Shame on people! New York Times writer, Sopan Deb and White House Correspondent James Oliphant used a Twitter exchange to taunt President Trump. What they ended up doing was so much more. They furthered the narrative that it’s okay to mock people for being adopted. As an adoptee I can tell you, it’s not okay. It’s gone on long enough. Celebrities, media, and everyone else for that matter have been marginalizing the feelings of adopted people forever. It’s happened in shows and movies for decades. Enough is enough. It’s not alright to imply that because someone is adopted, they are different or unwanted. Children are placed for adoption for many reasons, but most of all because their parents want the best for them. Adoptees have not been discarded like has been suggested.
“Speaking of adoption, we are a couple hours from a Trump tweet that says Don Jr is adopted.”
In the growing list of groups who we, as a society, are carefully navigating around the feeling of, adoptees aren’t even on the radar. The tweet has received over 7k likes, which proves a lot of people don’t see this as a problem. People need to see the comments the way adoptees do. The jokes I grew up with have got to go. Imagine a toddler licking a wall and the parent says to another adult, “Don’t mind him, he’s adopted.” It says the child is different, separate.
“He’s too good-looking to be adopted.”
Adoptees are an almost invisible class of people who are fighting for their rights in this country. We are fighting city by city, state by state to obtain our original birth certificates. We are fighting to gain access to information so many others take for granted. We are writing letters and protesting. We are changing laws so that future generations have it better than we did. We don’t want to be dismissed or diminished anymore. We need to be seen by you. Stop the insults, and stand with us!
