Today’s guest blogger is Melissa Lee.
The article that I read for the blog post is Black Kids in White Houses: On race, Silence and the changing American family by Jen Graves on November 8th 2008. I found the article on www.thestranger.com/seattle by searching transracial adoptions. The article is written about conversations that happen at a Workshop that was called “Race and Transracial Adoption Workshop.” The person who put on the workshop was Marie Rollins. The article wrote about experiences that transracially adopted people had, it talked about why white people choose to adopt transracially, and how often times people want to believe race doesn’t exist when it comes to adoptions. The article takes a firm stand that in fact it does and has a huge affect both on the person adopted, the person who gave the child up for adoption and the people who adopted. The article stated that some parents from Britain tended to “deny their child’s color or to say he was growing lighter, or that other people thought he was suntanned and did not recognize him as colored.” “Sometimes the reality was fully accepted (by the parents) only after the light child had grown noticeably darker after being exposed to the bright sunlight on holiday.” The article talks about how people who have been transracially adopted or who have studied transracial adoption find these statements from parents and other outrageous and closed-minded.
In this article it appeared that white adoptive families often say they do not see color or were color blind, but studies have shown that usually is not case, in fact most adoptive families want to try and ignore the color difference between their adoptive child and themselves. Being transracially adopted myself I know first hand that my white family did not see the color of my skin, but saw other peoples skin color and some of my relatives were out right prejudice. From experience I have found that when white people who have adopted or have family members who have adopted are faced with having to see the color differences they are filled with a lot of guilt and shame and do not know how to address the differences. The 2000 census was the first to collect data on adoptions and counted just over 16,000 white households with adopted black children. (Graves, 2008). So these “color blind” people are adopting black babies, and when adopting because of policy put into place around transracial adoptions known as the multi-ethnic Placement Act (MEPA http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/resources/specialtopics/adoption/mepatraingppt.pdf) social workers cannot talk about the challenges that children who are transracially adopted almost always struggle with. Children who are adopted almost always struggle with identity issues, but speaking from personal experience, children who are transracial adopted have much deeper struggles and identity issues around their adoptions.
The article does a great job giving personal stories of people who have been transracially adopted. It is often expected that adopted children should be thankful or grateful that they were adopted by these white families, and therefore should not have any anger towards their adoption. The article points out in fact that is not right, and until conversations start happening around the grief and loss transracially adopted people have, real change cannot happen. The article also talks about how often white people adopt transracially because they want to help save the world or change people’s perspective on different cultures. When someone adopts a child, he/she hopes it will change people’s attitude about different cultures; they are basically using a child to change adult’s behaviors and that is not right. The article does a great job at looking at both sides of the policy behind not having race be a factor in adoptions except when it comes to Native American children. The article shows that one policy is not better then the other and hopefully someday people will listen to what the adoptee’s are saying and start really looking for a way for race to be a part of the conversation when adopting, and at the same time, acknowledging that it not something people can pretend does not matter.
Citations
Graves, J. (2008). Black kids in white house. The Stranger , Retrieved from http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/black-kids-in-white-houses/content?oid=787542
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/civilrights/resources/specialtopics/adoption/mepatraingppt.pdfc