Is Interracial Adoption and Tansracial Adoption the same?

Question

I have been under the impression that interracial adoption and transraccial adoptions are the same but they are not? Right? From my understanding interracial adoptions are children adopted outside of the united States and transracial adoption is when parents try to mold children into the race they want them to be? Am I right?Please help me.

Answer 1

i second Marsha R's explanation. i'm a transracial adoptee. i'm bi-racial and my parents are white. however transracial does not mean what you stated above."transracial adoption is when parents try to mold childern into the race they want to be" i'm afarid to tell you that-that defintion is wrong!!! because if that definition was true my parents would be trying to make me white!

Answer 2

I have seen both Interracial and Transracial adoption used, and yes, they are both used to mean the same thing--the adoptive parent(s) and the adopted child are not of the same race. (It can be that only one parent is of a different race than the child, and then it is transracial with regard to that parent.) Transracial/Interracial adoption can be international or from within the same country.

The derivation is a subtly different: "trans-" means "across, beyond, crossing" and "inter-" means "between or among." So "transracial" means "across races" or "crossing [boundaries of] race" and "Interracial means "between races." Interracial is often used when talking about love (or s*x) relationships >between< adults. Transracial does not have that context (in fact a quick Google shows it almost always refers to adoption), so it is the better term to use when talking about adoption. I think interracial is mostly an older usage.

Regarding the idea that "transracial adoption is when the parents try to mold chldren into the race they want them to be." Well, yeah, very unfortunately that does happen--and it is called Racism!  

You can't mold someone into a different race, not without severe repercussions--look at Michael Jackson (shudder).

Maybe somehow the prefix "trans" caused some confusion somehow because it is often encountered in "transgender" or "transsexual," where a really basic change maybe >is< being made? In those cases it is the identity that is "trans." Any changes that are made are just the result of the "crossed" identity.

Answer 3

International adoption is the adoption of a child from another country, no matter what race the child or parents are.

Transracial adopton is when the parents adopt a child of a different race than they are, no matter what country, even domestically.

I think you had interracial and international mixed up?

Answer 4

You can’t mold someone into a different race. Transracial is where the adopting couple/person is not the same race as the child they are going to adopt.  For example a white couple adopts an Asian child. A black woman adopts a white child.  An asian couple adopts a mixed raced child. Also interracial is interchangeable with Transracial it means the same thing.

Tranraical/interracial  adoption happens both domestically and internationally.

Answer 5

They are the same. "Intercountry" and "international" are used for adoptions that aren't for children born in the U.S. Transracial and interracial mean the race of the adoptive parents and the adopted child are different. Some adoptive parents might neglect the heritage of the adoptive child. This seems to occur more in biracial children when Caucasian parents emphasize the Caucasian heritage of the child. This is a bad idea. For one thing, usually society identitifies a child as African American if they only look a little African American. Therefore the child grows up confused and unable to cope with racism. Our country is unfortunately still quite bigoted.

Answer 6

interracial adoptions are adoptions within the same race.  transracial are adoptions where the child and parents are different races.  you might mean international adoptions.  internations is where the child was adopted from a foreign country outside of the United States in my case.  domestic adoptions are adoptions where the adoptee is from the same country as the adoptive parents.