I had heard about the tremendous amount of reading required before and while designing a research project. And now, I've finally experienced it firsthand. Although my eyes water from staring at never-ending blocks of text, my brain is enjoying all the new information for the most part. Especially stories of how people of different races experience and cope with racial stereotypes.
On Thursday, our class watched First Person Plural, a documentary following a Korean American transracial adoptee. As a young child, Kang Okjin (renamed Deann Borshay) was adopted by a White family in California. When she spoke about her internal conflicts due to both subtle and obvious racial discrimination, I completely sympathized with her. What really interested me, however, wasn't our shared experiences, but rather Borshay's accounts of learning to accept parents who looked different from her. In the documentary, Borshay explains her sense of outcast because everyone else in her family—her mother, father, brother, and sister—had light hair and blue eyes. I can't imagine how I would feel if my family looked different from me.
Deann Borshay with her adoptive brother and sister.
When Borshay came into contact with her Korean mother, she faced yet another conflict: the existence of two mothers. Borshay states that she immediately felt like she belonged when she met her biological mother, who looked exactly like her. But, her biological mother wasn't the one who sent her to school, celebrated her birthdays, took care of her when she was sick. For a long time, Borshay struggled over who to call "mom" and eventually decided to get to know her biological mother as a person, not a mom.
Borshay's story really opened my eyes to another group of people to possibly include in my research project.While collecting references for our project, I noticed that barely any research papers have been published on the experiences of multiracial people and transracial adoptees (and trust me, I've read through a lot of publications). Although we currently don't plan on collecting data from multiracial students, I would definitely be interested in examining any trends if we end up with a reasonable pool of multiracial participants.
My research project so far doesn't follow my proposal exactly, but I think that's the fun of it. As of this week, I'll be contributing to a literature review on racial socialization to precede the collection and analysis of data. Also, I never mentioned in my proposal that I would learn how the ASU library system works or find the best study nooks at ASU, like the balcony of the Interdisciplinary Science and Technology Building 4 (Did I mention that a friend and I accidentally locked ourselves out on the balcony?). Who knows where the next eight weeks will take me? I guess you'll just have to keep reading to find out.
Studying experiences of multiracial people and transracial adoptees would be so cool! Do you think you'll be able to look into it at all or would that be broadening too much for the purposes of the research project? In any case, I'm glad you're learning so much :)
ReplyDeleteI hope I'll be able to look at it, but it all depends on the data we end up collecting! Thanks!
Delete1 of my kids is multi racial and the other igis a korean adoptee, so I am very interested in your project! let me know if you want to use them as soon as research subjects :-)
ReplyDeleteMr. Bloom
Parental consent is always awesome! Maybe I could interview them sometime? I'll have to check with my mentor later on.
DeleteYour SRP seems to have taken a turn, but I'm glad that it's towards something you're intrigued by and interested in. That will definitely help keep you interested in all the publications you're reading. I definitely find the concept of heritage interesting, because on one hand, someone raised outside of their heritage might not find any value in it, while someone raised inside of it may draw a lot of ideas and opinions from it. So it begs the question of how important is heritage? And to a lot of people, including me, I think people definitely find answers and explanations in where they come from. So I guess the question is how important should our heritage be? Social issues can be really interesting, but also a weird mix of subjectiveness and objectiveness.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could answer those questions, but it's honestly a different experience for every person. Personally, I think that although heritage is important, it doesn't define me.
DeleteI feel you so much on the eyes-watering from reading to much! I really like the turn your project seems to be taking! I'm really excited to follow your adventures (which hopefully do not involve being locked in more rooms.)
ReplyDeleteBorshay! I could not even imagine how difficult it was for her. I completely understand people stereotyping racial families, so it was really interesting and fun for me to read this, because I never really considered the struggles of a multiethnic family.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check out that documentary some time; it seems great! It's great to know that you're being flexible in regards to how your project may change, since it's quite common to happen. If you're somehow able to include other populations, like multiracial people and transracial adoptees, what sort of things would you discuss with them and present on? How do you think the things you ask them would align with the rest of the people you'd be interviewing?
ReplyDeleteKeep up the great work!
I'm glad that you're having so much fun with your SRP! This was enlightening for me to read since I never considered that a person could feel uncomfortable in a family. Regardless, of whether the family is multiethnic or not, I always figured that in a family no one has to struggle for the right to belong since everyone loves each other, but I guess that's not the case.
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