Rachel's Tavern- Shakesville Comment on Whiteness and Racial Awareness
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- Bottles, Breasts, and Mothering “Choices”
- NAACP Class Action Lawsuit on Subprime Loans
- We Have a Future Blogger
- I’m Afraid President Obama, Himself, is a Bit of Coward on the Race Issue
- Highly Skilled US Immigrants are Emigrating: What’s the deal?
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Oct
9
Race and Recruiting Adoptive Families in the United States and the United Kingdom Pt.1
Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Family Issues, Interracial Relationships, Mail Bag, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized by Rachel
Not proofread : Read at your own risk. 
I recently received an email from a reader, Laurie, asking me what I thought about an advertisement she saw in Britain. The ad text said, “Black children need black families–right now, Islington is looking for single people, couples, and families to care for children through adoption.” She saw the ad in Islington, which is a borough near London.1. Laurie asked me what I felt about the ad, and I realized that my answer to that question would take a few thousand words. In fact, it is probably better suited for a book length explanation, but for now, here is my abbreviate answer to how I feel about the ad. In order to understand why a group would put up such an advertisement, it’s important to discuss the racial dynamics of adoption in the US and the UK. While I don’t believe that a Black child must be raised by black parents, I understand the sentiment expressed in the advertisement. In both the US and Britain, Black children are languishing in foster care, and in the hierarchy of adoption, they are often the kids least likely to be adopted.
Foster Care and Private Adoptions in the US
When we compare the children in foster care to the population as a whole, there are dramatic differences. Children especially Black children are strongly overrepresented in foster care. Of the 520,000 children in foster care in 2003 the majority were from racial and ethnic minority groups. Of course, most of children in foster care will be reunited with parents and other relatives, so they don’t end up eligible for adoption. When the data is confined to the 120,000 kids eligible for adoption and the 50,000 kids adopted out of the foster care system, the situation looks even worse for Black children.2 3 The first table gives the racial make-up of the US in 2005, and the second table shows the racial make-up of kids in foster care.
While the data on adoption through foster care is interesting, public adoptions no longer make up the bulk of adoptions. The US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 2001 39% of adoptions were through public agencies, 15% were international, and 46% were private, independent, or tribal adoptions. It’s likely that a small percentage of the 22,728 children internationally adopted in 2005 were black children since 19,534 of the children were from China, Russia, Guatemala, South Korea, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, none of which are known for their black populations. My estimate based on visa data is that around 1000 of the children adopted internationally are from predominantly black countries. Thus, international adoptions don’t often involve black kids.
I had a difficult time finding data on exactly how many black kids were transracially adopted in private (non-international adoptions), but the data on this site suggests it is very uncommon. The slightly outdated figure, found that 1% of the kids adopted by white mothers were black. I suspect the number may be a little higher today, but not by much. Even though many black kids available through domestic adoption, it is rare that they are adopted by whites. Most whites are not rushing to adopt black kids, and unfortunately, many black parents are directly or indirectly placed at a disadvantage in the adoption process, so those most likely to adopt black children are not getting a foot in the door.
In the next post I want to discuss why it is important to recruit black adoptive parents, focusing more on Britain.
- I don’t know exactly how towns and cities are organized in the UK, so I’m not sure if suburb or borough would be the best word to describe this to a US audience. [back]
- Data is from the 2003 Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. [back]
- I’m not using the term people of color because neither the US or the British Census uses that term. This is not a value judgment on the terms people of color or racial and ethnic minorities. Since I’m drawing from the US Census and the UK Census, I’m trying to use their terminology. [back]
Comments
34 Responses to “Race and Recruiting Adoptive Families in the United States and the United Kingdom Pt.1”
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Thankyou Rachel exellent topic!
I am an adoptive parent and this topic really makes me mad when I look back on the history of transracial adoption in the U.S.
In the late sixties to the early seventies transracial adoption was a growing trend and there were thousands of African American kids being raised in white families. The National Association of Black Social Workers along with some other groups, in 1973 through advocacy and getting laws changed helped to restrict acsess of Black children from being adopted. They called family intergration “Cultural Genocide”. After 1973 the growing trend of International adoption blossomed. The Clinton administration helped to end the practice of restricting African American children from being adopted by other than Black families.
If what the NASB had done to African American children was done by a White organization everyone would recognize it as White separatist racism. I have no respect for the National Association of Black Social Workers. I work in the foster care system and I see the ravages every week.
Roe vs Wade was in 73 also making the demand for adopted children go up. Our nation could have expericenced multiplied thousands more intergrated families which by now in 2007 could have made race relations much improved for transracially adopted children.
Instead the growing trend of transracial adoption was restricted by Black separatist.
Instead of being rased by families and reciving all the inheritance which they bring the too many African American kids are were stuck in foster care partially because not enough African American families were availabe.
The foster care system is awful, at alarming rates kids pick up self destructive behaviors and are often institutionalised once graduating. The NABSW litterally has blood on their hands.
Today Thousands of Black children wait to be adopted While U.S. citzens seeking children to adopt go overseas and pay tens of thousands of dollars to do so. With adoption assisance these same families could be paid tens of thousands of dollars to adopt African American children. Without the influence of the NABSW the strange trend of going overseas to adopt kids might not have gotten started. Recently, Cannadians and Europeans have started adopting African American kids. This is a national disgrace.
On the bright side Transracial adoptions are intergrating thousands of families each year.
My wife is White and we have an adopted daugher who is African American like myself.
In the near future I plan on being a social worker working with adoptions. Helping to get kids out of foster care and intergrating families will be my passion.
Islington is a part of London, like Manhattan or the Bronx are part of New York. It has its own council, which deals with some issues, but there is also a Mayor of London, along with a Greater London Authority who have other powers, over the whole of the Greater London area.
London’s so big that its organisation/administrative structures are unique, and not shared by other UK cities.
There’s a post here, from the BBC website, about a call for ethnic minority adopters:
Jean Smith, from the NCH children’s charity, told BBC Asian Network more ethnic minority adopters were needed.
She said placing children from ethnic minorities with white parents often left them without a sense of cultural and religious identity later in life.
There are about 80,000 children in care in the UK. About 10,000 of these are black, Asian or of mixed heritage.
In the 1970s, many ethnic minority children were adopted into white families, but today the care system tries to make cultural and racial matches.
There’s also an interesting section, also on the BBC website, about inter-ethnic relationships:
Data from the 2001 census due to be released later this year is expected to confirm that Britain has one of the highest rates in the world of inter-ethnic relationships and, consequently, mixed race people.
By 1997 already half of black men and a third of black women in relationships had a white partner according to a major study of ethnic minorities published by the Policy Studies Institute (PSI).
It also revealed that other inter-racial relationships were flourishing with a fifth of Asian men and 10% of Asian women opting for a white partner. [...]
Figures published by the Office for National Statistics in 2001 revealed the number of mixed race people grew by more than 75% during the 1990s to around 415,000, 10% of the total ethnic minority population in the UK.
Professor Richard Berthoud of Essex University said such growth was leading to the blurring of racial identities, especially among those of black Caribbean origin.
“Our study showed around 40% of children with one black parent also had a white parent. [...]
The census in 2001 was a milestone for people of mixed race in the UK for the first time a “mixed” category was included among the racial groups.
It followed a long campaign by those opposed to having to tick a box marked other .
But researchers say though the existence of mixed race people may now be officially acknowledged in statistics, serious concerns remain.
Yasmin Alibhai Brown, author of a recent book Mixed Feelings examining the issues facing children of mixed race, said one major worry was that many organisations and public bodies in Britain had adopted policies from the US.
“The movement started there to claim all mixed race children as black - the argument was if they suffer racism nobody asks them if theyre mixed race.
“But I think big mistakes were made to drive policy makers and practitioners into accepting this rather ludicrous concept because mixed race children arent black and theyre not white or brown they are themselves,” she said.
Anyway, that gives the impression that the situation may be rather different in the UK from in the US, both in terms of identity and the history of mixed-race relationships.
There’s a more recent item here, also from the BBC, which reports that only 9% of white people surveyed would only consider marrying another white person. 87% said they would consider marrying a person of another race.
Sorry about the formatting in my last post. For comparative purposes, here’s the breakdown of the UK population by ethnic groups according to the 2001 Census is as follows: the larger groups are the 92.1% who identified as White, 1.2% Mixed, 1.8% Indian, 1.3% Pakistani, 2% Black/Black British (there are sub-categories included in this, but I’m just giving the figures which are over 1%).
The US figures are confusing me, because I can’t make them add up to 100%, though I read somewhere that’s because people were allowed to tick more than one box. Is that right? Anyway, selecting some of the bigger groups, what I found here gives 12.8% Black, 4.3% Asian, 1.5% “reporting two or more races”, 14.4% Hispanic/Latino, 66.9% White (non-Hispanic).
And I scrambled some of my words in that second post. Is there a preview option on here like there is on most other blogs I’ve been to? With the number of errors I’ve been making, I think I really need that sort of facility.
Rachel, I’m going to piggyback off of this post on my blog tomorrow, if you don’t mind. The reason is that I have been dealing with this issue for a few years now. In all likelihood, I won’t ever be able to have another biological child of my own. Even if I could, I’m not sure that I’d want to given the extremely high percentage of people in my family with auto-immune diseases and cancer. My partner (I am in an inter-racial relationship) and I have wanted to adopt a child for several years now. We really want a black child but we’d really settle for any child at all. Unfortunately, it would be easier for us to adopt a child from another country than it would be for us to adopt from within the U.S.
It’s a very painful topic and I think I need to talk about it but I don’t want to clog up your comment space with a long-winded diatribe. If you don’t mind, I’d like to link back to this post.
Oh *sigh* MikeR, here we go again, man…
>The National Association of Black Social Workers along with some other groups, in 1973 through advocacy and getting laws changed helped to restrict acsess of Black children from being adopted.
And I thought the same NABSW later TOOK BACK that statement?
>After 1973 the growing trend of International adoption blossomed.
I sincerely doubt that the lack of available black children is why majority-white people started looking abroad to adopt, in Asian, eastern European, and now central American counties. From what I’ve read, from both adoptees and others, racism and racial stereotypes in the US are what have black children languish in the foster system - the idea that they would have behavior problems, come with emotional baggage, or be so “different” from the adoptive parents as to not assimilate. In the mid-80s, there was the whole “crack baby” assumption for young black children in foster care or adoption. (funny thing is, I know a young lady who was born addicted and was adopted - she’s bright, sweet, funny, and on her way to college).
There’s also the general domestic vs. foreign adoption perception that foreign adoptions are more likely to come with no strings (read: living relatives in close proximity) than a domestic adoption. Of course, lots of this would be misperceptions or outright fallacies, but these ideas are out there.
>Roe vs Wade was in 73 also making the demand for adopted children go up.
Hunh? How did the legalization of abortion (although still heavily restricted) increase demand for adopted children? Was there really such a shortage, or rather was there a shortage in white healthy babies (I suspect the latter)? I’d like to see figures that prove that there were TONS of families clamoring for adoption that were denied with RvW.
Couldn’t it be that changes in US policy towards international adoption, and a wider US acceptance of (some) ethnic groups, encouraged more families to adopt abroad?
>Our nation could have expericenced multiplied thousands more intergrated families which by now in 2007 could have made race relations much improved for transracially adopted children.
I accept that you work in the foster care or child welfare system - but have you talked to a lot of TRAs? Many do not magically transform their families or neighborhoods, just by being TRA. Sometimes adoptive parents gloss over ethnic/racial differences and trivialize their children’s experiences as “other.” I’m not saying that TRAs are wrong by any means! But I really think this is another manifestation of the attitude you show so often, that interracial families, multiracial people, or now TRA people are magic bridges that will solve all society’s race problems. It’s not true, and it’s a damaging, self-serving cop-out that places the responsibility for ending racism on a select few, instead of EVERYONE of good conscience.
>Instead of being rased by families and reciving all the inheritance which they bring the too many African American kids are were stuck in foster care partially because not enough African American families were availabe.
Wait - you’re not saying that white adoptive families are AUTOMATICALLY better for children, are you? Because following your sentence about how there should have been more “integrated” families, it really sounds that way. Inheritance? Most adoptees I know were not raised in Daddy Warbucks households. If you’re referring to white privilege from the adoptive parents, then maybe - but I don’t know if that would be considered an inheritance.
> Without the influence of the NABSW the strange trend of going overseas to adopt kids might not have gotten started.
I think you’re laying WAY too much blame on the NABSW doorstep - lots of prospective adoptive parents haven’t even HEARD of the 1973 memo. I wonder if many prospective families (statistically mostly white) even consider a domestic adoption of a black child FIRST. As I said above, the trend towards international adoptions seems to have the connotations or stereotypes of having no familial strings attached, that babies will be healthier, or smarter (esp. in the case of Asian adoptions), etc.
>Recently, Cannadians and Europeans have started adopting African American kids. This is a national disgrace.
Why? Are you against ALL international adoptions, or just ones that are interracial, or ones that involve non-Americans adopting? BTW - there are African-Canadians too…
>On the bright side Transracial adoptions are intergrating thousands of families each year.
UGH. See comment above about “magical bridges.”
>Helping to get kids out of foster care \
FANTASTIC life goal. Seriously.
>and intergrating families will be my passion.
And not so much.
How about matching parents and kids, regardless of whether they’re being “integrated” or not? How about advocating for changes in child welfare system so that foster homes and other placements are safe, secure, and full of love? How about working against social ills so that less children enter the system in the FIRST place?
Well, Im sure you knew Id have some thoughts about this. ;-)
First, a response to the first commenter. It is not the fault of the NABSW that there are so many Black children and youth in foster care; read Billingsley and Giovannonis book Children of the Storm or Dorothy Roberts Shattered Bond: The Color of Child Welfare for research about how the system has targeted the African American family. It is an exaggeration to say that the NABSW started the trend of international adoptions since international adoptions had been happening in the US since WW2. It is also commonly forgotten that the NABSWs position on transracial adoption was only one part of their statement on African American children and child welfare. Also included in that position was the need for agencies and institutions to recruit and retain more African American families for the youth. It is no secret to anyone who works in public child welfare as I do that agencies do a piss poor job of recruiting families of color. And, it is also common knowledge in this industry that families of color are more often weeded out rather than white families.
Second, I agree the foster care system is not working and that too many children in foster care are being forgotten by the system. But to say that is the fault of the NABSW is misleading and looking for a scapegoat. The responsibility to improve the U.S. foster care system, a system that was created by a white dominated society and in fact once discriminated against African American youth in providing care and services (African American youth were once relegated to juvenile delinquency institutions not for crimes but because they werent allowed in white child institutions).
Third, the legislation passed by the Clinton administration, MEPA (Multi Ethnic Placement Act, and its subsequent follow up, InterEthnic Provisions Act) has not moved large numbers of Black foster care youth into adoptive homes. In a ten year follow up, a study by the Child Welfare League of America found that African American youth were still at alarmingly high rates of aging out and waiting a mean of 42.1 months versus white youths wait times of 25.7 months for an adoptive home.
And I know this is very long, but I think that what we call targeted recruiting in communities of color is a very common strategy used by many agencies to find prospective adoptive families. It is not true that there are tons of white families looking to adopt black children and our system or laws are prohibiting this. The majority of white families want to adopt white children. The idea that same race matching is the cause for the overrepresentation of African American youth in foster care is simplistic and overlooks the institutional racism embedded within the entire child welfare system in the United States.
Lyonside, you covered everything else I didn’t!
LOL! You guys are stealing all my thunder for the second post.
Including those figures on the racial make-up of Britain.
Thanks, Jae Ran, for your articulate correction of this common myth that it was the “evil NABSW” that resulted in so many Black children becoming/remaining homeless.
I’ll be interested to learn more about how this situation plays out in the UK. Here in the US, details about race and adoptive/foster status can be cobbled together by looking at the various special reports, such as:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/censr-6.pdf
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p20-547.pdf
“It is not true that there are tons of white families looking to adopt black children and our system or laws are prohibiting this. The majority of white families want to adopt white children.”
Entirely true… to say that this is primarily the doing of the NABSW is silly. I always figured that most people want to tell their children about their adoption on their own time (or not at all), and not have it readily apparent from day one to the child, the child’s peers, siblings, random strangers on the street, extended family, et cetera. The boom in international adoption ftom Baltic countries is in part borne from the desire of the vast majority of white adoptive families for children that look somewhat like the ones a biological coupling could produce. However, when it comes to the Asian numbers of international/interracial adoptions in comparison to African nations or blk/wht adoption numbers on the homefront, things begin to get interesting and telling… because an adopted child from an Asiatic country would be as equally conspicuous as one with African ancestry.
Aaah! I meant “from”, of course…
Yvette,
I read through that first Census report twice, and I couldn’t find that data for the number of black adopted children being raised by non-Black parents. I did see a figure suggesting that 17% of adopted families have a parent who’s a different race from the child. (That’s table 6). However, I know just from studying this area generally that most of those families are White parents with Asian adopted kids. Have you been able to find data that breaks it down by racial composition?
I’d also like to see data on what percentage of kids in private non-international adoption are black, and then what percentage of those black children are adopted by blacks, whites, etc.. Does anyone know where that info is? I searched for quite some time and couldn’t find it, but I would think it has to be out there somewhere.
Lyonside
Yes I was crying over what could have been. Yes I say some things that are over the top and unquantified.
Now I will quantify what could have been.
If even just a hundren or so children from the time beginning in 73 had been interracially adopted that number would have probably doubled or tripled by now 2007. The NABSW and other groups to block transracial adoptions did help to supress demand. It was leagalized bigotry. However It was not the only supressor. Still it was a factor to stop African Americans from being intergrated into other race families.
Their advocacy on this issue was at least in part biased against intergration. The numbers of trasracial adoptions did fall after their advocacy. I believe also that more can be done to place foster kids with same race bacgroud families. However with so many African American children in foster care
Family intergration is part of the solution it is not the end all.
I do not have the stats in front of me but I guess the income level of the average adoptive family is above average. This is the priveledge that I am speaking of when I mention inheritance. The NABSW has some blame although I am sure they meant well. Everything they do is not harmful to childeren and we agree on some issues.
Im I the only person who thinks that their position caused harm to children? Their position also hurt race relations in my opinion. Could it have made things better by opposing interrracial adoption.
Lyonside, I am not sure what you may be speaking about above. But to my knowledge, the NABSW never “took back” anything from their original statement. What has happened, I think, is that other parties with other interests have found it convenient to mischaracterize the original position paper as well the historical context in which it was drafted.
The NABSW’s current position paper “Preserving Families of African Descent” as listed on their web site opens:
“The initial policy statement on preserving families of African ancestry was approved at the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) Fourth Annual Conference in 1972. Known for this statement for over three decades, the emphasis has not wavered. Many thought that the organization’s position focused exclusively on transracial adoption. Yet, this was one component of the position statement, which instead emphasized the importance of and barriers to preserving families of African ancestry.”
The complete statement can be found here: http://www.nabsw.org/mserver/PreservingFamilies.aspx?menuContext=757
Rachel, I have sent you further information on sources for statistics via email.
Adoptions discussions beyond the context of politics and economics and racism are a bit silly…so MikeR - to make this simple - if those same “white” folks who were so gung ho about chocolate chillun’ in 1973 were as focused and directed in addressing the economic and other structural assaults on black families, your point would be moot. Decontextualizing the conversation to talk about innocent children and defenseless victims certainly registers emotionally, but its beside the point. In your little world/mind, the real problem was Jim Crow or the recency of new anti-discrimination laws - it was black social workers. That’s some typical shit. Get over yourself.
Actually MikeR - that was some sanctimonious, entitled bullshit. I just wanted to be specific. I’ll leave it to the more erudite posters to show you the error of your ways.
Yvette: If that’s still part of their mandate, then I take it back. I thought I remembered a take back (or at least a reinterpretation) when the NABSW statement came up on another site, but it seems I’m mistaken. I stand by the rest of my post, though.
Tell me, though, how influential is the NABSW today? Not all social workers/adoption agencies are African-American, and certainly all African-American workers are not part of NABSW, right? Kind of like assuming all black people are in the NAACP?
I still say people are targeting one organization instead of the society-wide racism that makes black children less desirable.
“I still say people are targeting one organization instead of the society-wide racism that makes black children less desirable.”
Lyonside - you do know this isn’t about the DESIRABILITY of Black children. Black children are plenty desirable and plenty valuable in this nation. Black children can be introduced to stress, trauma and dysfunction at a young age - and prepared to generate millions of dollars in STATE revenue as “special education students” “wards of the state” “juvenile offenders” “at-risk youth” “foster care children”, “homeless children”, “Title I children” and as “incarcerated youth.” All of these designations pump millions and millions of dollars into institutions that DESIRE Black children because they are most vulnerable.
This is about the battles for economic and social and political space by BLACK ADULTS - grown folk - the ones who teach, feed and clothe children. It’s about the adults - and the fact that Black folk are in the midst of an inter-generational struggle to remain whole.
Black children have been desirable since long before Thomas Jefferson chose to rape Sally Hemmings. That desirability has been a source of white profitablity for just as long. Black children cannot be protected from the predations of white supremacy by “whites” (broadly speaking) because the genesis of the problem is organically related to keeping Black adults under foot.
I’m not arguing that “whites” are biologically impaired. Hell, there is no thing as a “white” person. I’m arguing that the cultural bar is high - and that the approach of adoption is flawed and designed to service the status quo. Institutional war has been waged for centuries to separate Black children from their mothers and fathers. The solution is not transracial adoption. It’s an easy fix for “white” folks with reproductive issues…and the worst case scenario is millions of frauds who “never see race when they see their babies” and fail to prepare them for RACISM.
It’s about as lazy a public policy solution to a public health/economic issue as I can imagine. “White” women oughtta be outraged that these strong arm tactics are being perpetrated in their name. If infertility and paternalism have created this disingenuous brew, there is little hope for implementing needed class-based remedies.
Temple 3 Webster & “Dirrerent strokes
I welcomeyour rebuke it is part of my education.
Correct White racism is the larger issue however the NABSW has some blame. I agree with their position to try to keep kinship together. They are not all bad but I hate their anti-TRA bias. I don’t believe they have fully repented of the 73 “Cutural Genocide” statment. That kind of thinking did not help Afircan American Children.
Temple3: I’m not saying that children who are black aren’t intrinsically desirable!! All children are full of hope and potential, and I truly wish that every child was raised to know their worth as cherished individuals.
What I meant was that the current system, and many of the people who participate in it, see black children as less desirable (for “reasons” I’ve stated upthread) compared to other children considered “higher up” on the US’s racial heirarchy. It’s depressing and true. That said, I don’t mean that every potential adoptive parent thinks that way. But we are steeped in a racist and sexist society, and it shows in how we treat our most vulnerable members.
>All of these designations pump millions and millions of dollars into institutions that DESIRE Black children because they are most vulnerable.
I’m not srue what you mean by this per se - can you expand? What institutions specifically?
Cultural Genocide. On its face, the statement appears to be true. I wonder how receptive Israelis would be to a situation where their children were subjected to adoptions to a Muslim nation. I know that while the Korean government has embraced adoptions to the US and the West, that island would still be smoking if they contemplated the same to Japan. Not all matches are made in heaven. Can you even conceive of American children (the blond haired, blue-eyed kind) going to the Soviet Union in 1950? In 1973, the United States was in the 7th year of existence as a statutory democracy.
The United States, in 1973, was in it’s seventh year as a statutory democracy. The long arc of slavery and Jim Crow set the economic conditions for extreme labor dislocations and political exile. To suggest that in 1973 a policy of transracial adoption was not equal to cultural genocide is to miss the mark (I’m being kind here).
White Americans have never faced true economic competition from Blacks in this nation. When you weigh the full impact of excluding generations of skilled laborers from work - excluding renters from housing - excluding buyers from entire counties (with state sanction) - excluding leaders from elected office - excluding voters from the franchise…you understand that attacking Black social workers for their position is an implicit defense of terrorism.
It can’t be that you’re blinded by the rhetoric and the flag. In 1973, the US was in its 7th year as a statutory democracy. Africans have been here since 1619. How could TRA be conceived of as anything other than cultural genocide? How could the citizens of this nation dare suggest they possessed the capacity to raise the very children they’ve sought to destroy for well over 300 years? Why, the US was like an arrogant child with delusions of grandeur.
And don’t we all know that if anyone should be raising anyone’s children and receiving a great deal more compensation it is those BLACK women who TO THIS DAY raise white children all over America while their mothers compete in a labor market still tinged with discrimination.
I better not say much more on this. Temperature’s rising.
Lyonside:
List of Institutions…public schools (especially those serving special education students). The federal government has only recently reacted to the “overidentification” of Black boys for special education services in schools. The boys, often as young as K or first grade, are deemed to need special services which are often meaningless or non-existent. The real goal is behavior modification and the dispensation of numbing, dumbing drugs. Schools and big pharma benefit…test scores stay low and the Democrats continue their dangerous liaison with teachers unions all over the nation.
Prisons…the cost of incarceration exceeds by nearly three-fold the cost of education. The institutional benefits are several. Inmates are not counted as voters in their home districts, but as residents in the counties of incarceration. More tax money!! Having been identified as children by the school system early, these young men are tracked for a career of criminality. That removes a competitor from the labor pool. More money!! That’s one less person to move out of the neighborhood…That’s one less voter…one less candidate. Etc.
The same applies to the family court structure. Studies have documented - and in court anecdotes confirm - that the courts have different standards for Blacks. The courts seek to BREAK up families and once they start the process - it’s a wrap. Ward of the state…more money!! Foster care…more money! The bills pile up. Social service agencies…correctional institutions - and on and on.
What’s lost? An opportunity for folks to earn a living wage and reside in a place suitable for the healthy development of their children. Black folks in dire straits don’t need white folks to adopt their children…black folks have needed greater access and entry to the economic apparatus of the nation.
Rich folks (especially those actively engaged in the work force or the social pleasure force) don’t put their babies up for adoption - they put them up for supervision. They either don’t have the time or the inclination. They pay for parenting. If “white” people who can afford to buy black babies (middle class and up) really want to solve something, they should give up their place in the labor market and go supervise rich folks kids. That’s a solution that any Keynesian could embrace.
Imagine the economic benefits that would accrue to poorer parents with the flood of viable employment opportunities. Of course some additional training might be required - but it is a viable solution. And, at night, everyone gets to go home - of course, those middle class folks tending to rich folks children could petition to be “live-in” nannies - just like poor folks do now.
I worked in adoption for five years, and yes, prior to MEPA the NABSW statement was VERY influential. IMO it cut in two directions. It allowed the bigoted off the hook; no need to push for interracial adoptions. THEY don’t want it. OTOH, it also influenced those who might be genuinely concerned about such issues. I remember hearing Rosie O’Donnell say she didn’t care about the race of her children as long as they had a white mother. She didn’t want to run the risk of removing a child from his/her own culture and typically mothers are the keeper of culture. (Of course, that doesn’t take a whole plethora of other factors into consideration, but it shows she was thinking about it.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe most whites are out there clamoring for black kids, but I definitely think more would’ve been open to the notion without that statement.
When I worked in adoption we worked very diligently to recruit black families. We went to black churches and sporting events from various HBCUs. Keep in mind we were not paid overtime or given comp time for these weekend opportunities. We simply were not successful, and we were black social workers talking to black people about adopting black children.
I’m not sure what else can be done. I don’t think at this point that transracial adoptions are going to take off in this country. The foreign adoption model is too firmly established. Having had a disrupted domestic adoption myself, I know I will never even consider domestic again. IMO open adoption is a much greater barrier to domestic adoption than practically any other factor, including race.
People ask all the time why celebrities choose foreign adoption. It’s a no-brainer. Do you really want your child’s (sometimes substance addicted) parents showing up for the shakedown? And yes, I’ve been there and have no intention of going there again. Imagine if I’d been a celebrity with REAL money.
Unless, and until we do something about the effed up adoption laws in this country we will continue to have children languishing in the system forever.
“until we do something about the effed up adoption laws”
Ah, now we have some meat for real discussion. What is wrong with adoption laws, and how do they need changed?
[...] Rachel posts Pt 1 on transracial adoption? [...]
a dear friend of mine is a transracial adoptee, and she put it well when she said to me once that transracial adoption (meaning the entire industry) is a microcosm of all of the ills of society.
It is a little bubble where racism, classim, sexism, white privilege, cultural and economic imperialism, and a bunch of other evils seem to be running the show. Though the industry has become more politically correct, the problems are virtually the same as they have been since post WW2 opened up the phenomenon.
I’ve learned a bit about the industry through these very amazing blogs of transracial adoptees (I see Jae Ran has commented above :-))—their experiences and voices are really important in the anti-racism movement…I mean they really put out some amazing stuff.
I am looking forward to further posts on the subject.
Interestingly, we were told in our local Dutch adoption preparation course that Dutch and Swedish research shows that Black children do better in White adoptive families than White children in White adoptive families!
I have read this with interest. I am a married white woman (to a white man) and we tried to adopt twice unsucessfully through the US domestic system. Both times we wanted to adopt specifically a child of color since white children or even biracial children seemed to be so much faster to be placed for whatever reason. I was also told flat out by a social worker who was black “who do I think you are to want to adopt a child of color?!…how would you raise a black man in America?!” We had road blocks put in our way it was emotionally very difficult. Fast forward 6 years we have a delightful son who was born in Ethiopia who we love dearly and know the prior US hardships and roadblocks were part of God’s plan since now we see our son was in Ethiopia. We also are planning to go back to live and work in East Africa…the whole experience has changed our lives forever. We also have contact with some of our son’s birth family which is wonderful for us (we didn’t go abroad because we were uncomfortable with contact we wanted to have an open adoption both times in the states). Are we an anomoly? Maybe, but I know a lot of other white parents who adopted from Ethiopia who have a very similar story to tell and tried the US first becasue they had already resolved the issues of becoming a transracial family in America. We may still try to adopt from the US but privately now. And although we are white we pray with God’s help and with the help of friends who are black in the US and our friends in Africa that we can raise healthy, strong children who celebrate all the facets of their unique heritage.
Respectfully,
Daniel’s mom
Hi. I’ve read your blog for a while, but not yet said hello, so - hello. Thanks for this blog of yours, which is an important education to me and sometimes challenges my thinking in ways I really value. Being British, London-based, white and thinking about adopting, I’m extremely interested in what you have to say on this topic.
Laura’s right that Islington (pronounced Izlington, not Eye-lington, for anyone who’s interested) is a part of London with its own council. Within London, it’s the ‘boroughs’ (e.g. Islington) that have responsibility for finding homes for children in local authority care. Elsewhere in the UK the councils with that responsibility are called counties or unitary authorities. A minefield
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So what does this have to do with adoption? All adoption in the UK involves local authorities social services departments private adoptions are not legal. Many social workers wont consider placing a child with a family who doesnt look as though they could be biologically related to the child, so it makes little difference whether or not parents are willing to consider transracial matches. Transracial placements occasionally happen in UK adoption, but they are rare.
Another interesting aspect of this is the fact that race, along with other factors such as willingness to parent older children, sibling groups and those with special needs, can have a significant influence on whether someone is even allowed to apply to adopt; (i.e. can they find a social worker to take them through a homestudy?) and certainly on their likelihood of being matched once approved. People who are neither white nor members of one of the UKs larger ethnic minorities can fall at this first hurdle; turned down by social services because of the low chances of matching them to the children who need adoptive families. I get the impression that the process is very different in the US.
Like you I understand social workers reasons for preferring black families for black children. I dont underestimate the difficulties that being brought up by parents of a different race can cause for children. On balance, though, I think a permanent home with a family has to be a better bet than the alternative for kids in council care.
Looking forward to Part 2.
Black parents already adopt at higher rates than the general public, once you combine rates of formal and informal adoption.
On an individual level I think intraracial and intracultural adoption is usually more in the interest of the child. But I have nothing against transracial adoption. This debate so often gets phrased as Transracial - Either/Or, but the situation is much more complicated.
The fractured and chaotic nature of the US public system allows for all kinds of weird prejudices. As a prospective Asian adoptive parent I have heard some black social workers make extremely inaccurate and assumptions about Asian kids. In another state I’ve heard of a social worker who told a Hispanic family they were getting an adoptive placement of a Hispanic boy, but instead they were given a foster placement of an Anglo boy… and when they said they could not take him, they were called racists. And then there are the white adoptive parents who think that adoptive parents of color have an unfair advantage to get “their” kids, and exclude them from their communities…
I know of another Asian adoptive parent, in the UK, who was informally rejected by social services because they were in an interracial relationship and no one knew how to match them with a child.
My frustration - and it’s a frustration that I’ve found shared by MANY other adoptive parents of color - is, why is it never about US? I hate to seem so self-centered here, but every time this issue gets brought up in any kind of public forum, it turns into “blame or praise the white parents”, and we’re on the sidelines waving our hands and saying “Hello? Hello?”
white supremacy IS cultural genocide, people!…and aspects of it do show themselves in transracial adoption…does that mean that every white couple who wants to adopt a Black child is suspect?…no!…but denial is almost as harmful to Black kids as outright hostility!…well-meaning white folk have to stop being so paternalistic and self-righteous and realize…IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!…it’s about the child you decide to bring into your family tree and the unique needs that come with being a Black child in society that has yet to be purged from it’s racist impulses.
It’s sad to see a thread about transracial adoption devolve into such a mess. Honestly, why are so many attacking each other? The focus here should be on helping children who desperately need help, not arguing the existence and extent of racism (white or black or asian or whatever).
The fact is transracial adoption helps children who need help. Parents who adopt transracially love their children and give them wonderful homes (homes most of the adopted children could only otherwise dream about). Research clearly indicates transracially adopted children do quite well with their new families (of whatever race, mind you).
In light of this, wouldn’t it be better to stop arguing about who’s more racist (NABSW or whites) and foster more transracial adoptions? From my perspective, individuals of every race should be taking part in transracial adoptions: blacks, asians, native americans, white, everyone. Getting all involved will do a lot more for children than arguing on a message board about who sucks more.
Hello all!
I also saw the advert in Islington, as well as a tv interview on London news which said basically the same thing and it’s made me think a lot about how much importance ‘we’ put on heritage, race and cultural identity. Is it even relevent today?
I’m busy carrying out some preliminary research on the issue of cultural heritage and race in adoption for my dissertation and possibly a documentary film.
I’ve read the posts here, but if anyone, particularly adoptees or parents who’ve adopted have any comments, feelings, views or ideas they think might be useful please can you email me.
Thank you so much
Rosa