This dissertation is an examination of racialization – ideologies of human racial difference and inequality—and how it shapes the lives of transnationally adopted Korean Americans. As infants and children, they are brought to the United States through the process of transnational adoption, which usually translates to interracial adoption as these children are incorporated into a racialized system that constructs them as "Asian" or "non-White," and their adoptive parents are usually "White" or of "European descent." Korean adoptees are largely placed in communities isolated from other Asian Americans or racial minorities. The lives of Korean adoptees provide a unique site for exploring how race is experienced, processed, and expressed in the contemporary United States.

There are two analytical dimensions to this dissertation, one dimension focuses on how Korean adoptees are racially perceived and treated by White Americans and Asian Americans. The data shows that Korean adoptees are racialized within their predominantly White adoptive communities as honorary White people because they are Asian American and officially adopted by a White family. But ironically they are also perceived as perpetual foreigners because they are of Asian descent which marks them as non-white and therefore dubiously American. When Korean adoptees attempt to get in touch with their cultural roots, usually in college or as adults, they encounter Asian Americans, which include the immigrant generation, 1.5 generation, and second generation. They are often stereotyped as "White" or "cultural sell-outs" due to their interracial/cultural adoption, socialization, and lack of Korean or Asian American specific social capital.

The second analytical dimension of my research focuses on how Korean adoptees respond to their racialization; it explores narratives of how individuals submit to, manipulate and resist stereotypes and rigid classifications. Some informants conformed to expectations of being White, Korean, and/or Asian American. Other times, the task of culturally "fitting in" and being true to their own feelings of cultural identity were so incongruent that they created new cultural categories, social networks, and conceptual spaces to accommodate their cultural difference. Their transnational and interracial adoption usually provides the conceptual base for getting around the rigid expectations imposed by the dominant racial systems they encounter. Some have even created or joined adoptee-specific groups where their cultural experiences are validated and their political perspectives on race and adoption can be discussed and debated. But these spaces are few and limited by time, space, and depth of personal interaction. Negotiating the terms of dominant racial systems typify their daily lives. This dissertation hopes to contribute to the critical study of race in the post-civil rights era by (a) shedding light on the complex ways in which social race is being perpetuated in contemporary multicultural and multiracial social contexts, and (b) investigating the long-term impact of racism, racialization, and minority status on transnationally and transracially adopted adults.