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Article: "Vietnamese Adoptees: Where Are They Now?" Published by: New America Media, News Feature, Lana Nguyen, Posted: Jan 06, 2007

Jared Rehberg does not at first appear Vietnamese, does not have Vietnamese parents or a Vietnamese surname. Yet he identifies as Vietnamese. Rehberg was born somewhere in Saigon in 1975, his real birth date is unknown and the one he uses is made up. The only thing he is sure about during his short-lived time in Viet Nam, is that he was one of the babies of Operation Babylift.

Rehberg was told later in life that somebody brought him to an orphanage in Saigon called An Lac. There, Rehberg was one of the approximately 2,000 orphaned children put on a plane to the US with Operation Babylift in 1975.

In the US, Rehberg was temporarily placed at Fort Benning in Georgia until he wa nine months old, when his parents adopted him after hearing about Operation Babylift. Rehberg’s parents moved to New York during his early childhood and finally settled in a small town in Massachusetts. According to Rehberg, the town was predominantly white. His parents were also white but that did not seem to bother Rehberg—he wanted to be white despite his Asian features. Rehberg was not alone with that feeling. Rehberg, along with many other children that were internationally adopted, share some of the same experiences regarding their own struggles with their social identity.

International adoption, which recently received more attention thanks to Angelina Jolie and Madonna, has been increasing for over three decades. Between 1971 and 2001, US citizens adopted over 250,000 children from other countries, according to the US State Department, and the numbers quickly rose with each year. The aftermath of World War II launched the onset of international adoption and wars, crisis, and famine triggered subsequent waves of sending adoption countries, in particular the Korean War and the Viet Nam War. According to the US State Department, approximately 150,000 children were adopted from Asia between the years 1971 and 2001, and between those three decades, 7,000 children from Viet Nam were adopted to the US.

Some early resistance

Imagine being a different race than the people who have raised you. You have different eyes, different nose, and different skin tone from your parents. Imagine being in a family that is comprised of two or more different races. The stares, the comments, and the endless questions that you receive while with your family could not only be annoying, but also cause a struggle with identity. But most importantly, imagine feeling like you do not belong or connect.

The question regarding cultural identity came up in 1972 when many black children were adopted by white families due to the increasing number of black children that were put up for adoption. The National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) claimed that the act was “cultural genocide.” They believed that taking another child of one race and putting him in a home of another race jeopardized the child’s cultural identity. Years later, the issue continues to haunt adult-aged adoptees of all races and from all countries.

Mia Tuan, author of Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites? The Asian Ethnic Experience Today (Rutgers University Press, 1998), has studied and written about transracial adoptions of children from Asia. Tuan describes how parents that transracially adopted few decades ago did not foresee the possible issues that come up regarding culture and social identity issues with their child. “There were many parents who didn’t think about these issues. There were lots of kids that were placed in families without being thought about,” said Tuan. The issue of transracial adoption first came into question when the NABSW started objecting to the adoptions. “The black community started saying that it was cultural genocide with black children being in white families. People started to ask what happens when kids in a different culture were placed in a family of another culture.”

Later studies signaled that children who were placed in a home that was of a different race or ethnic group often developed feelings of isolation and not belonging. Tuan looked at the development of Korean adoptions which were the initial Asian, international adoptees. At the beginning of international adoption phenomenon, “there was no knowledge of research on what their needs are—there are a mixed range of how well they handled [their needs],” said Tuan.

According to Tuan, Asian transracial adoptees face additional issues like harsh questions that sometimes they are not prepared to handle, compared to a white adoptee child that looks the same as their adopted parents. “They face additional questions from curious strangers so there are more complexities to the adjustment that they have to make,” said Tuan. “It is when they face the outside world and when the adoptees come home, their racial identity had already been activated.” Differences in race does not become an issue in transracial families until others “activate” that thought. It is when others question or make comments, then the adoptee see themselves as outsiders in the family.

Rehberg never thought of himself as Asian. In fact, he noted he did not meet another Vietnamese person until after college, so connecting to his Asian roots did not concern him at all. According to him he was like any other kid in his small town. “I was always my mom and dad’s child. I didn’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I am Asian. Here I am.’ I didn’t carry a mirror around. I wasn’t treated Vietnamese.” His roots did not cross his mind until after college. That was when getting in touch with his birth identity became more of an interest.

It was after being in New York that Rehberg noted more of the difference between him and his family. According to Rehberg, his family did not see him as Asian until he started talking about, and get more immersed, in Vietnamese culture. “I was never expected to be any one else. Even my relatives were surprised that there was a whole other side of me that they didn’t understand. I never talked about being Asian.”

Many of the very first generation adoptees that have lived in a transracial family that look different than their parents had a hard time talking to their parents and because of that, did not feel as connected to their birthplace identity like Rehberg, and who felt out of place both in their family and sense of belonging to a culture. “If [the adoptees] do not talk about [their racial identity] either because their parents are not comfortable about it or simply because they do not want to, it makes them think about how different they are,” noted Tuan. “Adoptees learn to not come to their parents and think that their parents cannot or do not want to relate.”

Sara Dorow, author of Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship (New York University Press, 2006) and director of the East Asian programs for adoption, believes that there is even a bigger issue that arises from international and transracial adoption. She noted that instead of helping the children by adopting them overseas, it would be better to keep these children in their homeland. Nice “We know in some cases that it is because of poverty and sometimes a single parent that the child is place up for adoption like in Viet Nam, so the question should be what can or should we be doing internationally. We should be working with NGOs and the government and groups in Viet Nam and say, ‘How can we help families take care of their own children,’ rather than place their child up for adoption,” said Dorow. She believes that there is a sense of loss for many children that are adopted internationally in transracial families and the displacement can become traumatic so preventing children to be in that position would be in the best interest of the child.

Cultural identity
Agencies, the adopting family and society overall are much more aware of these cultural tugs of war between adoptees and their families due to the growing awareness and coming of age of these adoptees. “In the later generations of adoptees, agencies are getting more savvy and sensitive to these adoptees,” noted Tuan. “There are many parents who didn’t think about these issues and today adoption agencies ask parents to think about it and even screen parents.”

Tuan’s earlier work helped many international transracial adoptees understand their issues of cultural identity. Through her research she discovered a connection between third generation Asian Americans living in California and transracial Asian adoptees living in the US. There were distinct parallels between the two involving self-identities. “Both look Asian, but raised in American [environments]. Some of the findings was that they had to negotiate—they had to decide how much of being Chinese or Japanese that they wanted to be—did they eat the food, did they choose the language. They had to deal with questions of where they are from.” Tuan believes that both groups have to choose their ethnicity. To her, adoptees and third generation Asian Americans have to choose their ethnicity and negotiate their race; they have to decide to keep and what ethnicity they want and disregard what they do not want.

Parents are now also being more involved with helping their adopted child find their roots compared to when international adoption and transracial adoption first became popular a few decades back.

Coping strategies

Adult adoptees like Rehberg are now finding ways to cope either through music, speaking about their issues, or networking with other adoptees. Rehberg first met another internationally adopted Vietnamese person in 2000. The Vietnamese Adoption Network organized an event that let many Vietnamese adoptees from Operation Babylift meet for the first time. For Rehberg, it was an emotional event that changed his life. “That event inspired me to do the work I do today,” he said. He put together a music CD that chronicled his experience with adoption and connecting to his roots. He has even traveled around the country singing his music to other adoptee children, and according to him, give them a fresh perspective about being an adoptee.

The disconnect between being Asian or being in the adopted community is a difficult balancing act of “one or the other”; but sometimes, there is another option. Rehberg considers himself connected to another kind of community—a third space. “We have a special bond no matter how well we know each other. We as Viet adoptees share a third space of identity—not really Asian, not really white, but our own category and view of the world and how we fit into society,” said Rehberg. With that inspiration, Rehberg, along with a friend, created an adoptee networking group called Third Space.

Through his music and networking site for Vietnamese adoptees, Rehberg offers a support system for adoptees. For his generation of adoptees, it was hard to find a support system while growing up. But for younger adoptees, he hopes that access to help and support will be easier and that “they grow up in a world that accepts them for who they are.” Although the first generation of Vietnamese adoptees had to navigate through a lot of emotional and cultural terrain to feel more at ease and acceptance with their unique upbringing, we as a community need to embrace the history of adoptees as part of the collective history of uprooting caused by war, economic dislocation and migration that is closely tied to the Vietnamese American post-war narrative. BN


More Info

Vietnamese Adoption Network (VAN): A network for Vietnamese adoptees to connect to one another around the world. For more information, visit VAN - Home.

• Vietnamese Heritage Camp: A camp for families with adopted children from Viet Nam located in Colorado. Young adult Vietnamese adoptees can have the opportunity to become counselors. For more information, visit: Vietnamese Heritage Camp.

• In Third Space: An e-magazine where through which Vietnamese adoptees can connect through news and entertainment. For more information, visit: -Welcome to In Third Space! -.

Adopt Vietnam: A website dedicated to Vietnamese adoption stories, poetry and photographs. For more information, visit: Operation Babylift - Vietnam Adoption Airlift 1975.

BN does not endorse these websites, this information is being provided as a courtesy to our readers.
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