Adoption Week e-Magazine Article

Rita Jenkins

Were you ever one of those people who felt that adopting a child was out of the question simply because it called into question so many ... questions? Were you ever afraid to consider it because of something you’d heard, but didn’t know if it were fact or fallacy? Ever been filled with the fear that if you adopted a child, he could grow up to be some maniacal, mass murderer? What about all the foreign phobias many have about adopting a baby from another country or race? Afraid that sort of kid could grow into some alien being with communist tendencies? Or did you have a more optimistic outlook and imagined the worst that could happen would be that you’d end up with a child who simply resented being born into a world where she felt her own mother had discarded her like a disposable diaper? That might not be as bad as the other possibilities, but what if she then grew up resenting you, saying she hated you because you weren’t that real mother! What an ingrate! After all you’d done to pull this kid from the traumatizing clutches of orphanages and foster homes—all the months, all the money—why the madness?

Such fears are far from uncommon. Many childless couples face fears, phobias and fallacies about adopting. They, too, wonder what the odds are that they could adopt a child and then see their fears fulfilled as he grows into a maniacal, communist ingrate. Needless to say, they’d be much more comfortable if they knew there was a return policy.

What if, however, you’ve conquered your fright and seen the light and changed your views and attitudes? What if you’re ready now to open your heart and blend your family by adopting a baby? But what if it’s a baby from of another race? What will the neighbors think? What if you have to contend with the many close-minded people who feel that placing a child in a family outside of their race is a form of identity theft? What if the child ends up so confused that he develops severe complications brought on by an identity crisis?

Questions like these and other uncertainties can certainly cloud one’s views on adoption because when you adopt, nothing is certain. Even if you’ve reached the point of no concern for what others might think, adoptions still don’t come with guarantees. It’s so totally different from acquiring a child by getting pregnant and giving birth to a baby of your own flesh and blood—someone you can be sure will turn out normal. Yeah, just like your neighbor’s kid with the purple, spiked hair, five nose rings and a headless rat tattooed on his neck—that’s certainly normal in many families these days. But, I digress because we’re speaking here about the likelihood of adopting an abnormal child. The prospect of adopting an unknown person’s baby brings far more questions into the already challenging world of parenting. For instance, what if you adopted a child from a country where there’s a possibility the parents were cannibals? Is that hereditary? Well, that’s certainly not something you’d concern yourself with regarding a flesh and blood child, now is it? Maybe not, but what if your niece was one of those normal blood relatives who came to a family gatherings proudly displaying her tattoo of a headless rat? Would you wonder if there were cannibalistic tendencies in your family tree? I think not.

Regardless of the diverse dysfunctions that may be displayed among our own descendants, the uncertainties surrounding adoption are far more daunting. I mean, let’s face it. There aren’t nearly as many questions surrounding the birth of biological children. But, even if there were, unlike for adoptive children, the answers to all the questions would probably be the same: It doesn’t matter how they turn out because these children were created and born from thine own loins and will always be loved unconditionally, no matter what. The question then becomes: Would you be able to give such unconditional love to a child created from the loins of another? Even a child of another race? Even one with a headless neck rat?

If the child were biracial (i.e., half black and half white), would there be only half a chance of an identity theft issue? Or would that double the possibility of an identify crisis? So many questions. Who has answers? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could ask these types of questions to someone who’s been there? Adoptive parents can shed some light, but what about the adoptive children? What’s it really like to be adopted into a family where you’re obviously an anomaly? Well, I believe you’ve come to the right article. I’ve got answers to all sorts of questions because I’ve been there. Not only was I adopted, I was one of those biracial babies bought and sold from a foreign land! And believe it or not, I turned out just fine. Even though I was born into somewhat disadvantaged circumstances, and was then adopted into somewhat impoverished circumstances, I still turned out OK. Really.

Now that I’m all grown up (with a child of my own), I’d like to try to answer some of the questions and calm some of the fears one might have about integrating their family through adoption. Because mine was an open adoption, I also have the advantage of knowing more about my humble beginnings than most adoptees. I’ll bet I already know a few of the questions some would be eager to ask me:

Q: How did you feel when you found out you were adopted?
A: I was the happiest kid on the block!

Q: Why?
A: Because somebody wanted me!

Q: But didn’t your birthmother give you away?
A: Yes, she did. In fact, she sort of sold me. But it was to a couple who really wanted me. You see, my birthmother apparently found herself pregnant with not only an illegitimate child, but a mixed one. This was not a great combination back in the ‘50s (yes, I’m that old), especially in a country where many superstitions warned that a child of my particular mix was often born with a “tail!” Lord help her, the poor woman probably thought she was breeding a real live mutt! She also knew that children such as me would be ostracized in her country.

Q: What country is that and what are you mixed with?
A: My birthmother was a German woman who evidently had a case of “jungle fever,” because I was the product of a sexual encounter she had with a visiting musician from Nigeria. Top that off with the fact that she was Jewish and that makes me a Black Jew.

Q: How do you know all this?
A: Well, unlike most mutts, I’ve got papers. The entire adoption process was completely documented in both German and English, with copies provided to both parties. Years later, my adoptive mother also gave me a play-by-play of how things happened. According to her, my adoptive Dad ... OK, let’s dispense with all this “adoptive” labeling. My parents are the people who raised me, and they’re the only parents I’ve ever known, hence, they are “Mom” and “Dad.” I’ll have to keep referring to my birthmother as such, however, because things could get confusing otherwise. So as I was saying, my Dad was in the Army and stationed in Würzburg, Germany and my Mom had gone along for the ride because she figured that was the only way she’d ever get to see Europe. They had been wanting to adopt a child because, according to my Mom, “Every time your father dropped his pants, I had a miscarriage.” (Mom’s way with words was part of her charm.) Lo and behold, they just happened to run into a pregnant woman who just happened to be ripe for delivery of a baby who was destined to become a resident of the neighborhood orphanage. This 23-year-old German seamstress was about to become an unwed mother of a baby who not only had the potential to be born with skin the color of a Bavarian chocolate coffee bean, but also had that old wives’ tail, er, tale to contend with. So the three of them got together and came up with a plan whereby my new parents would pay the hospital bill for my birth, and my birthmom would hand me over to them and sign all the appropriate adoption papers, thereby making me not only legitimate, but a soon-to-be United States citizen.

Q: Were your new parents concerned with the possibility that you might be born with dark skin?
A: Oh, I’m sorry! Did I forget to mention that my adoptive parents were African American? Only back then in the ‘50s, they were called Negroes by most, Colored by many. In the ‘60s they became Afro-Americans, in the ‘70s, Black Americans, and in the ‘80s-‘90s they became African Americans. In any case, dark skin wasn’t going to present any problems they weren’t already familiar with.

Q: What race do you consider yourself?
A: It depends on the decade.

Q: What color did you turn out to be?
A: Let’s just say that I took far more after my birthmother than my birthfather.

Q: Since your birthmother was Jewish, do you practice the Jewish faith?
A: No. I’m actually a born-again Christian now. A Jew for Jesus, if you will. I’ve always had an instinctive interest in the Jewish faith, even before I knew about my heritage, but Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life for me now.

Q: Are you bilingual?
A: Yes. I speak both English and Ebonics, fluently.

Q: What was it like before you knew you were adopted? Did you look or feel like an outcast?
A: Well, before I knew the truth, I did realize things were “askew,” but I think I was in denial. You see, I didn’t look like anyone in my family! My parents, and every relative I had ever met, all had skin color ranging from chocolate to dark chocolate. In my case, even though my birthfather was from Africa where complexions are usually black, blacker, and then blackest, as I mentioned before, I took more after my birthmother and ended up with a complexion that was more akin to white chocolate. In my household and neighborhood, heck, among the entire African American race, I was known as “high yellow!” In fact, I was so much lighter than everyone else that it should have been obvious that I was adopted, but apparently no one dared to mention that. Because black families tend to include relatives sporting every color of the rainbow, I latched onto that fact to fuel my denial and continued to believe that I was a true member of the family. Whenever we’d take family photos, however (all black & whites back then), the only person who’d ever show up clearly in them, almost like a “light bulb,” was me. Ergo, I acquired the nickname of the family “light bulb.”

My hair was another obvious departure from the norm. It was very long (down to my waist) and curly, and referred to by many blacks as “good hair” because it was so easy to manage and never needed a hot comb to straighten it. My mom explained this oddity by saying that I had inherited my hair from her mother who was part Indian (they didn’t become Native Americans until a later decade), a very convincing explanation that worked quite well to further squash any fears that I was a fake.

Q: How and when did you find out you were adopted?
A: My mother told me when I was 18. But what she didn’t know at the time was that I had already found out on my own when I was 13. I didn’t tell her that I knew because I wanted to see how long it would take for her or Dad to tell me themselves. So anyway, I found out one day while I was snooping through a bunch of papers that my mom always kept hidden (hey, I may have been a snoop, but at least I never had any tattoos), when I came across a big brown envelope with the words “Adoption of a Child” printed across the front in big, bold letters. It hit me then like a bolt of lightening because I knew instantly what it meant, as I jumped to my feet and shouted, “That must be me!” I then crushed the envelope to my chest and proceeded to jump up and down and to do a little dance (I believe the boo-ga-lo was out at the time and, yes, I’ve always had rhythm). I was truly the happiest kid on the block! You see, I knew I had been born in Germany, so I immediately imagined that I had been born behind the communist Iron Curtain—not a great place to live, to say the least. I also imagined that my adoptive parents had risked life and limb, as they swaddled me up and whisked me off to America, the land of the free and home of the brave. (At least that’s what everyone called it back then.)

Then, one day when I was 18, my Mom said to me, “Oh, by the way, sweetie, you were adopted.” She said that because I had become an adult, I had a right to know, and she told me the whole story. When she finished, I smiled at her and said, “By the way, Mom, I already knew.” Then, since she seemed a little sad, I gave her a big hug and told her how much I loved her and how happy I was that even though she could have chosen from any number of babies in either America or Germany, she had chosen me to have as her very own, and that I loved her all the more because of that.

Q: Before you knew the truth, was it difficult growing up in a family where you were obviously different?
A: It wasn’t so much difficult as it was different. At home, everything was always great. We had an extended-family household that included my older sister, her husband and two kids (both around my age), and our grandmother. It may have been a shock to the family when I first arrived as a baby, but from as far back as I can remember, I only looked different—I was never treated differently. Every now and then, there might have been an incident where somebody got mad at me and yelled something like, “At least I wasn’t adopted like you!” But I would always defend my honor and respond with something like, “Yo mama was adopted!” And life went on.

Not only did I look different from everyone in my family, however, I also looked different from everyone in my school and in my entire community. I grew up in various inner-city black neighborhoods in Chicago, mostly ghettos, a couple of times in public housing (aka, the projects). The only white people I ever saw were usually on TV. People would always ask me, “Are you mixed or something?” And since I didn’t know the truth then, I could never answer them with anything other than, “nope.” One neighbor’s response to that was, “Right. Now pee on my head and tell me it’s raining!” Colloquialisms—you gotta love ‘em!

As far as being so light-skinned was concerned, well, you see, in the black community, there’s “yellow” and then there’s “high yellow.” “Yellow” is usually what we call our butterscotch and honey-colored brothas and sistahs. “High yellow” is reserved for those of us who are so very light, we’re darn near white. The difference is that you can always see that a “yellow” brotha or sistah is black—not so for us “high yellow” ones. I also grew up in an era that went from one extreme to another. A time when being called “black” went from signifying something negative, to a time when “Black is Beautiful” became the chant of the day. During the Black Power Movement of the ‘70s, “high yellow” sort of became the new negative. Also, from many dark-skinned blacks, I often received a very common remark that goes something like this, “She think she better then everybody else.” This was due to a common belief that high-yellow blacks felt superior to dark-skin blacks. Why? Well, one popular historic theory goes a little like this: During slavery, many white plantation owners evidently had cases of a condition I mentioned earlier, “jungle fever,” because of their tendency to make nightly visits to the huts of their slave women. The mulatto children that resulted had lighter skin, and because it was quite obvious who the “baby daddy” was, these children received many privileges not given to the darker-skinned slaves. Even if the father was actually the white blacksmith in town, these high-yellow children obviously carried the blood of a white man and were able to do things like work in the “big house” rather than in the cotton field. It was privileges such as these that frequently helped the lighter-skinned blacks to develop an attitude of superiority over darker-skinned blacks. This, and other similar practices eventually caused a rift among blacks that is often still present in today’s society. Even today’s whites have a tendency to treat lighter-skinned blacks with more respect, although I doubt many whites would actually admit to it.

Q: What about you? Did you ever feel superior?
A: No. Somehow, I actually developed somewhat of an inferiority complex. Because I was lighter than everyone around me, I was always the odd one. It seemed everyone else was black but me. I tried wearing dark make-up, I even wore an Afro wig for several months when I was in high school, just to try and fit in. It turned out just to be a phase though—I ended up not feeling I was better or worse, just different.

Q: What race do most people think you are?
A: Believe it or not, I’m actually not sure. I wish I could say that I have an “exotic” look about me, but I don’t. I’ve had some black friends that I’ve known for many years who have surprised me by suddenly asking me what race I was. Many whites automatically assume that I’m white; many blacks assume that I’m either white or mixed. If I go into a Spanish neighborhood, the people there always speak to me in Spanish. Even though the only language I spoke, almost until I was an adult, was Ebonics, most people didn’t know what I was. Nowadays, I prefer to eliminate any doubts from the people I know by discreetly working racially- identifying comments into my conversations. For those that I consider to be friends, I let them know that I’m black. For those that I consider to be good friends, I let them know that I’m black ... created from a medley of bloodlines from Africa, Germany and Judaism.

Q: What about men? Do you prefer them Black, White, German or Jewish?
A: I have always preferred my men black. My husband included. Other than a third- grade crush on a white teacher of German decent, and one adulthood crush on a Jewish boss—both of whom were very dark by Caucasian standards—I’ve always preferred black men.

Q: All in all, how would you say your life as an adoptee has turned out?
A: I’d say I’ve adapted quite admirably as an adoptee. I never gave my parents any reason to wish there had been a money-back guarantee, and they never gave me any reason to regret being assimilated into their family. I’d have to write a novel in order to cover all the “good times” in my life but I wanted to be sure to answer questions about how blending families through adoption can work just as well as families with bonds through blood. As for me, I love my life! I love my adoptive family! I love the fact that I was adopted! Sure, I was in denial at first when I instinctively knew something was peculiar, but who longs to find out they were adopted? Then, once I found out, I had an epiphany: being an adopted child was way better than being a child left unadopted. And I love being mixed, too. I love black people, white people, Germans, Jews, and everybody in between. Even though my childhood was spent almost exclusively among blacks, as an adult, I’ve always worked in environments with a white majority, and I’m cool with everyone! I am so well-rounded and well-adjusted that I actually find it difficult to even “take sides” on any racially-motivated issues because I can always see and totally understand both sides. I’m the most objective, impartial and unprejudiced person you’ll ever meet and I strive to bring harmony wherever I see the need. Heck, if I had the ability to go back and change anything in my life, the only thing I’d want to change is ... I think I’d give myself bigger legs. Skinny legs ain’t all that cool livin’ in the hood. Being called “that little, white girl” wasn’t nearly as bad as being called “the girl with the skinny legs.”

Q: Have you ever tried to find your birth parents?
A: Yes. I’ve signed up with a couple of International Adoption Search Registries, to no avail. I’ve even “Googled” my birthmother’s name but the results were inconclusive. My birthfather’s name was not included in the adoption records, so I always figured finding him would be next to impossible. That’s all OK, though, because my adoptive parents and family have never made me feel as if I were anything but a truly loved, blood relative. And I’ve never received or given anything but that all-important, unconditional love that true families share.

Q: What would you recommend to families considering adoption?
A: Fears, phobias and fallacies should never cloud one’s decision to adopt a child. Children almost always grow into individuals whose personalities, values and tendencies are based on the parenting they receive and the environments they grow up in. Adopting a child doesn’t change that. Adopting a child who is different simply changes that child and your family from ordinary to extraordinary.

Q: How do you think you would react if you found your birthmother?
A: I’d probably feel the same unconditional love for her as I feel for my adoptive mother. I’ve always loved my birthmom even though I’ve never known her. If I ever met her, I’d want to let her know how much courage I think it took for her to give me up, and that I don’t lay any blame on her for doing it because I know she did what she thought was best for the both of us. I’d let her know that the parents who raised me were very good and loving parents and even though they weren’t financially well off, I never really wanted for much of anything. I’d tell her that she has a wonderful granddaughter who also loves her, and that my life has been full and relatively happy. I would let her know that I hope her life has been good as well, and not filled with guilt. I’d ask her if it would be all right if we kept in touch, and then I’d look to see if she was the one I inherited my skinny legs from!

Biographical Note:

Rita Jenkins still lives in Chicago with her daughter, Natalie, who is attending college. Her adoptive parents are now deceased, but never far from thought. Although she has not yet found her birthparents, she continues the search, and hopes someday to be able to visit both Germany and Nigeria.