm like, well, that
Speaker 1: is quite a conflict, like a real freaking con That
Speaker 1: is right for psychological archaeos. But if you're trying to
Speaker 1: counsel other people on how to do it, counsel yourself,
Speaker 1: what are you saying, how would I do that? Like
Speaker 1: counsel yourself and how to raise child? Yes, how am
Speaker 1: I supposed to raise a black child if I don't
Speaker 1: know a black culture. What you're telling other people to
Speaker 1: do is to move into a black expose the child
Speaker 1: to black culture. You can do the same thing. What
Speaker 1: a tall order. It's a tall order, but because an
Speaker 1: order for a white person to do it for a
Speaker 1: black person, so as a black person to do it
Speaker 1: for a black child, it certainly is to me would
Speaker 1: be a bit easier because you have some idea of
Speaker 1: what it's like being black in the world. Do that
Speaker 1: could be a real healing process for yourself, for you, right,
Speaker 1: But if that's not my goal, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying I just have I've learned how to
Speaker 1: flourish in a white world, and so you have no desire.
Speaker 1: But and we as black people, we can't keep asking
Speaker 1: white people to do things for us that we're not
Speaker 1: willing to do for ourselves. White people in their comfort
Speaker 1: zones too. That's what we do to white privilege and
Speaker 1: all of that is trying to pull white people out
Speaker 1: of their comfort zone to go, Hey, just step in
Speaker 1: to our work, in our in our world a little
Speaker 1: bit and understand our experience. Yes, you feel me. Sometimes
Speaker 1: our biggest treasures and and our biggest lessons are in
Speaker 1: the zones of discomfort. You're putting up an excuse the
Speaker 1: reason why you can't do it. Yeah, So we want
Speaker 1: to remove that, and we want you to just sit
Speaker 1: with that for a minute, just sit with the idea
Speaker 1: for a minute. Yeah. Well, Angela's adopted parents to Theresa
Speaker 1: and David, have agreed to join us at the table
Speaker 1: for their first interview together. So first of all, I
Speaker 1: just like to say, you guys have raised a phenomenal
Speaker 1: young woman quite dynamic as she was growing up, Did
Speaker 1: you guys realize any struggles that she was having or
Speaker 1: you know, first was the hair because we didn't know
Speaker 1: how to do that. Her friends were always touching her hair.
Speaker 1: I just thought of curiosity. They've never seen hair like this, right, right,
Speaker 1: Like the translational adoptee has to become a teaching tool exactly,
Speaker 1: But think of that. That could be a positive experience,
Speaker 1: broadening other people's horizons and understanding. Yeah, in a white,
Speaker 1: predominantly white town. Nonetheless, it can be a step towards
Speaker 1: raising awareness. That could be a step towards raising awareness,
Speaker 1: but it also can be burdened on the child. Yeah,
Speaker 1: growing up my sister, I loved how her hair was
Speaker 1: sleek and down and would like flow in the wind.
Speaker 1: I loved her blue eyes. I like my dad's blew eyes.
Speaker 1: I just I just didn't. It comes back to representation,
Speaker 1: like I don't see I don't see that. I see
Speaker 1: this and it's it's beautiful and I love them. I
Speaker 1: want to be like that. Yeah. I remember I went
Speaker 1: through a little face when I was younger where I
Speaker 1: hated my hair and I would cry and I would
Speaker 1: just be like I want I want my hair to
Speaker 1: just like you were saying, my hair to fall. I
Speaker 1: wanted to and all. And then I remember you showed
Speaker 1: me rough and stuff and I watched that video when
Speaker 1: I was like stuff like that. That's when my whole,
Speaker 1: my whole life changed with my hair. Lady, you were like, here,
Speaker 1: none of this, but they're they're in lies again. My my,
Speaker 1: my concern and the challenge of not being raised, you know,
Speaker 1: around your own not even around you, even if you're
Speaker 1: not in you know, but not even around nowhere around
Speaker 1: owned your own culture, right, it becomes problematic with your
Speaker 1: own self esteem, self worth. Absolutely. What made you decide
Speaker 1: to adopt children of color? I'm not sure that was
Speaker 1: conscious decision. Wow, Okay. We asked ourselves, asked each other,
Speaker 1: what are we reopen to? What can we handle and
Speaker 1: contribute to? And we found Angela in a book the
Speaker 1: State of Tennessee. And what we saw was a child
Speaker 1: who also had spastic quadriplegia hearing loss, and that we
Speaker 1: could we could we could help she being part of
Speaker 1: our family. So you didn't really even consider the fact
Speaker 1: that she was black. It wasn't something that even really
Speaker 1: just about. I saw a child in need, yeah, obviously
Speaker 1: her picture was right, but you didn't consider that there
Speaker 1: might be any challenges or any differences and how she
Speaker 1: would be raised based on her race. If we did
Speaker 1: at that time, they would have been secondary to what
Speaker 1: are the needs. Well, Angela's birth mother, Deborah's joining us
Speaker 1: as well. Angela has not seen her in nearly four years,
Speaker 1: so this is pretty awesome. Oh she is well. Hello,
Speaker 1: Mr Deborah. Welcome to the table, Mr Debora. Hi, thank
Speaker 1: you for having me, well for coming. This is my family,
Speaker 1: my family. Yes, Angela, how are you daughter? How are
Speaker 1: you can sit over there beside Angela? Yes, So eight
Speaker 1: years ago Angela began the emotional journey to find her
Speaker 1: birth mother, Deborah, and she documented the whole process then waiting. Uh, god,
Speaker 1: she's so pretty and she's so tall, and oh it's
Speaker 1: a nervous way. I think I would have been a
Speaker 1: different person if I would have grown up with the sister.
Speaker 1: I have waited for twenty five years to thank Debra.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing Antea. So I right away, of
Speaker 1: course I wanted to thank her, and so we started
Speaker 1: walking together and I was thanking her, but at the
Speaker 1: same time she was thanking me. And I never thought
Speaker 1: about that. She did her just a really hard thing.
Speaker 1: She did something that I'm not sure I could do,
Speaker 1: and I did something that she wasn't able to do. Wow,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. How are you feeling hurt? Yeah? I will
Speaker 1: forever hurt the more I see her. The hard ideas. Now,
Speaker 1: if I could go back and don't do my life,
Speaker 1: No way that I will give away a child right
Speaker 1: at that time, not having a home, not having a job.
Speaker 1: Why to drag a child around right because you can't
Speaker 1: take care of it. So you got to make her
Speaker 1: strong with choice. So I went to a higher power
Speaker 1: and I said, help me please. When I put Angela
Speaker 1: up for adoption, that ended all my rights to know anything.
Speaker 1: I had no idea about where Angela was. I had
Speaker 1: no idea about transracial adoption. I was brought up into
Speaker 1: that age. Why you didn't talk to white people, they
Speaker 1: met talk to you. I was astonished. So, Teresa, where
Speaker 1: you hesitant about Angela finding when I was younger? Yes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I had this unreasonable fear that she might kind
Speaker 1: of come and she'd be her mom. But I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I don't know why, because you would be replaced, I
Speaker 1: would be replaced yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: Debora taught me that she's her mother different, I'm the
Speaker 1: vessel that God used to put her here. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: there's her parents right there. Yeah, And I am just
Speaker 1: so proud of the young lady she is, what they've
Speaker 1: taught her, how smart is. It's an overwhelming moment sitting
Speaker 1: in between parents. Wow, Like everyone's so beautiful here, but
Speaker 1: my eyes just want to like stare at Debora and
Speaker 1: just because I'm still just trying to figure her out,
Speaker 1: right and I still can't. We all know that you've
Speaker 1: done the best that you can and that we truly
Speaker 1: want you to feel like you're part of our family.
Speaker 1: That you not being able to parent me doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you give up your rights to know who I am,
Speaker 1: know how I'm doing. Thank you. I just need to
Speaker 1: thank everyone at this table for allowing me to be here.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well. I think it's just beautiful that we could
Speaker 1: all sit here together for many different reasons and talk
Speaker 1: about this specifically specific and the fact that these beautiful
Speaker 1: people adopted and raised this beautiful woman and we're open
Speaker 1: enough to come and speak to us about it and
Speaker 1: crossing those racial barriers and even though this is a
Speaker 1: learning process. But love is love, right, Love is love
Speaker 1: and this just shows you right here. This has been
Speaker 1: one of my favorite episodes. Yeah hey, r T T family.
Speaker 1: Join our Red Table Talk group on Facebook to become
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Speaker 1: show page to catch up on all our episodes. This
Speaker 1: is our new family, family, Thank you. There's so much
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes. It's a journey. Are you
Speaker 1: ready to go? Yeah, I'm broken, broken an give me
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