Born Without a Race: The trauma caused by trans-racial adoption, and how this biracial adoptee searched and found his birth mother, birth father, and racial identity..

When people would ask his mother if her young, adopted son was colored, she would answer with lies and deceit. She argued that his hair was kinky, and his skin was tan because of his many medications. “Besides, his eyes are blue, and he is way too smart to be a n****r.” Such was his upbringing. After 50 years of struggling with racial identity, his mom died, and he finally learned the truth.In the early 1960s, his white, 23-year-old birth mother's Indiana family did not want a black grandson. So as soon as he was born, they placed him for adoption. Had they kept him, they would have seen that he could pass for white. But, it was his misfortune to be adopted by another white, rural Indiana family with grandparents and cousins in the Ku Klux Klan. Their small town hated people who looked like him, so his adoptive mother concocted an elaborate, untrue story to hide his ethnicity from everyone, including him. This uncertainty triggered his lifelong search for a racial identity. His lack of identity led to struggles with his family, his education, his career, and his relationships. Every time someone would asked his race, he was reminded him of the trauma of being abandoned by his birth mother. The depression this questioning caused nearly consumed him, but conquered his demons.This struggle with racial identity led him to adopt two bi-racial infants to spare them from the same turmoil and trauma that haunted him. Through these trans-racial adoptions he found clues that led him to a reunion with his black biological father's family.