A personal and professional story of the lifelong impact of transracial adoption

Nick Pendry

An introduction

I find it difficult to think about my self, my identity, who I am, where I fit, and where or to what I might belong. I am a brown skinned Indian man, who doesn’t speak Hindi, Urdu or Gujarati, and I sometimes feel like a cultural impostor when I try to embrace my Indianess. I can relate to the white British norms and values, which represent middle-England. I understand what these norms and values might mean, and I feel, begrudgingly, a part of white Britain, but this is a White Britain that I feel doesn’t want me, and to which I will always be an outsider. The pain and hurt of rejection that I feel as the baby that wasn’t wanted by my mother, is compounded by the pain of feeling that I don’t truly belong to any culture or race, at least not in any way that the culture or race to which I might feel connected will warmly embrace me, and treat me as one of their own.

My story

• The beginning,

• Growing up,

• Relationship with parents,

• My parenting,

• My birth family,

• The personal, the professional, and the political…

This is where it begins…• Rasheed Charania - Born at the

Whittington Hospital, 8.1.72,

• My birth mother’s story,

• Foster care from 1 week old,

• Placed with John and Sheila Pendry and their 3 birth daughters on 15.2.72,

• Adoption Order made on 15.6.72,

• Prior to adoption The Church Adoption Society discussed with John and Sheila, “the problems of mixed race adoption”

• What’s in a name?

• No photo’s or contact.

Growing up: the feeling of difference and searching for a place to belong

• Where were the Indians?

• Making sense of feeling white, but being brown: the tension between culture and “race,” and the all pervasiveness of whiteness,

• An introduction to racism and the internalisation of a racist discourse: “the worst moment in my life was when I was seven years old and I discovered that there was such a thing as racism. You don’t know you’re different until someone lets you know,” (Sanjeev Bhaskar)

• The white van…

• I didn’t fit anywhere, but I really wanted to: the double whammy of adoption and transracial adoption.

Relationship with my parents: why did they do it?

• They wanted to make a difference: but good intentions are not enough: a story of white privilege (see McIntosh, 2008), and the Maasai Mara,

• This visible intention formed the discourse of gratitude, which still holds a massive influence over me: “if it wasn’t for them, where might I be…?”

• How can I talk about “race,” and racism with my parents who just don’t get it, and shouldn’t I just be grateful?

• Part of a family but always different: family photos, moving my mum into residential care and sharing childhood stories with my sisters,

• I still want to make it alright: be positive, hopeful and don’t lose compassion…

My parenting

• My adoption, the idea of “race,” and the reality of racism are major organising principles in my everyday life (Hardy, 2008): how could they not be?

• This shapes the way in which I parent: what we talk about as a family and how,

• This constructs how I position myself in relation to my family: the lack of belonging as a child and an adult child is not something I want to replicate for Luke and Maya,

• The family I have played a part in constructing I preciously guard as where I belong now!

My birth family

• My search,

• Relationship with my birth mother and the constant replaying of the rejection discourse,

• Relationship with my wider birth family: a sense of belonging, but always something missing - no shared history, language, food: no shared culture: the story of the cutlery,

• A taste of what might have been…an introduction to a different way of being and talking, particularly about race,

• Reinforces my “outsider” position, which influences personal and professional relationships: and at times serves an effective function,

• No-one understands me…(!!!)

The personal and the professional

• The influence of my experiences on the work that I do: as a social worker and a family therapist: what my colleagues, teams, practitioners might say about my professional position…

• The shame in sharing, but there’s no alternative: my struggle with genograms and training: family therapy, by definition, privileges a biological understanding of family…

• My preoccupation with my supervisee’s family of origin experiences: my current supervisory practice,

• The lifelong impact: my first trip to India and the meaning I made of this…

and the political

• My story invites me to take positions: on, “race,” and racism, on adoption, on how we think about the work that we do - not taking a position is not an option…

• These positions are bound up in a political context: social policy, lived realities, hard outcomes, the social reality of “race” based oppression: negative impact of disadvantage in relation to education, criminal justice, housing, employment, racist attacks and poverty: for example, police are 4 times more likely to use force against black people than white people (Independent 24.5.18), and Ministry of Justice figures show that 48.1% of the 940 children in custody as of April were BAME (CYP Now, 14.9.18),

• Our work is political and we cannot forget that (part of the problem or part of the solution): a particular challenge when the notion of White privilege is considered, “the idea of white privilege forces white people who aren’t actively racist to confront their own complicity in its continuing existence.” (Reni Eddo-Lodge, 2017),

• It’s not good enough to dodge the issue,

• But we must be prepared to have our positions influenced by others : thanks to Barry!

Bringing it together

• The issues are rich and complex and not amenable to our tendency to reduce down to easily understandable positions often constructed as: right and wrong, oppressor and oppressed, perpetrator and victim - this closes down opportunities for dialogue,

• The ability and means to construct a different story, or not be bound by the story that I hold in a deterministic way: critical for me personally and in my practice,

• The nature of racism and of white privilege are inescapable realities…

• Expressing the emotion and balancing the tension - I’m still searching for a place to belong…

Belonging

“Do I wish things had been different? Of course…I feel like my self has been stolen and

given back to me in a different form…”

Comments and reflections…

References

• Eddo-Lodge, R. (2017) Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race. Bloomsbury, London & NY,

• Hardy, K. V. (2008) Race, reality and relationships: implications for the re-visioning of family therapy. In M. McGoldrick & K. V. Hardy (eds) Re-visioning Family Therapy (2nd edn) pp. 76 - 84, Guilford Press, NY,

• McIntosh, P. (2008) White privilege and male privilege: a personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women’s studies. In: M. McGoldrick & K. V. Hardy (eds) Re-visioning Family Therapy (2nd edn) pp. 238 - 250, Guilford Press, NY,

• Pendry, N. (2006) Belonging. In: P. Harris (ed) In search of belonging: Reflections by transracially adopted people. pp. 191 - 194, BAAF, London.