"I'm Not a Savior" - And That's a Good Thing - When Privilege Sneaks Into Parenting
Jun 01, 2025Even thinking of yourself as a “rescuer” assumes someone else needed saving.
That someone else had misfortune. That you’re offering them something they didn’t have.
And the heartbreaking part is - your children feel that imbalance, even if they don't yet have the words for it.
They life in a world that responds to their skin color differently than yours, and they watch how you move through that world with a kind of ease they aren't granted. This is the truth you can't ignore:
Your children know your whiteness better than you do.
They feel it in your words. They see it in how people treat you—and how people treat them.
They navigate the world differently, and you can’t give them an “out” from that reality, no matter how much privilege you hold or how deeply you love.
If white people hadn’t historically oppressed people of color,
my children’s Black birth mother might never have chosen me.
Did she choose me as the adoptive parent of her twins so they would have more access, more safety, more opportunity?
More privilege—because of my pale skin?
That’s a painful realization.
Read it again.
It took me years to let that land.
Years of defensiveness. Years of grief.
Years of learning how whiteness bends even the purest of intentions.
The savior complex is so sneaky, especially in transracial adoption. It shows up in small ways—“I just want to give them a better life”—and in big ones—“We love them the same as our bio kids.” But that love is not protection from systemic racism. That love does not erase the power imbalance that placed you as the parent in the first place.
I’ve learned—am learning—to sit with the discomfort.
To recognize how supremacy can be embedded in “good intentions.”
To listen when my children reflect my whiteness back at me.
And to understand that BIPOC survival depends on understanding whiteness—the way it moves, how it harms, and how it pretends not to be there.
We don’t get to adopt across race without adopting the responsibility of unpacking our role in a system built to benefit us.
You’re not rescuing anyone.
But you can stand beside them with truth, humility, and deep, deep listening.
Don't miss a beat!
New moves, motivation, and classes delivered to your inbox.
We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.
