Pete Buttigieg got real about transracial adoption. It's making waves – with good reason.

USA Today

08-05-2025

Pete Buttigieg got real about transracial adoption. It's making waves – with good reason.
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'Teen Mom's' Tyler and Catelynn Baltierra reflect on adoption decision
15 Years Later: "Teen Mom" couple open up about grief from their adoption decision.
Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten are raising adopted Black children – something he recently discussed on the "Flagrant" podcast. And they're hardly alone.
Scroll through TikTok and you'll find wholesome, heartwarming stories about White parents with Black children posting videos perfecting their children's hair. Many comments are encouraging: "omg her hair is beautiful and so is a mothers love." "A mother who TRIES is all our kids need." "You're doing a great job caring for them."
Buttigieg alluded to plenty of advice he received on his children's hair from Black parents on social media. "They're like, 'let me tell you how to do it,'" he said.
Today, there are plenty of resources for parents who adopt children of a different race, a process known as transracial adoption. But that wasn't always the case.
For transracial adoptees who grew up in White families decades ago, these TikTok videos and the attention this subject is now getting bring mixed emotions. It's encouraging to see how far things have come in terms of adoptive parents working to better understand their children's needs. But these viral positive posts aren't reflective of what they experienced.
Some now-adult transracial adoptees are determined to share their stories too, to combat what they say is an overly rosy narrative about adoption. They hope in doing so, the experience of Black adoptees will continue to improve and evolve.
DezaRay Mons, transracial infant adoptee who goes by @TheOutspokenAdoptee online, hopes to raise awareness about the types of things she experienced growing up in the '80s and to make sure people adopting Black children today have a comprehensive view of the experience. For example, Mons explains for many in the transracial adoptee community, "Our first microaggressions are often with our White adoptive families.'
'It broke me'
Mary-Noreen Troup knew she was adopted growing up. She found out within the last few years that she is biracial: Her mother was White and her father was Black. Her mother's family was racist. 'She wanted to keep me but she could not bring home a biracial baby," the Riverside, California, resident, 54, says. She kept her pregnancy a secret for nine months. A few months after that, Troup's White adoptive parents took her in from foster care as their own.
The trauma she experienced didn't sink in until adulthood.
'It broke me, because I love these people, and they love me, but they did not love all of me," Troup says. "They desperately wanted to try to erase the Black part.'
Since her earliest memories, she sat ashamed in her skin. Her parents, who lived in an all-White community, never wanted to acknowledge she was Black. They whispered about her Blackness. "She's biracial," they'd say, explaining why she looked different. Her mother often yanked her hair, perplexed.
'She would hit me on the head with a brush, because she was so frustrated, she didn't know what to do with my hair," Troup said. She called it "a rat's nest." "Medusa." As an adult, Troup's Black community embraced and loved her hair – something she never experienced before.
Kristine Brown's White adoptive family from Connecticut was Italian. Her family brushed away concerns she looked different from them. 'Well, just tell people you're a really tan Italian person," the 47-year-old remembers her family saying.
That didn't square with her experiences at school, getting called the N-word. Her parents insisted she wasn't Black when her mirror said otherwise. Her middle school guidance counselor ultimately intervened and explained to her that she was indeed an African-American student.
Their stories align with a growing trend: In recent years, more adoptees of all races have begun speaking out about the difficulties they faced. In the process, they're providing different view of the adoption process, which experts and advocates say is often depicted solely in an positive light.
"The narrative that the industry puts out there is so adoptive-parents heavy and so-savior heavy that it doesn't allow for grieving, for loss, for feelings of abandonment, rejection, all of those things, basically to be legitimate and so those feelings are pushed down, shut down, because adoption's beautiful and wonderful, and you've been saved," says Abigail Hasberry, an adoptee, therapist and author of "Adopting Privilege."
Important: This 'Teen Mom' couple's adoption nightmare is sparking an important conversation
'They won't ever really understand'
Hasberry often talked to her mother about race. 'My mother was very open about race and racial differences and how other people would perceive me," she says. "And so we had lots of conversations about race as far back as I can remember.'
Her mother made her understand what was happening in the world and Hasberry's place in it, but in Hasberry's mind, she still fell short of where she could've been.
'There are things that just are never going to be part of our relationship, and that I know that they won't ever really understand," she says of her adoptive family.
Buttigieg, for his part, is trying to do all the right things: 'You're constantly asking yourself: 'How can I be a good dad'. Now it's: 'How can I be a good dad for kids who have a different racial identity than I do? How can I help them navigate that?"
'Why do I feel so horrible all the time?'
Karasalla Patton, 36, grew up in a not-so-diverse area of Oregon – meaning she stuck out in her White family and her community at large. The only Black person around.
She felt like 'there was something wrong, and I could never really put my finger on it as a kid, because, you know, you're always told, like, 'you got a better life. They got you because they love you. Your mom gave you up for good reasons.' As I grew up, I always was like, something's not adding up. Because if it was all good reasons, why do I feel so horrible all the time?'
She remembers her first instance of racism. She attended a church camp with her family when she was 6-years-old. A little girl stared her down and let Patton know that she wasn't allowed to play with Black kids. She thought to herself: "Well, I'm Brown but I'm not Black." Her parents pushed the comments aside, explaining they just don't know her yet, don't know how smart she is. They never said anything like "hey, some people are bad people, and they will hate you just because of what you look like. And that's not OK.'
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How conversations about adoptions are shifting
The conversations around adoption in general have come a long way in recent years. Tyler and Catelynn Baltierra of "Teen Mom" fame have been outspoken about seeing adoption as trauma following their lost contact with their birth daughter. For transracial adoption specifically, adoptees say more open and honest conversations about the process are long overdue.
Adopting a child of a different race takes someone dedicated to learning (and un-learning) and growing even when it's uncomfortable, Patton says. But there are caveats: You need to prioritize the cultural and ethnic and racial background of your child, even when that child may want to assimilate.
'There's not really assimilation for Black children," Patton says. "Our assimilation stops the moment we're not with our White family. Our proximity to Whiteness doesn't protect us.' That means everything from proper care hair to talking through how people may treat you differently based on the color of your skin.
The Buttigieg family is trying to provide the best environment for their children. 'We think about it all the time. It's not like we have it all figured out,' Pete Buttigieg also said on the podcast.
Joni Schwartz, who is White, adopted her Black now-adult daughter Rebecca, feels like she would've done things differently. Larger conversations about race, education and preparation are imperative.
'Knowing what I know today, I would have prepared very differently for several reasons … I would have known much more about White privilege and White saviorism, and I wasn't prepared racially,' Schwartz says.
Elizabeth Bartholet, researcher and emeritus law professor at Harvard Law School, is a transracial, international adoptive parent herself. 'Have I felt inadequate and (questioned) my ability to deal with the racism that my two Brown skinned Peruvian-born children faced? Yes, I mean, that's a real challenge," Bartholet adds. "And I feel had I been a Brown skin Peruvian person, I might, in some ways, have been a better parent in terms of those issues, but I might or might not. And obviously it's something I tried to educate myself about and think about as I think virtually all transracial and international adoptive parents do."
But Bartholet reminds herself − and others − there are many facets to being a great parent. 'Often when people look at the transracial issue, it's as if that's the only issue in life. And obviously it isn't," Bartholet adds.
How can they parents learn more and curb their children's trauma before it starts? It begins with openness, something most transracial adoptees support.
And a move toward more well-rounded conversations about adoption is what makes scrolling through upbeat videos of adoptive parents on TikTok seeking advice all the more hopeful. Ditto comments like these from Buttigieg: "I need to connect them (with) mentors and people in their lives, because the reality is this is not a colorblind society."