“People’s Heads Do Not Even Go There”: Public Perceptions to Transracial Familial Intimacy

ABSTRACT

U.S. culture uses phenotypical resemblance as the primary way that family ties are legitimized and authenticated. Transracial adoption challenges this type of kinship authentication because of the lack of resemblance among family members. This article explores how transracial family members experience and perceive interactions and conversations regarding family acknowledgment, belonging, and resemblance. This study finds that transracial family members must contend with being both hypervisible and incomprehensible as a family formation due to normative assumptions of which family members “belong” together. Transracial family members use specific strategies to challenge and reinforce these assumptions. To examine this phenomenon, 30 in-depth, life-story interviews with transracial family members are employed.

KEYWORDS:

• Adoption
• family
• race
• sexuality
• transracial

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Devon R. Goss

Devon R. Goss is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her research examines (1) the color line, particularly in relation to instances of white boundary crossing in racialized institutions, (2) the impact of racialization in family processes, through an examination of transracial adoption, and (3) the raced and gendered nature of sports. Devon’s work has appeared in The Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, and Symbolic Interaction.