What Happens When a Black Adoptee in a White Family Realizes Love Isn’t Protection
There’s a unique ache that comes with being a Black transracial adoptee in America — a reality that isn’t often spoken about in white living rooms or family dinners, especially when that family is the one you were adopted into. It’s the ache of being “loved” while watching the people who claim to love you vote against your safety, dignity, and future. I’m a multiracial man — Black and white — adopted and raised by a white mother and stepfather, surrounded by a majority white prevalent family, and a society where I am identified as a Black man. In a world where proximity to whiteness is currency, I was handed a false pass — one that meant nothing once I stepped outside the house, and in recent years, not even within it.
I didn’t grow up in a whitewashed suburb. I was raised in a predominantly Black and Brown community where most of my friends looked like me — or at least, didn’t look like my family. That gave me a unique lens early on. At home, I was navigating whiteness, constantly translating my lived experience in a way my parents could understand (or ignore). Outside, I was learning how to survive and find belonging among people who shared my skin tone but not always my story. Later in life, I pursued a graduate degree in organizational studies — the study of how people, groups, and institutions function — using an interdisciplinary lens of psychology, sociology, political science, and economics. My academic training helped me name the systems I had been surviving my whole life. It taught me to see how love, power, and identity operate within families and institutions alike — and how even the most well-meaning intentions can be steeped in harm when they go unexamined.
This story is not about politics. It’s about patterns. It’s about pain. And above all, it’s about how white people from my experience in my white family, when left unchallenged, will often choose comfort over accountability — even when the person they harm is someone they “love.”
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The Myth of Colorblind Love
Growing up, my mom often said she, “I don’t see color.” It was meant to be a loving sentiment — a sign that I belonged. But what I came to understand is that when white people say they don’t see color, what they’re really saying is, “I won’t see the ways you suffer.” It’s an erasure disguised as affection, rooted in the idea that if we just pretend race doesn’t matter, racism won’t exist. But for adoptees like me — especially those of us who aren’t white passing — our race is never invisible to the world. And when our parents refuse to acknowledge it, we’re forced to fight alone, even within our own homes and families, not just in society.
But beyond the personal anecdote against the idea of not seeing color, there’s a body of social science that makes clear why universal colorblindness as it pertains to race isn’t just ineffective — it’s impossible. Our brains are wired to make quick decisions based on patterns and prior experiences, using what psychologists call heuristics — mental shortcuts that help us process vast amounts of information quickly. These heuristics are shaped by the environment we grow up in: the people we’re around, the media we consume, the stories we hear, and the biases passed down — explicitly or implicitly — by those in power (anyone that holds a position we see as influential in our lives). Over time, our heuristics form the foundation of our schemata, or the mental frameworks we use to understand and ultimately navigate the world. When it comes to race, these schemas often reinforce societal hierarchies and stereotypes, even if we’re not conscious of it. So when someone says they “don’t see color,” what they’re actually doing is refusing to examine the very mental shortcuts and assumptions that guide their behavior. It’s not a lack of prejudice — it’s a refusal to acknowledge the lens through which that prejudice operates. And that refusal, however well-intentioned, blocks the possibility of true empathy, followed by compassion and sympathy for those different from themselves.
So the moment you are “loved” but not protected, the illusion of safety shatters. That’s a reality many Black people have come to terms with. It’s a daily juggle in this society. That moment — or at least one of — came for me when my parents starkly expressed political beliefs that directly endangered my rights — not just as a Black man, but as a gay Black man. It’s not just that they voted for a party known for anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. It’s that, when confronted, they’d deflect with anecdotes like (“Trump went to Elton John’s gay wedding”) or racist oversimplifications and epithets (“Black people just need better education”). These weren’t slips of the tongue. They were symptoms of deeper ideological fractures — ones that could no longer be smoothed over with Hallmark-card sentiments, and proved that they do see color.
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Whiteness, Groupthink, and the Comfort of Cognitive Dissonance
What I’ve come to see clearly — painfully clearly — while living in a white family is how whiteness operates. There’s a phenomenon called the cross-race effect or ingroup advatage, a psychological tendency where people more easily recognize and empathize with members of their own race. For many white people, this isn’t just about facial recognition — it’s emotional recognition. My parents for example, unconsciously don’t recognize that they are determining that my pain doesn’t register the same way their own does, and they behave in ways that harm me and anyone whose reflection they don’t see in themselves. It’s how my stepdad can utter, and my mom stand by in silence, without hesitation and without advocacy, that “Black people just need better education” — a statement that flattens centuries of systemic inequity into a problem of individual responsibility. Yet, felt no remorse of having said and done it even while in that moment I expressed frustration and hurt around it. It was as if for them there were no feelings or pain for me associated to juxtaposition of talking about Black people in negative ways and me standing there as a Black man.
The irony? I’m Black. I’m educated. I’ve achieved academic and professional success. I’m a disabled veteran. Yet even with all of that, my lived experience is still reduced to a deficiency narrative. Because to them and many members of my greater family, no amount of anything can override the internalized belief that Blackness is inherently a barrier, and something to be fixed rather than loved. That’s the insidious part of whiteness — it creates shortcuts in the mind that allow even the most “loving” people to stereotype, to condescend, and to dismiss. And when those biases go unchecked within a family, they don’t just cause harm — they fracture trust and safety at the deepest level.
To take that a step further, when you investigate that interaction in the context of society, that’s where you can find Blackness not inherently being the barrier but the mental model of whiteness that establishes and fosters a barrier for Black people — how implicit and overt racial views by white people as individuals become whiteness as a group perpetuating systemic and systematic racism.
It doesn’t stop at a white person’s individual bias, like being unconsciously influenced by the cross-race effect. It is compounded by groupthink — the gravitational pull to preserve harmony within a group like. For white communities and families, this conformity even happens at the cost of justice. Cross-race effect influences how individuals process and respond to race, but groupthink takes that one step further — turning individuals into agents of predictable behavior shaped by the values, language, and boundaries of the group. In this context, it’s not just that my mom fails to speak up when my stepdad or other relatives make racist or inappropriate remarks — it’s that her silence is a learned response. Whiteness teaches silence as a form of survival, not in the face of threat, but in the face of discomfort. That discomfort is tied to power — specifically, who holds it, who challenges it, and what it might mean if she spoke up against a family member she concedes to being in a dominant position like my stepdad or any other male in the family. Even if it goes against someone like me, her Black son.
I’ve begun to theorize that within white systems, especially those shaped by conservative and Christian national ideologies, groupthink doesn’t just protect ideology — it protects positionality. The manifest function may appear to be “keeping the peace” or “agreeing to disagree,” but the latent function is more unsettling: it’s a quiet preservation of class and racial hierarchy, even with white families with transracial adoptee childrend. In that schema, no one wants the Black person — even the one they adopted — to be positioned above them in intellect, insight, or moral clarity. Why? Because to admit that would threaten not just the family’s worldview, but their internal ranking system — one where whiteness must always be at the top (even if they don’t consciously recognize that stratification).
Though in “recent” history, that racial superiority was hidden for older white people behind politeness and coded language, Trumpism gave whiteness full permission to reassert itself as dominant, explicitly and unapologetically demonizing “wokeness” to revert back to an acceptance around being “colorblind”. Through executive orders, public statements, and media echo chambers, whiteness was told it didn’t have to share “privilege,” or in another word, “opportunity” (which I feel opportunity is inclusive of safety, trust, and wellbeing). To break from that groupthink is not just uncomfortable — it’s an unrealized and unspoken betrayal of whiteness. And within families like mine, in those moments, love becomes conditional, truth becomes dangerous, and silence becomes the glue that keeps white identity intact, and my Blackness in dispare.
Then there’s cognitive dissonance — the psychological discomfort that arises when a person holds two conflicting beliefs or values. For my family, it’s the mental gymnastics required to say, “I love you,” while simultaneously endorsing, voting for, or defending policies and ideologies that actively harm me. Rather than resolve the dissonance by questioning their choices, many white people protect their self-image at all costs. They respond not with curiosity, but with confusion, denial, or emotional fragility. Like my mom, “I raised you not to see color” or “no one has ever called me a racist before” becomes a shield — a way to preserve their own sense of goodness while sidestepping the implications of their actions. Raising a Black child to be colorless in a world that targets them because of their color isn’t a form of progressive love — it’s a form of negligent denial.
What makes this even more complex is how cognitive dissonance doesn’t operate in isolation. It works in tandem with the cross-race effect, which distorts empathy and recognition across racial lines, and groupthink, which reinforces conformity and punishes dissent within white families and communities. Together, these forces don’t just shape opinions — they shape entire worldviews. To think otherwise, to truly see the impact of their actions and beliefs, would mean white people, like my parents, would have to admit something earth-shattering: that their entire framework of love, morality, and family has been built, at least in part, on a lie: that love alone is enough. They’d have to face that their silence has not just been passive, but complicit. And that their “good intentions” didn’t prevent harm — they enabled it.
To face that truth would mean reconciling a lifetime of behaviors and beliefs that have likely harmed not only strangers or acquaintances, but the very Black child they claim to love unconditionally. That kind of reckoning isn’t just hard — it’s identity-threatening. It’s a collapse of the world they’ve known and felt safe in. And the terrifying question they would be forced to answer is: Can I handle the truth? Maybe the reason my family has chosen not to see my Blackness isn’t because they don’t see color, but because deep down, they need to avoid what my Blackness means. My Blackness doesn’t fit into their worldview. And so, “I don’t see color” becomes the excuse — the way to reconcile within themselves the mental shortcuts that drive their choices, the way they don’t see themselves in my face, and the way they want to love me without confronting what loving someone like me actually requires. Stripping me of color makes it easier to keep me in a box that feels safe, familiar, and unchallenging to their conscious and unconscious biases — one where I can be there son without disrupting the image they have of their family, their politics, and the ever so whispers from the views they hold.
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Love Without Action Is Not Love at All
There’s a dangerous narrative many white parents of transracial adoptees fall into: that adoption alone is proof of anti-racism. That their choice to “give a child a better life” excuses them from the ongoing labor of understanding how whiteness, privilege, and systemic oppression shape that child’s reality. But the truth is, adoption is not the finish line for the family — it’s the starting point.
If you’re white, adopt a Black child, and fail to examine your relationship with whiteness, your child will pay the price for your ignorance. If you remain silent in rooms where racist remarks are made, your child learns that their dignity is negotiable and they don’t deserve to be respected or valued by anyone. And if you vote for candidates that support policies that reduce civil rights — especially those targeting the very intersections your child exists within — your child sees where your priorities truly lie. Let’s be clear: when you vote for tax breaks over trans rights, for “law and order” over racial justice, or for “religious freedom” over LGBTQ+ protections, you’re telling your child that your personal comfort, economic benefit, and political identity matter more than their safety, their future, and their full humanity.
You may tell yourself it’s more complicated than that. You may say you voted for the economy, or for security, or for tradition. But from where your Black child stands — especially one who is also gay — those votes don’t feel complicated. They feel targeted. They feel like betrayal. They feel like devastation and a collapse of their trust in you. Because every vote cast for someone who seeks to strip rights from people like your child is a vote that reinforces that they don’t fully belong — not in society, and not in your family. Your better economy or wanting to avoid a world war has nothing to do with Black or LGBTQ+ people — AT ALL!
Over time, what becomes painfully clear to that child is this: they were never fully claimed. They were invited into the family, maybe even loved in part, but never protected in full as a true part of the family. They were expected to adapt to the white family’s norms, not the family to their Black transracial adoptees reality. And when the policies you vote for reflect a desire to preserve a world where whiteness remains dominant and unchallenged, it tells your child they were always just a guest — temporarily accepted, conditionally included, and never truly home because if you want a world like that then what kind family do you think you uphold?
I am no longer interested in “I love you’s” that don’t come with action. Love, in the context of racial justice and LGBTQ+ safety, requires risk. It requires speaking up at the dinner table. It requires learning on your own instead of demanding education from the people already exhausted. And it absolutely requires acknowledging that your experience of the world is not universal — especially if you’re white.
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This Isn’t Just My Story — It’s a Call to Action
I am writing this not just as a Black transracial adopted son, but as a mirror. A mirror for every white person. A mirror for very white parent who has adopted a child of color. A mirror for every family member who thinks they can vote against our rights and still be invited to the wedding. A mirror for the liberal-minded who think love equals love is enough, while remaining complicit in systems of harm.
To care for someone different from yourself — racially, sexually, culturally, any interesectionality— is to accept responsibility for understanding what safety means to them. It is to interrogate your own beliefs, your own silences, and your own votes.
I no longer carry the burden of educating my parents. That weight was never mine to hold. What I carry now is clarity — and the understanding that if love isn’t backed by action, accountability, and advocacy, it’s not love. It’s convenient. So instead of bearing the weight for othersI choose to stand up for myself with pride from the mountaintops, to advocate not just change, but for my safety in the way I would if I was a parent.
Hear me and hear me loud.
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I am multiracial. I am Black. I am gay. I am a veteran. I am disabled. I am so many things that no one should want to be blind to because above all I am human and deserve to be seen, valued, and loved just like anyone else in this world. And I will not trade my dignity for family harmony. My safety and wellbeing is not a political opinion. It is a basic right I deserve.
If you say you care or love someone, then fight for them — loudly, consistently, and without asking them to do all the work.
Because the next generation of transracial adoptees are watching. And they deserve a world — and a family — that won’t betray them with silence.
Note: please understand this is my processing and reconciliation with the trauma around being adopted and that of transracial adoption. This isn’t the best representation of how I grew up though is a true acknowledgment of part of my experience in my family. This isn’t to say that I don’t have a “loving” family though it is my advocacy that they need to do better.
