May 28, 2018 The Nation.^5
ally, it’s essential that white parents are comfortable talking with their
adopted children about race and about the racism they may sometimes
face. (Black parents can be good role models for white parents in this
situation.) A “color-blind” approach to child-rearing, even if well-
meaning, can backfire in a still-racist society.
The experience of transracial adoption is changing, however, as
more families become more multicolored for other reasons, includ-
ing interracial marriage and dating, which are far more common now
than in the 1970s. American society is growing ever more multiracial,
multiethnic, and multicultural.
Today, adoption agencies are barred by federal law from consider-
ing race in adoption placement at all. That may sound
like a shocking overcorrection—surely a black couple
should get first priority over others waiting to adopt a
black child—but the law is intended to address other
racist injustices, not least the fact that black children
take longer than white children to be adopted and
spend far too long in foster care. Arguing in support
of this reform, Harvard professor Randall Kennedy,
author of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity,
and Adoption, declared that trying to pair children with adoptive par-
ents of the same race “buttresses the notion that people of different
racial backgrounds really are different in some moral, unbridgeable,
permanent sense. It affirms the notion that race should be a cage to
which people are assigned at birth.... [It] instructs us that our affec-
tions are and should be bounded by the color line regardless of our
efforts.” While the white-savior complex and, yes, orientalism ofAsking for
a Friend
(^)
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(^) L
iz
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Dear Liza,
My spouse and I are considering adoption, prob-
ably domestically. We are both white with professional
degrees. We would welcome a child of any color and
are disturbed by the clearly racist patterns in domestic
adoption. But we also often sense something ethically
ambiguous or even orientalist in certain adoptions
by white people of children of color. I have also heard
that these situations can be very difficult for the child.
What’s the best thing to do?
—Hopeful Parent
Dear Hopeful,
T
his question has been the subject of newly fe-
verish discussion since the deaths in late March
of six black teenage children who’d apparently
been abused and neglected (even deprived of food) by
their white adoptive parents. Compounding the hor-
ror, the white couple had enjoyed a sickening degree
of veneration from parts of their community for their
supposed altruism. But the issue has a long history,
Hopeful, most of it more nuanced and complex.
Before the middle of the previous century, transra-
cial adoption was rare, but two things happened that
made it more acceptable in the US: the widespread
adoption of Korean orphans after the Korean War, and
the civil-rights movement, which offered hope for an
integrated society. But as more white families adopted
black children, many people began to worry that the
practice wasn’t in the children’s best interests. In 1972,
the National Association of Black Social Workers took
what the organization described as a “vehement stand
against the placement of black children in white homes
for any reason,” denouncing it as a form of cultural
genocide and a perpetuation of black people’s “chat-
tel status.” The NABSW questioned whether white
parents could raise black children who were secure in
their identity and adequately prepare them to deal with
racism. This stance was influential at the time, sowing
doubt that white parents could bring up well-adjusted
black children.
The research on that question actually suggests that
being adopted by parents of a different race does not in
itself cause problems for kids. It does show, however,
that much depends on what the white parents do to
help their adopted children of color thrive. Living in
a racially diverse community with integrated schools
helps, as it can be difficult for adopted children of color
to grow up in predominantly white places. Addition-
Adoptive Measures
Questions?
Ask Liza at
TheNation
.com/article/
asking-for-a-
friend.
ILLUSTRATED BY JOANNA NEBORSKY
(continued on page 8)