Asian Adoptees for Black Lives Matter
July 10th 1:00-2:30pm EDT
A conversation and discussion with Emily Thornton and her husband Bruce "Eric" Thornton, and facilitated by Joy Lieberthal, on how Asian Adoptees can be supportive and effective allies.
This event is for Adoptees ONLY. Please register ahead of time to be emailed a zoom link. Registration will close 24 hrs before the event.
The aims of this conversation will be:
1. How to acknowledge privilege, and what that looks like for Asian Adoptees.
2. How/What can Asian Adoptees do to support?
3. How can, and to what extent, should NBPOC and TRA start conversations with White people, their parents, and others about this?
This conversation is for Asian Adoptees (16+) and is intended to be a space to share and process our unique experiences. We will be speaking from personal experiences. Please respect that all personal information that is discussed is to be kept private and not to be shared outside of this forum.
Questions/comments: adopteeboard@fccny.org
About our speakers:
About Bruce
Bruce "Eric" Thornton envisions a world where all transracial foster youth have the proper support to grow and develop without having to assimilate. He is committed to educating the black community about the crucial need for more black foster parents. As a black adoptive and foster parent himself, he has chosen to lead by example while also mentoring other children of color without father figures.
Bruce has devoted nearly two decades of his life towards caring for children, from working annual summer camp programs to being a classroom teacher to eventually supervising teaching staff. His range of experience has been from the ground up and he has worked with children whose families were from all over the world.
He is the Co-founder and CEO of Thornton Family Initiative as well as the Co-director of Sonshine Quality Childcare and Don’t Worry Childcare, two Pennsylvania family-owned child care centers on the outskirts of Pittsburgh.
Bruce is a Pittsburgh native and he and his wife, Emily, have five children - two biological, one adopted from foster care and two who narrowly escaped the child welfare system. You can view a recent tribute his family made to celebrate him on Father’s Day here.
When not spending time with his family he expresses himself creatively, writing and performing music.
About Emily
Emily Thornton envisions a world where all foster children of color are raised within families of color and are provided connections to understand where and who they came from.
Emily’s personal story reflects the challenges many transracial adoptees and foster youth face when attempting to connect with their origins. As a Korean adoptee raised by white parents in a small rural Nebraska town, she embarked upon an unsuccessful mission to find her Korean birth parents. The inconclusive outcome of her search was published in a blog for Holt International.
She is the Co-founder and President of Thornton Family Initiative and Co-director of two family-owned child care centers in Pennsylvania that serve at-risk youth and foster children. Emily is also the business & client relations manager for Angela Tucker and The Adopted Life, an adoptee-centric platform offering nuanced, ethical and accessible content for the adoption community. The Adopted Life recently published a very vulnerable piece about Emily’s experience of becoming a biological mother as an adoptee.
Emily will join the board of Foster Love Project in September and speaks to various groups in the adoption triad about openness and prioritizing the needs of the adoptee. She and her family were featured in a short documentary as a model for openness in adoption last year.
About Joy
Over the last 25 years, Joy Lieberthal has been immersed in the adoption world in order to better understand how she got to where she did and what to make of it all. From working with adoptees to create an adoptee led organization to working in adoption policy and practice, Joy has had the privilege of being at the creation level of the first adoptee led mentorship program with Also-Known-As, to the first international gathering of Korean and Vietnamese adoptees with IKAA.
But, it has been the experience of decades of conversations as a therapist and counselor that has informed so much of Joy's vision for and founding of IAMAdoptee. The intimacy of the counseling space has taught Joy that the desire to understand and be understood is lifelong and hits the most intimate spaces of our hearts and consciousness.
Recently, Joy contributed to a podcast speaking about how Asian Americans can take care of their mental health with the rise of hate crimes. As a therapist that works with adoptees, she also provides guidance on how an Asian person can talk to their non-Asian parents, partner(s), and friends about the fear they are feeling.
