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Social and Behavioral Sciences

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Theses/Dissertations

2023

Adoption

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“If I Am Going To Have To Force You To Talk About It With Me, Then I’M Not Going To”: Relational Dialectics In Transracial Asian Adoptees’ Conversations About Race, Brooke Hornberger May 2023

“If I Am Going To Have To Force You To Talk About It With Me, Then I’M Not Going To”: Relational Dialectics In Transracial Asian Adoptees’ Conversations About Race, Brooke Hornberger

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Transracial adoptive families often encounter various struggles around race as they acknowledge the challenges of racial dissimilarity in their family structure. This thesis, grounded in the theoretical framework of Relational Dialectics Theory, explored the competing discourses around the conversation of race for adult Asian adoptees. The results from 35 semi-structured interviews and contrapuntal analysis revealed one dialectical tension highlighting the Asian adoptee’s role in maintaining conversations of race with their White adoptive parents. Some adoptees voiced the discourse of taking the opportunity to be the advocate, while others voiced the discourse of feeling frustrated with being the advocate. The results …