Does Family Really Matter?

A Review of Angela Tucker’s, You Should Be Grateful: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption

“Transracial adoption mirrors the trans-Atlantic slave trade,” said Angela Tucker during a recent presentation I attended. Taken aback, I glanced at my wife, whose uneasy shift in her chair mirrored my own discomfort. I leaned forward, hoping for some much-needed context. Tucker, a black woman adopted by white parents, continued by describing transracial adoption as “taking children out of our culture and forcing them to serve a white culture."

I sat back in my chair. I could understand that some adopters may neglect their child’s cultural background, but I wondered, is this a universal issue? Was the transracial adoption system built on racism? As a foster parent eager to explore Tucker’s perspective and gain deeper insight into her views on society, identity, and adoption, I decided to read her book, You Should Be Grateful”: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption.

Foundations of Tucker’s Ideas

In both her talk and her book, Tucker raises issues of “whiteness," “microaggressions," “centering different voices," “macro-systems issues," “choosing to privilege whiteness," and “policies designed to oppress.” These terms reflect a distinct ideological framework. To understand Tucker’s positions, we need to recognize their philosophical roots in the work of thinkers like Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire.

Gramsci and Freire both saw educational institutions as critical for reshaping minds and, ultimately, culture. Gramsci coined the idea of a "long march through the institutions," a gradual transformation of societal structures like education to shift cultural norms. Freire argued that education, like every other part of the “system” of society, was oppressive by design and must be abolished and totally reimagined. His new “critical” pedagogy would awaken students to their oppressed condition and mobilize them as activists for changing the system. This kind of thinking is rooted in Marxism.

Tucker’s work, I discovered, aligns with these Marxist ideas, especially in her discussions of social work—a field that has long been shaped by Marxist thought. For example, Saul Alinsky emphasized that “poverty means not only lacking money, but also lacking power,” and that “an anti-poverty program must recognize that its program has to do something about not only economic poverty but also political poverty" (Rules for Radicals, 1971). This idea echoes political philosopher John Rawls, who wrote in A Theory of Justice that “social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are … to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged.” Both perspectives reflect the Marxist argument that elite control over resources drives economic inequality—a condition that social work seeks to address through advocacy and empowerment.

It was with this knowledge informing my perspective that I approached Tucker's book.

Reading You Should Be Grateful

As I delved into the book, I found many things to admire about Angela Tucker. Well educated in modern social work, she is acutely aware of its challenges and empathetic toward adoptees. As a foster parent, I understand how deeply social workers care for children, even though the foster care system often fails them. Tucker’s own experience as an adoptee has shaped her compassion and drive to improve others’ lives, which is commendable.

However, several aspects of her book troubled me.

Adoption as Slavery? Seeking to highlight systemic harms, Tucker’s book, as in her speech, equates transracial adoption to a “transatlantic slave-type movement across regions” (p. 67). She supports this thesis by quoting Jennifer Ann Ho, who argues that adoptees are “appropriated, assimilated, made into the image and likeness of their parents and society,” and Dorothy Roberts, who views transracial adoption as a tool for dismantling black families in America. Transracial adoptees do often face challenges to their cultural identity; yet, while Tucker’s desire to preserve black families is admirable, her ideas also support the undermining of existing family bonds between children and their adoptive parents.

Undermining Family Bonds. The concept of “centering” certain oppressed voices—a postmodern and Marxist idea—runs throughout Tucker’s narrative. In her “mentoring” sessions with transracial adoptees, for example, she emphasizes “centering” their voices, but she actively uses language meant to awaken their consciousness of oppression by their adoptive parents, who have taught them to think in a more white-centric way. These “mentoring” sessions seemed more like oppression witch hunts, or struggle sessions, tinged with a desire to create conflict between parents and children. A tenet of Marxism and critical theory is to break down the fabric of the family unit to create activists. Tucker’s focus on distancing children from their adoptive families—rather than fostering healthy family relationships—seemed particularly harmful to me.

Lived Experience as Ultimate Truth. Tucker’s commitment to standpoint epistemology—the idea that “lived experience” offers insights unknowable to those who do not have it, echoes postmodern beliefs that deny objective truth in favor of subjective experiences. As a Christian, I see similarities to Gnosticism, an ancient heresy claiming that only those with hidden spiritual knowledge could access divine truth. The church soundly rejected this idea hundreds of years ago. But with the advent of New Age thought and postmodernism, objective truth is under assault. Tucker’s framing of lived experience as the ultimate truth (“my truth”) undermines the concept of objective reality and truth.

One-Sided View of History. Tucker also applies a broad brush to “colonial oppression,” arguing that colonialism involves “conquest, genocide, cultural erasure, and other atrocities." All in all, it is a very bleak picture of the crafting of civilization without any notes of positive outcomes for anyone. In her view, history is dark, violent, and destructive.

Microaggression Overreach. One of the most striking concepts Tucker explores is the idea of “microaggressions,” as defined by psychiatrist Chester Pierce. Pierce believed that “whites were replacing blatant racism with more subtle but equally powerful racialized language and behavior” and that “the statements are so small” that “neither the perpetrator nor the target understands that they have participated in racism" (source?). Tucker extends this idea, suggesting that nearly every interaction can be viewed as racially charged. In other words, real harm can occur between people, even if neither the “oppressor” nor the “oppressed” is aware of it.

Internal Contradictions. Finally, Tucker reflects on her discomfort in “white spaces” and the inner conflict she feels when witnessing white people’s racial “fragility” (page 88). She feels the need to rescue white people in these situations, yet, ironically, elsewhere she criticizes them for their “white savior” complex (page 64). These internal contradictions reveal deeper tensions in her worldview.

Worldview Despair … and Hope

What struck me most in You Should Be Grateful was the overwhelming sense of despair. According to Tucker’s worldview, everything is broken, and there is no hope for true change. Foster care and adoption are corrupt, and racism is an insurmountable problem, so ingrained that we’re not even aware of it. And even the most well-meaning parents harm their transracially adopted children by removing them from their birth communities, raising them in an alien, racist culture, and robbing them of vital fulfillment found only in family and community ties.

Indeed, Tucker’s own search for fulfillment by reconnecting with her biological family reflects a profound longing to resolve the emptiness she feels. In reconnecting, she hoped to replace her “ghost-kingdom”—the biological family in her imagination—with the real thing. I found her story of locating and meeting her biological mother deeply poignant, and I sympathized with her pain as the joy she sought in reunion eluded her and she realized  those relationships couldn’t fill the void in her heart. As Christians, we know that nothing and no one in this world ever really does fill that void.

Ultimately, Tucker’s ideas are in stark contrast to a Christian worldview. Her thesis supports a metanarrative rooted in critical theory and Marxist ideology, which frames history as a struggle between oppressor and oppressed. From this viewpoint, the solution is to dismantle the existing system and replace it with a new one. In this worldview, man is the pinnacle of creation, the problem, and the savior all at once.

But this ideology offers no real solutions. Modern social science, psychiatry, and postmodern philosophy have failed to bring lasting change. In contrast, the Christian perspective offers a radical hope: transformation through Christ. In Him, chains are broken, lives are changed, and families are made whole. My prayer for Tucker is that she may one day experience the joy of adoption into God’s family.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. ‭‭(Romans‬ ‭15‬:‭13‬; ESV)

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. ‭ (Ephesians‬ ‭1‬:‭3‬-‭6‬; ESV)