Amerasian outcast found acceptance in Puyallup
By Susan Gordon
Taylor Cornyn has a message for people who complain about race problems at Puyallup High School: Get real.
To find out about race discrimination, she says, go to Korea, where it’s a daily fact of life for mixed-race people such as Cornyn.
The 20-year-old graduated from Puyallup High School last spring. The daughter of a black U.S. soldier and a Korean woman, she was born in a country where children like her are scorned.
“I don’t fit in that society at all,” said Cornyn, who was 15 when she came to Washington state to join the family of Bob and Linda Cornyn of Fife. The Cornyns, who have made adoption their life’s mission, have taken in 65 children, including about 20 Amerasians from South Korea.
At Puyallup High, Cornyn felt she belonged. She joined the dance team, served on the student council and managed the basketball team. Nobody harassed her, she said.
Circumstances were different in South Korea, where many shunned her. At school, girls pulled her kinky hair, then ran away laughing. Some told her to go back to her own country, even though she had been born there.
Just before she left, she was locked up for a month in a juvenile jail. She had gotten into a fistfight at school with a girl whose father was a Korean police officer.
“A couple of days later, the cop comes to my house to take me away,” Cornyn said.
The only way her mother could get her out of jail was to make arrangements with an adoption agency to relocate her to the United States. Bob Cornyn flew to Korea to pick her up. Later, he and his wife adopted her along with her younger brother, Mason.
The plight of Korea’s Amerasian children struck a chord with the Cornyns, who took home their first foster child in 1978 after they visited an orphanage. At the time, the Cornyns lived in South Korea; Bob Cornyn was in the U.S. Army. He has since retired.
The orphanage, outside Inchon, was home to dozens of unwanted Amerasian children.
“They were all so beautiful,” said Bob Cornyn. “I couldn’t believe nobody wanted them.”
Taylor Cornyn is among several mixed-race Cornyns who have graduated from Puyallup High. She knew no English when she came to the United States but adapted immediately.
“Taylor is a very outgoing person,” Bob Cornyn said. “Taylor’s got this wonderful smile. She’s pretty. She fits the mold.”
The Cornyns moved their huge family into the Puyallup School District in 1987. At that time, few children of color attended Puyallup schools.
“On both sides, it was a little tense,” said Linda Cornyn. At first, some teachers stereotyped the children, based on race, she said. But she believes most of those problems have been overcome.
Discrimination is a fact of life in Puyallup as elsewhere, said Bob Cornyn. For Taylor, Puyallup High was a lot of fun. But other dark-skinned Cornyn children haven’t always been comfortable there, they said.
“Don’t let the (hateful) words dig into your soul,” Linda Cornyn tells her children.
She is a Mexican American who grew up in Michigan. As a child, people called her a dirty wetback.
“On the whole, I teach my children to love everyone,” she said. “Some people you just don’t love very much.”