I have to be honest with you and say that I didn’t think Katherine would go through with it. When it was first reported here, I was thinking well yeah, these Hollywood stars change their mind every five minutes and are into fads, etc. Lo and behold but looks like the adoption really happened.
Photo from AP
{ 77 comments… read them below or add one }
White couple, Hollywood one at that, adopts non-white baby.
Oh yeah, wangkon, real close call here.
Yeah, you are right… Hollywood couples adopting non-white kids. That is actually a FAD in Hollywood. My bad.
Hey, but you gotta admit that the picture is cute, right?
Whites adopting non-white kids is a fad alright. A fad that’s been going on for about, oh I don’t know, 100 hundred years or so.
A non-white couple adopting a child of another race might be a close call, since it basically never happens. Not this though.
Well, I didn’t mean an overall fad… I meant it was a Hollywood fad.
http://english.china.com/zh_cn.....60790.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/sto.....528979.htm
Is Korea #1 or China #1 in “exporting” babies?
I believe it is a noble venture for a couple to adopt a baby and take on the commitment to raise that child as their own flesh. They take a child that has very little opportunity in their current position and provide love and opportunity for growth that didn’t exist for that baby previously. I freely grant it to them that they are not adopting to satisfy their own need but rather as the child has a need. God bless them all.
Unlike other Hollywood couples who seem to enjoy creating a little baby United nations, Katherine Heigl’s sister was adopted from Korea, thus the motivation to adopt herself.
Katherine Heigl is different than those other baby-collecting celebs, a’la Brangelina. The reason is b/c Katherine has an adopted Korean older sister named Meg who was adopted before Katherine was even born.
http://community.livejournal.c.....53335.html
Apparently, the baby named “Naleigh” is a special needs baby too, which I personally think is wonderful. (Also explains why they were able to adopt her so fast — the usual waiting period can be for years.)
http://www.wten.com/Global/sto.....nu30_10_10
Curious…how do you pick the baby? Among all the healthy ones that is.
“She’s cute. Wait, wow, he’s even cuter. Hmnnn, this one looks very unique.”
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
I have a friend from high school who was the 4th daughter of a couple who had 3 daughters before her. Needless to say, she wasn’t too happy about discussing the topic.
You throw a set of keys in the middle of the kennel and see which one come to the keys first and starts sniffing. Wait, that’s for dogs. Nevermind….
That was bad, huh?.. 
My relative adopted four Korean kids from Holt — two of whom were classified as “special needs” at the time of adoption.
Basically, you get whomever the agency matches you with– they use a FIFO method apparently. Of course, the adoptive parents in their application can indicate a gender preference and age range, and whether they would like a special needs child. But the more restrictions the adoptive parents have, the less likely they will be able to adopt quickly.
Also, supply-and-demand dictates the waiting period, which means if you would like a newborn — or specifically decline a special needs child — the wait period can be years instead of months.
So no, it isn’t like “Lil’ Orphan Annie,” or “How much is that puppy in the window,”, or “Stuart Little” either. I think stalwart agencies like Holt International are above board in reminding adoptive parents that they’re choosing someone else’s child to raise as their own as opposed to someone like that sick puppy out in California Phillip Garrido. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/.....newssearch
Back in the 70s, foreigners could get a free ticket to the States with Holt by volunteering to chaparone an adoptee. Not sure if they still do that.
You could still do that as recent as the late 90’s.
Is Korea still one of the biggest baby exporters?
It’s amazing that a country with one of the lowest birth rates in the world would also be one of the world’s biggest baby exporters.
If so, they really need to get their shit together.
Is there a large gender imbalance in adoption as well? If so, perhaps they wouldn’t need to import so many foreign wives if so many female babies weren’t being exported.
Some of you are so crass.
And, Wangkon, why did you think she wouldn’t go through with it? Because she’s a young attractive woman? If that’s the case, then you’re the one who’s hung up on looks and image, not her.
It is uncommon, probably owing to supply and demand. There are more children of color relative to the number of adoptive parents. A white colleague’s father speaks fluent Chinese because he and other orphaned children were adopted and raised by a Chinese-American couple who needed farm hands to tend their orchards in California.
Am I the only one who feels sorry for the kid?
Sure, the baby will be pampered with all the material comforts her adoptive parents can provide.
But it’s Katherine Heigl, a notoriously loud and obnoxious bitch. She’s known for constantly bitching on “Grey’s Anatomy” and just generally being unpleasant. She’s always complaining about “sexism,” and trumpeting feminism and all the rest of that nonsense. Just an overall full-of-herself woman that needs to be put in her place. Never put the pussy on a pedestal. Oh and she was raised Mormon, and is possibly a crypto-Mormon currently, so this makes her even more suspect.
Who knows what kind of psychological damage she might possibly inflict.
WGAF.
“A white colleague’s father speaks fluent Chinese because he and other orphaned children were adopted and raised by a Chinese-American couple who needed farm hands to tend their orchards in California.”
Umm…so they wanted cheap/free labor? Isn’t this, um, slavery?
And since you know this, that means the Chinese-American couple either told their adopted children that they were adopted (at least partly) because they needed farm labor, or inferred this from their childhood experience, right?
Yeah, but happens a lot with Asian families be they natural kids or adopted kids.
http://stuffkoreanmomslike.blo.....labor.html
I worked full-time for my dad for four total years and half the time he didn’t pay me…
I’m guessing the latter. The arrangement was not unusual for that time period. From the mid-1800s into the early 1900s, orphan trains relocated children from eastern cities to midwest rural families, who plucked the healthiest children from the lot.
It’s amazing that a country with one of the lowest birth rates in the world would also be one of the world’s biggest baby exporters.
Not really when you realize that Korean women are notoriously unschooled with regards to birth control, and getting an abortion is not as popular in Korea as it is in the U.S.
Also, there is this Korean-style Catholic/Buddhist-influenced reluctance to abort, which may explain why many lower- to mid-income married Korean women, who conceive accidentally and cannot afford to raise a third or fourth child, will usually give up that child for adoption, rather than have an abortion.
That being said, I totally agree with you that this kind of dichotomy (low birth rate, high overseas adoption rate) is completely f***ed up.
I’ve seen these Western movies where orphans are sent to assassin school.
I’ve seen Korean movies where Korean orphans are used to provide organs for Western babies. And if their organs aren’t harvested they still have a pretty crappy life of home, food and education.
I understand Koreans aren’t too happy with exporting their babies. Perhaps the assassin schools ought to be set up.
@24
Oh, I think you’ll find your average Korean physician is much more skilled in the art of illegal abortions than is your average US doctor.
8675309, Korea has one of the highest abortion rates in the world. And I also got a little laugh when you said,
“many lower- to mid-income married Korean women, who conceive accidentally and cannot afford to raise a third or fourth child, will usually give up that child for adoption, rather than have an abortion.”
I have to ask, where and what era are you from? It is unusual and rare to see any Korean woman giving birth to third or fourth child. Any woman who does that is probably thought of as a nutcase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary
The Turkish, non-fictional version.
My father would have charged me rent if I complained about not being paid…So, no, it’s not just an Asian thing.
Okay, child slavery happens everywhere. Let’s move on.
Another example of westerners taking all the Korean girls.
NewYorkTom@5,
I think China now surpassed Korea for exporting babies.
I think it’s shame for South Korea keep on sending babies to foreign adopters.
If it wasn’t still such a stigma in Korea to be adopted, Korea wouldn’t have to export so many of their own children. This isn’t even talking about the 99.5% (at last look) of special needs children that go to foreign families.
Koreansentry, at least the majority will have a better life rather than being isolated in a society that still looks down on orphans.
My guess is China prolly exports more but I’d say Korea beats them in terms of per capita.
Mkaplan. Yea, Heigl has the potential to be “Mommy Dearest” but I’m sure that as a special needs child, she’s much better off with the money/care Heigl can provide. Hmmmm, then again…I wonder if that’s a good trade off.
If that is true, how do you explain the huge surplus of 100% pure Korean babies available for adoption, while in the U.S., it’s practically impossible to adopt a white infant?
Also, how do you explain the fact that it’s almost impossible to find half-Korean infants available for adoption in Korea? (Excluding the population of Amerasians in their teens and 20’s who usually live in private orphanages around the camptowns, like TDC, Uijeongbu, Songtan, etc., who are usually not considered for adoption.)
The fact is that Korean girls who conceive accidentally, will give the full-blooded Korean babies up for adoption, while aborting the twiggies (half Koreans).
Gee, you must be some kind of omnipresent Korean OBYGYN, aren’t you? I’d like to correct your statement though, and say that it is unusual and rare to see a Korean woman WITH a third or fourth child. (An additonal child would’ve already been given up for adoption by then.)
I don’t even know where to begin with you Koreans/half-Koreans/Korean-Americans pretending to be Korean/the rest of you:
a) Yet government officials estimate that between 1.5 million and 2 million abortions are performed in South Korea each year–roughly the same number as in the United States, a country with six times the female population. For every child born in Korea, roughly three are aborted–one of the highest rates in the world.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/64215?digg=1 (Admittedly, from 2002)
Korea has a lower rate of abortion than the US? Really?
b) But it’s Katherine Heigl, a notoriously loud and obnoxious bitch.
And Korean mothers are demure little flowers?
c) twiggies (half Koreans).
WTF does that mean?
d)Since 1958, when orphans from the Korean War and the abandoned children of foreign soldiers and Korean women began to be taken in by overseas families, about 160,000 South Korean children have been adopted abroad, the welfare ministry said.
Well over half of them ended up in the United States.
In the years leading up to the 1988 Olympics when South Korea was emerging as an economic power, it sent about 8,500 children a year abroad for adoption — a statistic which became a national embarrassment. Now, the number is a little under 2,000 a year.
http://www.reuters.com/article.....2820070525
Korea may now be behind China in overall adoptions, but isn’t 2,00 a year still too high?
e)
Curious…how do you pick the baby? Among all the healthy ones that is.
You throw a set of keys in the middle of the kennel and see which one come to the keys first and starts sniffing. Wait, that’s for dogs. Nevermind….
That was bad, huh?.. 
Comparing special-needs kids to animals. Cute. You may have ‘Merican educations, but you still think like Hangooksarams.
“Gee, you must be some kind of omnipresent Korean OBYGYN, aren’t you? I’d like to correct your statement though, and say that it is unusual and rare to see a Korean woman WITH a third or fourth child. (An additonal child would’ve already been given up for adoption by then.)”
And you base this on what??
I base my assertions on Korea’s official birth rate which is 1.2 babies per female.
http://english.chosun.com/site.....00883.html
Where have you been the last few years, the lowest birth rate in the world is right in South Korea. That’s been in the headline for the last several years.
Based on that fact, it is absolute criminal that South Korea allows their precious young people to be exported out of the country because not enough Koreans want to adopt them.
#6 burkingshaw:
I believe it is a noble venture for a couple to adopt a baby and take on the commitment to raise that child as their own flesh. They take a child that has very little opportunity in their current position and provide love and opportunity for growth that didn’t exist for that baby previously. I freely grant it to them that they are not adopting to satisfy their own need but rather as the child has a need. God bless them all.
Please spare me us bullshit about any implication about humanitarian magnanimity regarding baby adoption. Because if that were really true, White folks would be adopting more Brown and Black babies from places like Africa, where the children really and truly need the assistance.
Altruism disguised as racism.
In America, adoption and the idea of raising children who are not biologically your own is more acceptable compared to Korea ironically because of decades of breakdown of the traditional family. Divorce and children borne out of wedlock means that it is not uncommon to have step-parents. Remember “The Brady Bunch”? TV shows like that have been in circulation since the 70’s. Beware of anyone who tries to credit foreign adoption to some built-in, intrinsic sense of moral superiority because that is just a load of hogwash.
Particular with White people, especially, with their strange and unique ways, adopting foreign babies may be a way of injecting some “ethnic culture” into their bland, white-bread existence. Adopting an ethnic baby is like the adult equivalent of the teenager who gets a tattoo of a Chinese character on her midriff. Having an Asian baby is like having a living and breathing “Chinese tattoo character” in your family! It’s sooo cool in the same sense that it is cool to be eating only organic, local food or driving a environmentally friendly Prius. White people like this generally want ethnic but they also don’t want “too ethnic”, if you know what I mean. An Asian baby collectible fits that bill perfectly.
NK, I was about to praise you for being a contrast to the sputtering wjk. You dissappoint with more outrageous speculative nonsense.
So what else is new in the land of Overactive Imagination?
Let me rephrase my last comment…
Some of you are just fucking nuts.
This is so politically incorrect, but hey… it’s the weekend and I don’t give a hoot.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/.....ommercial/
??? Adoption has long been accepted and practiced in the US. In the past, people married young, so infertility was rare. A couple with several children to feed had no reason to take in more.
Still more ignorant racialist rubbish. First of all, every orphan child needs a home. African children do not need a home more than Romanian children or Chinese children. Secondly, White parents adopt foreign children from Eastern Europe, Central America, and Asia because there are countries on those continents that have reliable means of completing a successful adoption of a healthy child. Even Madonna had difficulty finalizing the adoption of her son David.
Domestic adoption of older American children is risky because many of those children are either severely physically disabled or emotionally disturbed. A cousin of mine and his wife have taken in foster children, some of whom were physically violent to the point of endangering themselves or others. Social services was dishonest about the children’s histories in order to get the couple to take in the kids.
Well first of all, I commend Katherine Heigl and her partner for adopting this Korean baby. I am pretty sure it was all out of the pure goodness of their hearts and not because it’s some wierd trendy Hollywood thing to do. Now, this adoptee will grow up to be yet another confused, no identity-having, mind-fucked twinkie because we simply just don’t have enough of those already.
First of all, every orphan child needs a home. African children do not need a home more than Romanian children or Chinese children. Secondly, White parents adopt foreign children from Eastern Europe, Central America, and Asia because there are countries on those continents that have reliable means of completing a successful adoption of a healthy child.
This doesn’t really counteract my initial argument. Why is this so? Why is it easier to adopt an Asian baby but not an African baby? That’s because, apart from the occasional Madonna or Angeline Jolie, both very recent examples of adoption from Africa, there was never a big demand. And why is that?
But I do agree that in this day and age it is unconscionable for Koreans to allow Korean babies to be exported abroad especially in light of the low birth rates. The government should give tax breaks and other assistance to Korean couples willing to adopt Korean children.
Net K,
“It is estimated in that in 2005, there were 109 million children with
no available caregivers living in Asia (62 million), Africa (39
million), and Latin America and the Caribbean (8 million). This
figure does not include children needing caregivers in Europe.”
IMMIGRANT ORPHANS ADOPTED BY U.S. CITIZENS BY GENDER, AGE, AND REGION AND COUNTRY OF BIRTH: FISCAL YEAR 2008
Africa 2,315
Asia 6,735
(from the us childwelfare site)
Not such a massive disparity is it? Especially considering the baby factory that is china? I was going to cherry pick Ethiopia (1600) vs Korea (1000) but a little research would have allowed you to try and discredit the whole point.
There you have actual statistics to show that you are full of shit.
No one has mentioned yet the actual effect it can have on the child itself, growing up as an ugly duckling. (I don’t mean the child is ugly for ffsake so don’t anyone bother latching onto that) Despite the time and age we live in, growing pains and identity issues always follow the children around. It does add to the potential issues if you look obviously different from both your parents or a lot of the people around you.
I’ve got a friend I might have mentioned before who was adopted from to Belgium. His sister was also from Korea. The girls might adjust a bit better but more issues with the boys. I was his first Korean friend. He said he didn’t want to visit Korea, and he didn’t have very good feelings towards it and he said that there were definitely problems with the adopted kids in Europe. I’ve been in Sweden, where the proportion of Korean adoptees(now Chinese) are very high. The Swedes themselves are nice, they mean well, but it doesn’t solve the problem. It’s like a mother abandonment issue multiplied many times by country abandonment issue.
Hubinette was a Swedish adoptee who caused quite a controversy by saying that all white men who go out with Asian women are paedophiliac tendencies.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if Mizar is an adoptee.
who was adopted from to Belgium. -> who was adopted from Korea to Belgium
who go out with Asian women are paedophiliac tendencies.-> Asian women have paedophilic
Can you support your assertion that a lack of interested adoptive parents is the primary reason why African countries aren’t noted for international adoptions, rather than other barriers like the health of the children or cumbersome regulations like the 18-24-month residency requirement which Malawi waived for Madonna?
for ffsake -> ffsake
Sonagi here I think a lot of factors at play here, we cannot just say it was traditionally not on the map because of the harder restrictions placed by the African countries such as : pre and post AIDS and rise of orphans & traditionally the grandmas raising the orphaned kids in Africa.. I think it’s a combination of factors also to do with whether they had colonies in that part, the family culture of the country and whether it had once been a source of slaves and various other issues which I missed out which all sit uncomfortably on our collective conscience.
Sonagi look above, I have shown that not only is it his own opinion and little else. But it is wrong. There clearly is significant interest in Adopting African babies.
And Yuna, ugly duckling syndrome has nothing on lack of attachment. When you see the truly messed up, juvenile offenders and reactive attachment disorder kids, you would know that having loving and attentive parents is much more important.
Yes there will be identity issues (no denying that), but have a look at wjk and netizen kim and tell me those poor two confused individuals aren’t struggling with identity issues (well maybe not wjk).
The emotional and developmental problems for kids that grow up in orphanges and are shifted from foster carer to foster carer are much more significant, making adoption into a family where bonds of attachment can be formed during those early years imperative for the childs well being. If Koreans would adopt Korean children that may be a better alternative, but as has been discussed here, that just does not happen often enough.
NK, who has not done any research into the subject again projects his personal insecurities into the topic to rationalize a demonstrated general tendency to overestimate the factor of race, while ignoring numerous other factors that have contributed to international adoptions.
The biggest source countries of adaptees in 2008 in order were:
1. Guatamala
2. China
3. Russia
4. Ethiopia
5. S. Korea
6. Viet Nam
Here are some facts cut from various studies:
Health: In the U.S., about 60% of these children have special needs such as an older adoptive age, physical disabilities or mental problems According to Children’s Bureau of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there were 117,000 U.S. children waiting to be adopted by March 1999. Among these waiting children, 34% are White, 45% Black, 12% Hispanic. Only three percent of minority children waiting are less than 1 year old and 32% are between 1 and 5 years old.
Some couples stated that adoptive parents were worried about white babies being crack babies.
Gender: The U.S. is also a baby sending country and is not lacking a large supply of babies, but is short of certain types of babies that most adoptive parents desire. About 2/3 of foreign adoptions are infants under the age of one which is one of the important factors that makes international adoption more attractive than domestic . More girls than boys are adopted as women generally prefer to adopt girls according to the 2003 U.S. Census. Girls account for 95% of children waiting for adoption in China.
Fear of reclaiming an adopted child: Another concern for potential adoptive parents is that a child may be removed from the adoptive family home. Compared to domestic adoption, foreign adoption is essentially finalized because the birth parents are less likely to take away the child after the adoptive parents have already developed an attachment with the adopted child, nor would the birth parents be likely to interfere with the child’s life (Hollingsworth, 2003). This helps the adoptive parents feel more secure and makes international adoption more attractive than domestic adoption.
Waiting time: The 2003 U.S. Census special reports by Census attribute the increase in foreign adoption to the longer waiting time of domestic adoption.
Supply and demand: The percentage of babies given up for adoption by US teen mothers has dropped sharply from 9% before 1973 to 4% in 1981 and to 2% in 1988 (Stolley, 1993). Stolley concluded that “the number of women seeking to adopt surpasses the annual number of unrelated adoptions by a ratio of 3.3 to 1.” Other reasons cited for increasing demand are: effects of infertility, delayed childbirth, and single and gay parenthood. Mosher and Bachrach’s research showed that “the rates of infertility did not change significantly in the 1980s, but because of delayed childbearing and the aging of the baby-boom cohort, the number of older childless women increased substantially.”
Increased adoption by gay and single parents: Another factor that may increase the demand for foreign adoption is the struggles by single parents and gay couples to adopt children. Single and gay parenthood are not as negative and stigmatized as before. Single women are more likely to adopt than they were before, both domestically and internationally, so the increase in foreign adoption can also be attributed to the increasing social acceptance of single parenthood and gay parenthood (U.S. News & World Report, 2001).
Government policy: Policies which favors foreign adoption have made it easier for people to adopt internationally as well for a long time. Foreign adoption became institutionalized after the Korean War and a 1994 federal law made it illegal for agencies to refuse to place a child with parents of another race (Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994). The Childhood Citizenship Act of 2000 guarantees that children adopted abroad now became citizens once they enter the States. Adoptive families also benefited financially from the recent legislation (Adoption Tax Credits, the Promoting Safe and Stable Families program)
Economic factors: The adoption process has become increaingly commercialized and industrialized in both sending and receiving countries. Since China implemented its one-child-per-couple policy in late 1979, there have been many abandoned girls. Commercialized international adoption has made abandoned Chinese children more likely to be adopted outside the country rather than inside the country.
Race: Some attitudes toward choice of adoption reflect prejudices against the minority groups, ie. a more positive attitudes towards Asians than blacks. However, the first national survey of public attitudes about adoptions in 1997 revealed that the majority of people (over 75%) approve of white people adopting a black baby and black people adopting a white baby (Simon and Altstein, 2000). The 1999 report by National Center for Health Statistics found that 73% of white women would accept a black child.
Yes ink, some Kyopos identity issues ^3 = abroad adoptee’s identity issues.
It came from issue of looking different in a country(kyopo) * issue of looking different from your parents * issue of country which you were exported from looking at you with a certain angle and feeling like you’ve been rejected a second time
Where did I draw that formula from? Out of my arse again of course, so don’t no one attack me in more than 100 comments. I won’t engage.
Don’t no one attack me for my bringing in slavery which has nothing to do with this thread either.
@Yuna:
Health concerns and regulations were two examples of obstacles to adoptions of African children. I did not even imply that these two reasons were all-inclusive. I cited these two examples to refute NK’s unsupported assertion that the principal reason for underadoption of African children is an unwillingness of American parents to raise Black children. Curious that you took issue with my post and not NK’s unsupported claim made twice.
Hey Mizar, doesn’t the first sentence of the last section “Race” support Netizen Kim didn’t pull his opinion out of *his* arse altogether?
A: Apples are mostly red
B: Bullshit
A: It’s not bullshit
B: They are red, round and crispy delicious
A: Still, they are red, and so it’s bullshit to say it’s bullshit.
B: It’s confirmation bias.
one Korean I know noted that white people will feel queasy or even go berserk when and if Koreans were adopting white children to raise.
this has been going on in a few cases, of course.
There are various sources. Russia, Eastern Europe.
The problem with Africa is AIDS.
Koreans don’t adopt because some rightfully believe as Yangbans, they should have a pure blood line, raising only blood relations. Most, however, are sadly mistakenly believing they are Yangbans. Kimhae Kim who has been running a shikdang all his life? Come, on.
Only 2 countries I am aware of, where handful of last names are the last names of most of the population.
1/ Korea.
2/ Vietnam.
A: Apples are mostly red
B: Bullshit
A: It’s not bullshit
B: China is the world’s largest apple producer, and its most commonly grown variety is the Fuji, whose greenish yellow skin is adorned with speckled pink stripes. Most of those apples lose their skins and end up pulverized and reduced to concentrate, which is then sold to North American food manufacturers to be reconstituted into juice or added to other food products.
소나기, 하하하. 아이 라이크 유어 스타일,
Wow, some of the things said on this thread set new records for stupid. White people do some really awful stuff (I just finished Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”), but adopting orphans, regardless of their skin tone, is not one of them.
I defy anyone to consider for just a moment how heart-breaking it is to be told by a doctor that you and your spouse can’t have children, and still maintain that Western adopters are villains*. Show some fucking empathy.
Yes, Koreans get upset about “their” babies being sent to American couples. But the Koreans I’ve spoken to know damn well where the blame for Korean baby exportation lies, and for once, it ain’t with the white folk.
* The extent to which this applies to Hollywood celebrities is left as an exercise to the reader. Especially to readers who don’t understand statistical significance and have no problem making wild guesses at couples’ fertility in the absence of anything resembling fact.
The fact that Korean babies are adopted abroad and its responsibility lies solely on the Koreans. That’s why when I was still at school, I contributed to an effort to stop this from happening and to raise awareness with the Koreans.
I’m also interested to know, what reasons some parents who *can* have their own natural children have to adopt from abroad (nothing wrong with it, just curious)
I used to work with a couple who adopted two Chinese girls while living in China because the wife just didn’t want to go through the experience of pregnancy and childbirth.
At my school there are a number of mixed-race children who don’t look clearly like either parent. These kids don’t stand out at all in a classroom with peers in wheelchairs or acting out in an autistic moment. One of the most beautiful friendships I’ve witnessed was between a severely autistic White girl and Black boy with an enlarged head and crippled legs, legacies of prenatal exposure to crack. His White adoptive parents thought he was a gift from God. In many US public schools, there are no ugly ducklings because there is no representative model.
My fellow gyopos, let’s go adopt some Eastern Europeans.
wjk:
If you’re trying to agitate me, you have failed beyond measure. I think it would be wonderful for gyopos to adopt white orphans in need of a good home. (Well, not YOU, of course. But gyopos in general.)
I’m not sure what you are getting at, Yuna. Does it surprising that race would be a factor? Did you have such an exhaulted view of Americans that you believed that they had all transcended their human shells and ascended into the heavens ? I certainly wish that were true – because, believe me, it gets lonely up here sometimes.
Mizar5,
Shut up.
.
“My fellow gyopos, let’s go adopt some Eastern Europeans.”
Preferably leggy 18-year-old blonds, right?
you racist mother fucker someguyinkorea,
I don’t give a shit whether or not someone is blond, and contrary to what you think
blond does not mean beautiful.
Hitler thought blond means beautiful.
Hitler and you are the same.
historically whites have tried to symbolically say,
“I’m a good person”
by adopting non whites.
Who has done this?
Adopting a non white was key for these race conscious celebrities, a stark contrast to say Dave Thomas.
someguy, still going around saying you’re the same ethinicity as Shananana Twain, and thus you aren’t white and blablablah? People will laugh at you, you dumb ass. Looks like your tribe did as good a job preserving genetic feautures as Steven Segal’s.
Yaaaaawn.
Some of my thoughts on why Koreans are so hung on genetics when it comes to offspring:
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/.....ent-168621
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/.....ent-168756
There is a Yuna in the thread linked above. Same as today’s Yuna?
Check out what Josh Kelley said:
“We adopted a baby from Korea, me and my girl, and she’s awesome, dude! This girl is the bomb!”
http://www.people.com/people/a.....94,00.html
WangKon, with due respect, “Koreans think this way because….” followed by conjecture about the extent to which the worldview of the Shilla dynasty might have carried over to the present is not really a valid approach to understanding the issue. Conjectures about peninsular nations and so forth also strike me as irrelevant. You’re overthinking and practicing reification.
The mindset of a people derives from a combination of the way that they were taught by the previous generation, peer pressure, societal mores and their adoptations to the conditions, opportunities and challanges of the contemporary socio-economic environment. Korea is an isolated nation in which people huddle together for comfort because they in fact need not interact with foreigners in any meaningful manner. As people are essentially lazy, and tend to just get by with as little effort as possible. As long as there remains no compelling need for Koreans to conform to the expectations of outsiders, they will not. As long as they remain a fairly homogeneous nation, sensitivity to interracial or intercultural issues will never be a priority, and Korean will continue to behave in inan sensitive manner toward outsiders.
While I don’t want to squash anybody’s pie-in-the-sky optimism about Korean interracial and intercultural issues, it really has not changed appreciably over the past 4 decades, and there is no reason to expect it to.
No need to overthink; it’s really as simple as that.
She’s a “special needs” child. I would say that gives them the right to brag.
Then you’ll always have a big gaping hole in your understanding of Koreans. Things that happened in the past, even the very distant past does affect how people think today. Do you also think it is ridiculous how the way Athenians voted on broken clay pieces of pottery 2,300 years ago affected how Western nations have democracy today? Bear in mind that democracy is, of course, a Greek word.
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