From Model Minority to Racial Threat: Chinese Transracial Adoptees' Experience Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic

This qualitative study explores Chinese transracial adoptees' experiences navigating the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, focusing on identity negotiation, sense of belonging, and encounters with COVID-19-related racism at the familial, community, and societal level. Participants (N = 20) were Chinese transracial adoptees, born in China and raised in White adoptive families in the United States, between the ages of 19 and 28 (M = 23.1), who were between 6 and 16 months (M = 9.5) when they were adopted. Data collected through in-depth, semistructured individual interviews, conducted via Zoom, were coded using phenomenological analysis. Findings suggest a superordinate theme in which COVID-19 presents a multipronged threat to Chinese transracial adoptees. Not only are they unjustly feared and judged by others, but their physical safety and psychological well-being are in jeopardy. This overarching theme was characterized by three core themes: (a) from model minority to racial threat, (b) questioning of identity and sense of belonging, and (c) COVID-19 pandemic as evoking thoughts of adoption. Subsequently, the following eight subthemes emerged: (a) Asian Americans perceived as a racial threat, (b) ongoing denial of anti-Asian racism, (c) coping with COVID-19-related racism, (d) solidarity with the Asian community yet deidentification with Chinese identity, (e) increased sense of being a perpetual foreigner in the U.S., (f) feeling of in-betweenness amplified by sociopolitical tension, (g) increased thoughts of birth parents, and (h) feelings about past and present restrictive government policies in China. Study limitations and future clinical and research directions are discussed. What is the public significance of this article? The present study offers insight into Chinese transracial adoptees' experience negotiating their racial identity and sense of belonging within their White families and in the United States amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings have the potential to give voice to Chinese transracial adoptees and their unique marginalization experiences, and increase acceptance of Chinese transracial adoptees within Asian American spaces and the U.S. at large.