An introduction for adoptees and their families

Looking like the people who raise you can be meaningful. It may offer recognition, connection, and support in facing racism. It does not, by itself, tell the whole story of where you came from, what changed through adoption, or what you may want to know.

The Peña Racially Coded Transcultural Adoption (RCTA) Framework, developed by Rosemarie Peña, Ph.D., offers language for this experience. Its companion TRACE lens invites attention to history, racial experience, information, culture, and relationships. It begins with the adoptee’s own account and choices.

What does RCTA mean?

Racially coded transcultural adoption describes an adoption in which a child and their adoptive parent or parents are understood by institutions or the receiving society as belonging to the same broad racial category, while adoption moves the child across significant boundaries of culture, language, ethnicity, religion, citizenship, history, or diaspora.

“Racially coded” means that people and institutions assign racial meaning to a person or family. Those meanings can change across places and over time. “Transcultural” draws attention to the cultural worlds crossed through adoption.

For example, a Black German child adopted by African American parents may find love, racial recognition, and preparation for racism within that family. German language, relationships, records, and cultural history may still become less accessible. Both experiences can be part of the same life.

RCTA adds specificity to descriptions such as same-race, transracial, and transnational adoption. It does not require an adoptee to accept a particular label. It asks what a broad racial description helps us see—and what it may leave out.

Why Black German adoption history matters

Postwar Black German adoption brings these questions into focus. Adoption could connect children to African American families and communities while also changing their access to German relatives, language, names, documents, and national belonging. The circumstances and meanings of those changes varied.

BGHRA’s Black German Postwar Adoption History page explains the historical setting. RCTA-TRACE invites us to consider how such histories may continue to matter in individual lives, families, and communities.

TRACE offers five areas for reflection

You can begin wherever you wish, return to a question later, or leave it unanswered. These are areas of inquiry, not stages to complete or a test to pass.

T — Transfer history

What places, caregivers, languages, names, and legal statuses were part of your history? What do you know, and what remains uncertain? A passport, photograph, remembered place, or family story may raise different questions.

R — Racialization across contexts

How have others understood your race in different settings? Where have you felt recognized, protected, misunderstood, or excluded? What did your family or community teach you about navigating racism?

A — Adoption disclosure and records

When and how did you learn about adoption, parentage, or nationality? Which records or accounts are available? What happens when a document and a family story disagree? It is possible to acknowledge uncertainty without deciding immediately which account is correct.

C — Cultural continuity and reculturation

What languages, relationships, practices, and histories remained available to you? What became harder to access? Reculturation means learning about or reconnecting with cultural worlds that adoption interrupted. You may want extensive connection, selective involvement, or none at this time. There is no requirement to prove cultural authenticity.

E — Extended kin and emotional meaning

Who counts as family to you? What meanings do search, reunion, non-search, grief, loyalty, hope, and boundaries carry? Knowing someone’s identity and building a relationship with them are different processes. Each deserves its own pace.

For adoptees

You can love your adoptive family and still have questions about your origins. You may feel loss, curiosity, anger, joy, or little interest in exploring these matters. Your wishes can change over time.

A trace may be a record, memory, story, silence, or relationship through which a connection can be followed. TRACE, in capital letters, names the five areas above. Finding a trace does not obligate you to search, make contact, travel, or share what you learn.

Peña’s work also considers rekinning: the work of renewing or making relationships with family, community, culture, place, and history after adoption has interrupted or obscured them. Connection may grow through relatives, other adoptees, or a wider community. It need not follow one path.

For adoptive families and relatives

Support begins with listening to what the adoptee wants to discuss. You might ask:

• “What would you like me to understand about this part of your history?”
• “Would you like help finding information, or would you prefer that I simply listen?”
• “What would make this conversation feel comfortable for you?”

Share what you know, identify the source, and distinguish it from what you have been told or assumed. Respect the adoptee’s decisions about records, contact, privacy, and timing. Avoid treating questions about origins as a measure of love or gratitude. Cultural learning should make room for the adoptee’s interests and relationships.

About the framework

Rosemarie Peña is a Black German American adoptee, scholar, and founder and president of the Black German Heritage & Research Association. RCTA-TRACE grows from her scholarship and work with Black German adoptee histories, kinship, and transatlantic community formation.

RCTA-TRACE is a proposed conceptual framework. It is not a diagnosis, a validated assessment, or a prescribed treatment. It offers questions for understanding varied experiences; it does not predict how any adoptee will feel.

Continue exploring

• Black German Postwar Adoption History
• Postwar family-tracing records and research resources
• BGHRA and scholarly activism

Framework and introduction © 2026 Rosemarie Peña. Public introduction published by BGHRA.