Finding Your Roots could be the conversation starter you need to talk about adoption

Jacket photo on Birthmark, 1979

Last night I watched as rapper LL Cool J dealt with discovering that his mother was adopted, that the grandfather who lovingly raised him was not his biological grandfather.

He was shocked and surprised because of the love and caring he felt from the grandfather, and stunned about his mother because she herself did not know she was adopted. Later, LL Cool J (born James Todd Smith) and his mother were invited into her and his biological clan, one where they found people who they looked like, and also shared a love of boxing. Both his biological grandfather and grand uncle were successful boxers. His uncle was a champion who held a title for four years. Together this newly reunited family watched an old film of his uncle and grandfather boxing, and shared photos of the boxing gym where this grandfather (or his uncle, there was a lot of information to take down) trained both white and black boxers. Apparently on the back cover of one of his albums, LL Cool J is in a boxing stance with a punch. When
the photograph of his actual grandfather emerged, he immediately said, I can see the resemblance there. (Google LL Cool Jay; the boxing photos will show up.*)

All this was revealed on one of the most important shows for the cause of unsealing birth records of the adopted, Finding Your Roots on PBS. In its sixth season, black historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., traces the lineage of well-known people back as far as they can find it, always several generations.

Why is this show--just an hour six or eight times a season--such an important piece of unlocking sealed birth records of the adopted, or really anyone? Because it's a high-toned intellectual endeavor focusing on the absolute importance of knowing your roots. It is the kind of show that can reach lawyers, legislators, judges, governors, adoption workers, and their spouses, as well as adoptive parents. My husband Tony and I have been watching it for years, and I doubt we ever get through an episode without at least glassy eyes, if not downright tears. I can imagine the spouse of a judge or a legislator watching and telling the lawmaker about it, and maybe moving the emotional needle towards openness, old strictures be damned!

Richard Hill's convoluted
search and ultimate reunion. 

Last night when Cool J said something--I don't remember the exact words--but it touched a nerve:  Well, that did it! I said to Tony, somewhere between tears and laughter, for we are amused ourselves at how easily we are brought to tears.

The other rapper featured last night--the show groups together people who have something in common--was P Diddy or Sean Combs, who sychonistically was also in yesterday's New York Times crossword puzzle. (Clue: Rapper who would make a good barber.) Combs's father died when he was two, but he was not told the truth of how he died. He discovered it in an old newspaper clipping when he was in college. His father was a drug dealer and died during a shootout. Upon learning  his father was a drug dealer, Combs said: he was an entrepreneur--I kinda always wondered where I got that from. Drug-dealing is not the ideal entrepreneurship, of course, but blacks had limited opportunity, and Combs saw the connection with the way he lives his life, and how he built his business.

Now Sean Combs knew where he "got that from." Now more of his life made sense. I don't recall the show ever doing an adoptee search--as in someone comes in who is adopted themselves--it's usually a parent who is adopted. Tia Leoni's mother was adopted. When that happens, the guest and child of the adoptee, usually says something like, "she always wondered but there was no way she could find out.... " Gates and his team of genealogists and DNA sleuths find the ancestor and move on from that, as he did last night.

The point about the show is, the guests unfailingly say something about the meaning and importance of knowing their roots. How it fills in a hole. How they always wondered. How they feel more connected than they did before. The comments are unscripted, usually short, but touch upon the heart of the matter. To see ancestral names written down in a marriage ledger, or a slave record, or a census report of a century ago is incredibly powerful and emotional. The guests speak of always wondering where they got this or that trait from, of now having the gaps in their story filled in. Similar or related occupations show up frequently from long lost forebears. In photographs they see traces of themselves. Just like I do. Just like we all do who are able to.

The first memoir from a
first/birth mother, 1979. 

I can't help but see that the public who watches this show cannot be moved to not only think about their own roots, as I do, but to reflect upon the adopted people they know. The obvious hole in their identity must come to mind. Do adoptive parents watch? Or do they turn away? That's a unknown, but fathoming a guess, I'd say that many of them don't want to watch. Don't want to deal with the question of their children's identities. Don't want to be reminded. My daughter's adoptive mother, an inveterate reader, was told about my memoir Birthmark by a relative--in 1979, the first of its kind--but she didn't bother to track it down. She could have gotten it through the library in Madison, Wisconsin, she could have found it at a bookstore. But she did not want to know more about that other side of her childrens' adoptions.

Today, what a good tool Finding Your Roots could be for adoptive parents of children of any age to use as a conversation starter about their adoption, even if their children have never, ever mentioned they were interested in their origins.

I've told this story before, but it's worth repeating: One of my husband's best friends from college, we'll call him Bert, was adopted. His adoptive mother, from what Bert's told me, never knew he was curious about his roots. He learned he was adopted at 12 from a cousin, and when he asked, his mother confirmed it. His adoption was never brought up again at home. On his father's death bed, he asked Bert not to search "because it would kill your mother." So the searching Bert did--unsuccessfully--was done without her knowing. When she died, Bert asked an aunt--by now, our friend was in his seventies--and Presto! The aunt knew who his mother and father were. The maid of someone in the family, who though married, had an affair. Unfortunately, she was deceased.

My point is, any show that demonstrates the utter importance and deep emotion involved in knowing your roots, is a plus for us. It's why each show like This is Us with its initial adoption theme, or Bull where a casual comment about the need to know makes it into the script, or a reunion on the Today show, is another nail in the coffin of sealed records.

TLC's three-night program about baby selling, Taken At Birth, is another that is as nearly as much a police procedural (okay, I'm stretching that somewhat) as one about roots. The stuff that comes from the mouth of the first sold baby--who is now 70 something--is forceful, honest, poignant, and so amply demonstrates the need to know where one fits into the tree of life. Though I initially shied away from Taken at Birth--thinking I'd be crying all the way through--it isn't like that, and is so worth watching. The main person talking is one of the children who were sold, and who has devoted her life to tracking down the parents of the "Hicks Babies." You can watch all episodes on the computer or On Demand.

Adoptees who can't bring up the subject itself might ask their parents--yes, it will be edgy if adoption has never been talked about--if they watch Finding Your Roots, and suggest that they might, er, find it interesting. If nothing else, it will be a big clue that this subject has been eating at you. You never know, they might know more about your biological family than they have let on--because you never asked. And because you never asked, they never knew you were curious.--lorraine
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*Copyright prevents us from showing here.

Link to the trailer to Taken at Birth here,

TO READ 
Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA

Marcia L. Gorman

I loved this book. Unlike the author who was adopted, I just found out that my mother lied to me all my life about who my father was. I'm 66 yrs old! So needless to say, finding out this late in life was a mind blower. His story has inspired me simply because he was so tenacious about finding out who his birth parents were. The ebook also includes an addendum which explains all about DNA tests, how they work, and which one to use. ...I have been able to figure out which family I came from, but like the author, I'm still trying to figure out which of the three brothers was the culprit! It's been a very valuable tool.... Well written and a great drama.
FROM FMF

Finding Your Roots: Bastards show up in all family trees

Contacting siblings when a first mother is silent

Give the Gift of Life: Help give back your child's true identity

Know Thyself...How do adoptees do that without knowledge of who they were when they were born?