wocinsolidarity:

In November, a major news network broadcast video of a white woman* claiming to be “transracial” because she identifies as Filipina. Many Black, Latinx, indigenous, Asian, and multiracial people in the weeks since have expressed an outpouring of anger and condemnation that a white woman is once again seeking to profit from claiming the cultural heritage—and legacies of colonialism, trauma, and oppression—of people of color.

Especially after the far-reaching, highly public damage caused by Rachel Dolezal, the white woman in Washington state who claims to identify as a Black woman, I’ve been witnessing other people of color say things like “transracial is not a thing,” and “transracial doesn’t exist.”

Every time I read these words, a piece of me dies inside, and I’m torn between hiding under the nearest desk or punching out the nearest window (which probably wouldn’t work anyway, because I’m weak and afraid of broken glass).

You see, I’m transracial—I’m a Chinese, East Asian person of color, born in Suzhou in the province of Jiangsu, and removed from my ancestral home to join and be raised by white U.S. citizen parents. I’m also a genderqueer, nonbinary trans person. We do exist, and these racist white people need to stop stealing our term. And people of color (and white accomplices) who call out their racism must do so without erasing our stories, identities, and existence.

For literally decades, adoptees and researchers have referred to “transracial adoption” to mean when a child of one race is adopted by a family of another race; it is most often used for transracially adopted children of color, or adult adoptees of color, whose adoptive family is entirely or majority white. More and more of us are speaking and writing publicly about our experiences as transracial and transnational adoptees, especially at intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and disability.

Being ‘Transracial’ Is Real—But It’s Not What Racist White People Claim It Is – Rewire