One of Corazon Swanberg's most vivid childhood memories is of being ridiculed in kindergarten because of her hair. "My mom just didn't have time to braid my hair, and so she had combed it out and just put it into puffs," said Swanberg, now a 23-year-old studying social work in Boston. "As soon as the door to the classroom shut, people were laughing at me because I looked different." But it would be almost two decades before the former dancer, who is of mixed heritage including African American, talked about that profoundly significant event with her adoptive mother, Tory Rhodin, who is white. Growing up as a person of color in the Upper Valley area, Swanberg was often the only minority student in class, she recalled. While she found support in a circle of fellow transracial adoptees and a mentoring program at Dartmouth College for minority children, she still faced plenty of challenges. Swanberg's adoptive white parents were "woke," she said, and celebrated Kwanzaa with her. It became easier to talk to them about those early painful experiences as she got older. Rhodin, a social worker, said her daughter's revelation made her sad. "It struck me that there were a lot of things that happened that we probably never heard about," she said. "She managed on her own, even though I had usually imagined we were more or less on top of things." Transracial adoption, or raising a child of another race or ethnicity, always brings challenges, said Catherine Harris, the post-permanence program manager at the Vermont Department for Children and Families. While families may raise their children to be color-blind, the larger society is not. The experiences of white children are not the same as those of minority children. "It's not always an easy childhood for children of color in Vermont," observed Harris. Transracial adoptees may feel additional alienation because their parents cannot relate to their experiences. A tragic incident in California in March brought transracial adoption under public scrutiny: Jennifer Hart drove off a cliff with her wife and their six black adopted children. Child welfare officials in three states had received reports of abuse in Hart's home, and the investigation touched off online debates about the white women's motive in adopting black children. In Vermont, transracial adoption came to the fore this summer after reports of racism by participants in a weeklong camp in Stowe for…
One of Corazon Swanberg's most vivid childhood memories is of being ridiculed in kindergarten because of her hair. "My mom just didn't have time to braid my hair, and so she had combed it out and just put it into puffs," said Swanberg, now a 23-year-old studying social work in Boston. "As soon as the door to the classroom shut, people were laughing at me because I looked different." But it would be almost two decades before the former dancer, who is of mixed heritage including African American, talked about that profoundly significant event with her adoptive mother, Tory Rhodin, who is white. Growing up as a person of color in the Upper Valley area, Swanberg was often the only minority student in class, she recalled. While she found support in a circle of fellow transracial adoptees and a mentoring program at Dartmouth College for minority children, she still faced plenty of challenges. Swanberg's adoptive white parents were "woke," she said, and celebrated Kwanzaa with her. It became easier to talk to them about those early painful experiences as she got older. Rhodin, a social worker, said her daughter's revelation made her sad. "It struck me that there were a lot of things that happened that we probably never heard about," she said. "She managed on her own, even though I had usually imagined we were more or less on top of things." Transracial adoption, or raising a child of another race or ethnicity, always brings challenges, said Catherine Harris, the post-permanence program manager at the Vermont Department for Children and Families. While families may raise their children to be color-blind, the larger society is not. The experiences of white children are not the same as those of minority children. "It's not always an easy childhood for children of color in Vermont," observed Harris. Transracial adoptees may feel additional alienation because their parents cannot relate to their experiences. A tragic incident in California in March brought transracial adoption under public scrutiny: Jennifer Hart drove off a cliff with her wife and their six black adopted children. Child welfare officials in three states had received reports of abuse in Hart's home, and the investigation touched off online debates about the white women's motive in adopting black children. In Vermont, transracial adoption came to the fore this summer after reports of racism by participants in a weeklong camp in Stowe for…