So how can it be that in 2010, this is where we find ourselves:Of course, the post is about more than children's books; that context, however, makes the concept of white privilege very accessible, I think.
*The percentage of published children’s books featuring characters of color is far smaller than - perhaps less than half - the percentage of people of color in the U.S. population, and the majority of these books are still created by white writers and illustrators.
*Many of the most popular book series, particularly in fantasy, have no significant characters of color at all.
*Cases of “whitewashing” book jackets, of editors requesting that an author erase a character’s ethnicity so that a book “can reach a larger audience,” of booksellers or librarians passing on certain titles because “our community doesn’t respond to those kinds of books,” suggest an assumption that white readers won’t respond to characters of color.
And so on.
I want to suggest a cause for the gap between our intention and the reality we’ve created: the patterns formed by white American socialization, which I’ll call White Mind.
Humans are hardwired to feel another person's pain. But they may feel less innate empathy if the other person's skin color doesn't match their own, a new study suggests.
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In the study, which appears in the journal Current Biology, people of Italian and African descent watched short film clips that showed needles pricking black- and white-skinned hands. As they watched, researchers measured the participants' empathy (i.e., their nervous-system activity) by monitoring sensors attached to the same spot on their hands. They also tracked the participants' heart rates and sweat-gland activity, a common measure of emotional response.
"White observers reacted more to the pain of white than black models, and black observers reacted more to the pain of black than white models," says the lead researcher, Alessio Avenanti, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Bologna.
The researchers also showed clips of a needle pricking a hand painted bright purple. Both the Italian and African participants were more likely to empathize with this intentionally strange-looking hand than with the hand of another race, which implies that the earlier lack of empathy was due to skin color, not just difference. "This is quite important, because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play," says Avenanti.
The researchers gauged prejudice by testing the participants on how readily they associated good and bad concepts with Italians and Africans. The people who showed a strong preference for their own group in this test also tended to show the least empathy when the hand belonging to the other group was needled, the researchers found.
Adopting a child especially through international adoption process is not an easy decision to take. Both the needy parents and the adoption agency have to look after various factors . . . .I don't think the author intended sarcastic social commentary about the fact that adoption these days isn't so much about finding families for needy children, but is instead about finding children for needy parents. . . .
The need for adoption-competent mental health services is critical to the ongoing wellbeing of adoptive families. Feedback from adoptive families reflects a struggle to meet the mental health needs of their children due to a failure of some mental health providers to understand the unique issues of adoption that are related to mental health. Health and behavioral health care providers need to have expertise related to adoption in the same way that a provider might specialize in substance abuse treatment or in a specific diagnosis such as autism.The most important trait, I think, is the one listed first: "Knowing that adoption is a lifelong process that includes universal experiences as well as unique individual feelings and perceptions." Dr. Gregory Keck's book, Parenting Adopted Adolescents
, devotes chapter 9 to the therapist's role, and notes the need to keep adoption issues in perspective in therapy:Some therapists dismiss or minimize adoption, convinced it is not a contributing factor to the presenting problem. Others blame all of the child's difficulties on the fact that he was adopted. As with most things, the truth of the matter lies somewhere between these two polarities.I think that's another important trait -- that the therapist doesn't attribute all behavior to adoption, but who knows that adoption may affect a host of behaviors.
Here, free of charge, is a Crash Course for transracial adoptive parents. Think of it as your guide to getting the education that you will absolutely need in order to effectively and ethically raise an adopted child of color in the United States (and possibly in comparable white settler nations, such as Canada and Australia).Really important stuff here, with a humorous approach.
The unabashed assumption and unapologetic bias behind this Crash Course is that the best teachers of adoptive parents are adult transracial adoptees who have lived through the experiment, especially those adoptees who are also adoptive parents. The second best teachers are experienced transracial adoptive parents who, even though they may not be adoptees or people of color, nevertheless have figured out how to become conscious anti-racist advocates and allies.
Allies, you ask, in what struggles? In the joint struggles against racism and on behalf of adoption reform.
US-based Desiree and David Smolin were elated when they adopted two girls from Hyderabad. But their happiness was shortlived. Within weeks, the couple discovered that their two lovely daughters were not orphans, but victims of child trafficking.I met the Smolins in 2004, when they presented at a conference on international adoption that my law school hosted. He has written quite a bit about adoption corruption since that time. I've always remembered Desiree's presentation about language loss and acquisition -- she explained how children the age of her adopted children lost their original language at a rate greater than the acquisition of the new language such that they were incapable of even thinking, much less expressing, complex thoughts. How frustrating is that?!
That was 12 years ago. The Smolins now operate a website, in which they have catalogued international adoption injustices and offer advice to adopting parents, based on their own experience [the only website I know that the Smolins are involved in is Fleas Biting, which hasn't had a post since 2008 -- does anyone know of a more current website?].
The Smolins, who have five sons, adopted nine-year-old Bhagya and 11-year-old Manjula from Action for Social Development (ASD), a Hyderabad-based adoption agency, Nov 18, 1998.
"The girls were terribly depressed and one of them had suicidal tendencies," Desiree told IANS in an e-mail interview. The Smolins were saddened by the emotional state of the girls. Luckily, they got some information. The girls had told a friend at ASD about their past, which prompted the Smolins to probe further.
"When the girls finally began to open up after about six weeks, they told us that they were not orphans, but were stolen and sold to us. They were even threatened and forced to lie to the embassy official, who interviewed them," said Desiree, who still can't believe it after 12 years.
, and a white adoptive parent of a son who is African-American and Latino, on how their attempts to incorporate culture failed to protect their son from racism :When we adopted our son in 1991 — he is African American and Latino; we are white — there weren’t many images floating around (either in my mind or in the media) of transracial families. Neither were there many books on the subject of parenting a child of another race nor many agencies educating adoptive parents on the right way to go about it. (Little did we know, there isn’t a right way.)For an eye-opening look at the teen-age years, check out her article, the Trouble With Troubled Teens.
In not knowing quite what to do, we did a lot: sought out friends of color; talked openly about race and racism; went with our son to culture camp; got books and artwork depicting different ethnicities; wrote letters to accomplished men of color for advice; read about racial identity and history; celebrated Kwanzaa; visited a Baptist church; even traded homes one summer with a family from a Black and Hispanic neighborhood in Oakland, CA.
There’s plenty we didn’t do, too: We didn’t move to a community that was racially mixed in the way our son is; our closest family friends were still white; our gung-ho efforts to pursue ethnic friends and experiences petered off as our son got older; and we chose to send him to a better school than the one that had more kids of color.
Our second-hand attempts to boost our son’s racial pride over the years have been outweighed and outnumbered by his first-hand experiences with prejudice. Big-impact opportunities he’s had — like meeting a group of Tuskegee Airmen and spending a day with Quincy Jones — are no armor for the small, daily daggers he’s encountered — like being stopped in ninth grade by a security guard at his own high school or being watched like a hawk at 7-Eleven.
The story as I originally heard it from Zhou Lei, my Chinese teacher every Sunday afternoon at Temple B'nai Chaim, goes like this: a girl named Yan Yu is adopted into a white family and taken to a small town in Maine. Shortly after she leaves China, her birth mother, along with her brother, are killed in a factory fire. Yan Yu's birth father -- a man named Chao -- grieves, but he is not to be reconciled. He decides to search for his daughter.To read the rest, click here.
In his village, Chao finds the right people, says the correct words, presents the appropriate gifts. He's told by an official at the orphanage where Yan Yu had once lived, that his daughter is in a place called "Crooked Bay," and gives her Western name: Molly Kutner. It takes years, and practically every yuan he can gather, but Chao is finally able to immigrate to the U.S. and gets a job as a waiter in a place called The Golden Panda, Crooked Bay's only Chinese-style restaurant.
And here's where he gets lucky. . . .
The market is not politically correct. It often assigns lower values to humans (their wages) based on their race or sex, even after controlling for education and experience. It's just as cruel to children. A few years ago I was disturbed to learn that it's cheaper to adopt black American children than white. I recently had lunch with NYU Stern School economist Allan Collard-Wexler, who has estimated adoption price sensitivity. He found just how much adoption fees are sensitive to the race and gender of a baby. It’s about $8,000 cheaper to adopt a black baby than a white or Hispanic child and girls tend to cost about $2,000 more than boys.They're talking about that same study that came out last month about adoptive parents preferring non-black, girls. But it is interesting to hear the Economist's market take on it.
Inter-country adoption has undergone radical decline and it is no longer the opportunity it once was for building families. In the US, the practice peaked in 2004 with 22,990 children sent to the nation as adoptees as compared to only 12,753 in 2009.
As adoption has become more difficult, the global surrogacy industry has begun to surge to meet the fertility demands of individuals and couples seeking to secure healthy infants.
A handful of adoption agencies and service providers with prior significant interests in Guatemala have been shifting to meet this need. For example, attorney Mark Reder of MLJ Adoptions based in Indianapolis boasts international surrogacy as a practice area of expertise, calling the activity “surrogacy arrangements.” Because Guatemala is recognized by the UN to have the greatest gender inequality in the Western hemisphere and the nation has no regulatory laws on surrogacy, “expertise” on such matters is more about the how to, where to, and with which vulnerable woman to contract the service. In the current environment, the information and service that will be offered will undoubtedly be tailored to meet the needs of those who have the privilege to pay for surrogacy. One has to wonder how information will be imparted to Guatemalan women who may well be illiterate and lack the legal savvy to truly understand the contracts they will be required to sign.
What is the state of international adoption today? In light of recent controversies involving Russia and Haiti, we'll spend this hour with UTA Sociologist and adoption expert, Dr. Heather Jacobson. Her recent book on the subject is "Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Difference" (Vanderbilt University Press, 2008).
Aggrieved parents whose children were adopted by American-based Main Adoption Placement Services, MAPS, have demanded the immediate return of their children.The story says there's been a year-long investigation by the Sierra Leone government, but no results yet.
In a meeting with the minister of social welfare, gender and children's affairs at his New England office yesterday, spokesperson for the aggrieved parents, Kassim Kargbo said: "We want our children back immediately. We were not informed about any adoption."
He said they were told by Help A Needy Child International, HANCI, that their children would be well taken care off and provided with the basic amenities up to university level, adding, "It is rather unfortunate that it has turned out to be an adoption."
HANCI, an organization responsible to look after the welfare of children in the country, facilitated the adoption of the children to MAPS in America.
The organization had earlier claimed that the adoption was done legally and that the parents of the children were fully informed throughout the process.
In a report published by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on the 10th May, 54% of the 2,439 children adopted last year were adopted domestically.The article also includes an alarming statistic about adoption disruption in its argument for supporting single women who parent their children before supporting a program of domestic adoption: "1,314 children were adopted domestically last year; however, in 866 cases adoptive parents relinquished their parental responsibilities and gave their adoptive children back into care." Wow.
However, when examining the statistics more thoroughly, one might wonder whether the government policy is desirable or not, even though it has contributed a lot to promoting domestic adoption. Last year, 84.9% of domestic adoptions (1116 adoptees), and 89.3% of international adoptions (1005 adoptees) were born of unwed mothers. It demonstrates that the government does not consider supporting unwed mothers in raising their own children in its policy.
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Mee-jung Lee, a researcher for the Korean Women’s Development Institute, pointed out that “Even though the parents are still alive, and Korea is no longer poor like it was after the Korean War, every year about 2500 children are given away for adoption. This is because the Korean government is holding off on providing a welfare system for single-mother families.” Pastor Do-Hyun Kim who runs ‘Koroot’, an organization which helps adoptees to visit their homeland, said “The first principle of child welfare is not about material wealth, but letting these children live with their own families”. He added, “Adoption should be the choice of the individual, not of the government”.
Of course, you all know I was raised back in the days when we just didn't talk about adoption feelings. In fact, I'm not entirely sure parents even realized that adoptees were aware and experiencing the whole deal. I'm not sure I even realized it, but I sure do now. So, there were not adoption talks in my house. Just talks about how we were meant to be a family, and the only thing that made me different was that my parents got to pick me (bullshit).
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And the person I am most terrified of talking adoption with? My mom. The mom who worked her whole life to make mine wonderful. Who has sacrificed without hesitation, who loves me to the moon and back. Who taught me how to be a mom, sister, wife, and woman. The mother whom I admire and respect and love deeply. The mother who, if she knew the truth of my feelings, would be devastated.
So I bring it up. I don’t say, “Hey, Madison, do you feel so much more tied to Pennie [Madison's birth mother] than you do to me? Since she’s your real mother and all?” Instead I say, “How did you feel when so-and-so was talking about how much you look like Pennie?” If I was Brian Stuy in a closed adoption from China, I’d surely say, “Sometimes I wonder about your birth mom. Do you wonder?” Because I would wonder. And if I’m wondering, it’s not such a far stretch to think that the kid herself in question wonders.And then Dawn goes on to interview her kids on whether she should raise the issue of adoption or not!
Little Louis is adorable with his big, dark eyes, curly hair and brown skin. He's African-American and he'll be raised by a white mother. And in a perfect world, this wouldn't be fodder for a clueless mainstream press. But Change.org exists because we don't live in a perfect world. We are constantly confronted with racist, sexist, classist stereotypes, like the one of the perfect White Mother.I'm on CNN with Don Lemon!
Kin of Another Kind examines American literary representations of adoption across racial lines at key moments in the 20th century to help understand adoption's literary and social significance. In juxtaposing representations of African American, American Indian, and Korean and Chinese transracial and transnational adoptions, the book traces the metaphorical significance of adoption when it appears in fiction; at the same time, aligning these groups calls attention to their unique and divergent cultural histories with adoption, which serve as important contexts for the fiction discussed. Cynthia Callahan explores the fiction of canonical authors such as William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Charles Chesnutt, Kate Chopin, Barbara Kingsolver, Gish Jen, and Anne Tyler and productively places it alongside lesser-known works by Robert E. Boles, Dallas Chief Eagle (Lakota), and Sui Sin Far, all works that, when reconsidered, can advance our understanding not only of adoption in literature but of 20th-century American literature in general.And two links thanks to Tonggu Mama's Sunday Linkage, which is always superb, both links to Korean adoptees talking about their experiences as Asian in a white world:
Sometimes I feel like an alien. It’s not a nice feeling. Like the aliens in movies, it feels slimy and icky. I used to tell people that I didn’t like being the odd one out. I couldn’t put it in words at the time, but it was because I was always the odd one out, and it attracted looks from people that made me stand out even more. It wasn’t so much that I was Asian, but it was because I was the only Asian person in a family of Caucasian people. I mean, that’s not really, well… normal. Genetics doesn’t allow for an Asian person to be born from people of European backgrounds! Many adoptive parents think this isn’t really a big deal. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard/seen them say things like: “we don’t mind having an Asian child”; “we’re open to all different races”; “race doesn’t matter to us, we just want a child” etc etc. But the fact of the matter is that race does matter. Maybe not to them, but to the outside world and even the child they’re adopting.Twice Foreign
Where I reside in Asian-American society, as a Korean adoptee, has been referred to as the “third space.” It is a place that hovers between who I was raised to be and who I was born to be.And the final entry here -- a provocative piece by John Raible about LGBT parents and transracial adoption:
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When I first heard the term “twinkie” to describe a person who was ethnically Asian, but was culturally white (or strived to “act” white), I was so relieved to finally have a label for myself. Even though the person who was describing this term was referring to twinkie as a pejorative term, I was just so happy to learn there was a group of Asians with whom I could identify.
I’ve heard it argued that LGBT parents have an almost innate sensitivity to diversity issues since they are members of an oppressed minority. There’s an appealing logic to the notion that queer adults would be especially sensitive to marginalization, of being positioned as the Other, in families and at school. It makes a certain sense that queer adults, therefore, would make sensitive and compassionate parents to kids of color. Right?Whew! A lot of good stuff. Enjoy!
While more and more LGBT folk are adopting—and anecdotally at least, it looks like many of us end up adopting kids of color—a troubling development has emerged, to my way of thinking. In plain terms, it feels as if in the effort to form “gay families” and have those families recognized as legitimate and equal to other families, lesbian and gay parents have privileged their own equality above other concerns.
As a gay parent, it goes without saying that I am all for equality. At the same time, as an anti-racism advocate with a long-standing interest in and commitment to ensuring the rights and welfare of children of color, I am very concerned that the issues of race in adoption may be overlooked and overshadowed in the rush to increase LGBT legitimacy and visibility.
Born to immigrants from rural China who respectively became an aerospace engineer and a seamstress in America, Dolly Gee grew up in Southern California. Her mother refused to ever teach her how to sew because she never wanted her daughter to have to do the same work that she did. Taking this lesson to heart, Dolly Gee graduated from UCLA Law School in 1984.Looks like her parents are Chinese American Heroes, too.
I hope you can look at your name choice in the context of adoption parenting, transracial adoption parenting, international adoption parenting, not simply as a parent who wants to gift her child with her favorite name.So what do you think -- is naming different in adoption? If yes, how? What additional factors should adoptive parents consider in naming their children?
Some of the issues in naming in adoption include the disconnect between name and appearance, the potential for racial and adoption teasing (Annie might lead to "Little Orphan Annie" teasing, for example), whether the name represents negative images of adoption (ex. the name Charity is lovely, but perhaps not for an adopted child who is likely to be viewed as a charity case by many), whether the name might suggest a rejection of birth culture or race (rejecting a given name as "too ethnic"), whether the name furthers stereotypes about race and culture (ex. naming a child from China "Jade"), whether the name is respectful of the birth parents' wishes, if known, whether the child adopted at an older age agrees, etc.
Best of luck with your adoption journey -- it isn't just a travel journey, but a journey of understanding that the focus has to be on what our children need, not on what we want.
1. “This is how Susie became available for adoption.”I've heard far worse -- what would you add to the list?
2. “Don’t tell my kids, but [insert facts about your child’s origins here].”
3. “Race doesn’t matter. When we look at Kyle, we just see our son; we don’t see White/Black/Hispanic/Asian.”
4. “We’re Americans. Jenna may have been born in China, but she’s American now, and that’s good enough for us. We don’t really worry about all of that cultural stuff.”
5. “We used to celebrate our Irish background before the kids came along, but now we feel like we really have to focus on Ethiopia.”
6. Negative comments about your child’s birth family.
7. Invented facts about your child’s birth family.
8. “Asians are good at music, so we weren’t surprised when Jin’s violin teacher told us he could be a real prodigy.”
9. Disparaging comments about your child’s race or any other race.
10. “This is my adopted daughter, Grace.”
The United States and Russia have agreed on key points of a treaty regulating child adoptions, and a final draft will be approved Friday for signing within two months, children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said Wednesday.
The agreement, which Moscow demanded after a U.S. mother returned her 7-year-old son alone on a plane to Russia last month, will put an end to independent adoptions through lawyers instead of authorized adoption agencies, Astakhov said after a second round of talks with U.S. officials at the Foreign Ministry.
"There will be no so-called independent adoptions because this caused major problems. There was no opportunity to track a child's well-being," Astakhov said in a statement.
He said Russian officials had accepted a U.S. proposal under which agencies that participate in adoptions would have to receive U.S. accreditation and work in accordance with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, which has been ratified by the United States but not by Russia.
Vicki Manalo was the daughter of a Filipino father and an English mother, in a society in which mixed marriages were generally frowned on. When she was 17, she sought to join the Fairmont Hotel Swimming and Diving Club in San Francisco. As she told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2005, the club’s coach, Phil Patterson, told her that because of her Filipino name she could not join the club.
Instead, she said, he “formed a ‘special’ club just for me — the Patterson School of Swimming and Diving.”
“I think he was a prejudiced man,” she added. “It wasn’t special for me. It was his way of separating me from the others.”
He also told her that she could not compete unless she changed her name to Taylor, her mother’s maiden name, she said. She and her mother reluctantly agreed.
“I don’t know how my dad felt,” Draves said in an oral history in 1991, “because he never said anything.”
In 1948, by then married to her new coach, Lyle Draves, she made history in the Olympic Games in London. In her first competition there, on the 3-meter springboard, Draves trailed Zoe Ann Olsen, a teammate from home, going into her last dive, a back one-and-a-half somersault. As Draves told Dr. Margaret Costa in the oral history interview, “I was so nervous that I would shake before each dive.”
Draves, at 5 feet 1, won that gold medal, then another off the 10-meter platform, her stronger event. She and Sammy Lee, the men’s platform winner and a Korean-American, became the first divers of Asian descent to win Olympic gold medals.
We have never brought up, unprompted, our daughters' birth parents. We have discussed adoption, conception and pregnancy, and other corollary issues from time to time, but I have never, without having the subject introduced by a daughter, initiated a conversation by saying, "Do you wish you knew your birth mother?" Or, "Do you want to know more about your abandonment?" I have always indicated a willingness to answer any and all questions (not just about adoption but about anything), so I am confident my kids know that if they ask any question we will try to provide them with a good answer. But the point is, I wait for them to ask. Those that force-feed their children the deep issues of abandonment, birth parents and adoption, risk, I believe, getting the kinds of responses displayed above. In fact, by presenting the reality of birth parents before they are mature enough to handle it, for example, I think we risk diminishing our own position as parents to our children.
This research seeks to conduct a theoretical analysis that tests two competing explanations of international adoption: a functionalist model, and a critical and conflict-oriented model. According to a functionalist model, international adoption practices may be explained as a response to need: need of children, need of families, and need of societies to provide structuresfor altruistic transfer of children for purposes of building families and providing care and opportunities to needy children. It is hypothesized that, although most research on internationaladoption practices is focused on individual outcomes and is atheoretical or theory-weak (Engel et al 2007), the functionalist model is the dominant implicit explanation of international adoptionpractices in lay consciousness, the views of experts of children’s rights, international policy, andacademic literatures. In contrast, according to a critical and conflict-oriented model, the roles ofpower, profit and poverty are fundamental in facilitating and reinforcing current institutionalized practices of inter-country adoption. These literatures are more peripheral (e.g. Fonseca, unpublished manuscript). From this perspective, ideology about adoption legitimates and reinforces the social systems of international adoption, discourages interrogation of structural features of the systems that benefit specific groups within and outside of the sending country, and inhibits consideration of the implications of global inequality for the welfare of poor children.
I spent the evening chatting with her while avoiding direct interaction with Ben for fear I’d show too much affection, or too little. Open adoption is an awkward choreography; I am offered a place at the table, but I am not sure where to sit. I don’t know how to be any kind of mother, much less one who surrendered her child but is back to help build a Lego castle.Guest-Teaching Chinese, and Learning America:
China wants to teach the world its language and culture, and Ms. Zheng is one of about 325 guest teachers who have volunteered to work for up to three years in American schools, with their salaries subsidized by the Chinese government. A parallel effort has sent about 2,000 American school administrators to visit China at Beijing’s expense.
Ms. Zheng left her teaching post at a provincial university south of Beijing two years ago to come to Lawton. She is out of her usual element in this city of strip malls and car dealerships surrounded by cattle ranches and an Army base. The culture of American schools is also different.
“My life in high school was torture, just studying, nothing else,” said Ms. Zheng (pronounced djung). “Here students lead more interesting lives,” partly because they are more involved in athletics, choir and other activities.
“They party, they drink, they date,” she added. “In China, we study and study and study.”
McCullough and others say they cannot forget one poignant detail from Freeman's story: When he graduated from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 2002, no one came to watch him cross the stage.Enjoy!
Freeman recalls that as a turning point in his life -- when he realized that the pain of not having an involved family extends beyond childhood.
"This is going to be the time that is different for him," said Marilyn Regier, executive director of Barker, who will join almost two dozen well-wishers this weekend, including McCullough.
Dear Birth Mother,Zoe's note read:
Happy Mother's Day! Are you having a good day in China? I love you!
Love, Maya
Dear Birth Mother,When I teared up, I could blame it on the smoke getting in my eyes.
Happy Mother's Day! Do you miss me? I miss you. I think of you every second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year. I can never stop thinking of you.
Love, Zoe
■Post a picture of your mother (the one you most refer to as a mom). This could be your grandmother, your birthmother, your aunt, your sister, your biological mom, your adoptive mom, your best friend, your surrogate mom…Your MOTHER (or both your mothers).You should do the same at your blog, and link it up at Grown in my Heart.
■Include a Six-Word-Memoir with the picture describing her/what she means to you.
"White people adopt black kids to make themselves feel good... A black child needs black parents to raise it." "Maybe she adopted one because the blacks in the community wouldn't step forward and adopt?" "What's the big deal? If no white person ever adopted a black child, they'd be saying why don't white people adopt black children." "Who cares what race they are? A woman got a child, a child got a mother...it's BEAUTIFUL!!! And yes I am black...if it matters."Despite the sensationalized title and opener, and the sensationalized (yet interesting) theme implying that a black woman adopting a white child raises the same issues as a white woman adopting an African-American child (it's actually far more complicated than equating the two suggests) the article does a fairly good job of discussing some of the issues in transracial adoption, though you have to keep reading to the end to get to those points. For example, the article includes this important reminder:
These impassioned comments and thousands more poured in earlier this week when CNN published a story on the stirred-up debate surrounding Sandra Bullock's recent adoption.
When handled well, transracial adoption is "a very positive thing," says Rita Simon, who has been studying these adoptions for 30 years and has written 65 books, including Adoption, Race & Identity: From Infancy to Young AdulthoodAn interesting read, which I don't say often about CNN stories, which tend to be far to short to deal with anything complex..
"But love is not enough," said Simon, a professor of justice and public policy at American University in Washington. "You really have to make some changes in your life if you adopt a child of another race."
In the case of a white parent adopting a black child, that might mean living in an integrated neighborhood, having pictures in the home of black heroes, seeking out other families in similar situations, attending a black church and finding role models or godparents who are black. The same need to integrate a child's culture applies across the board, whether parents are adopting from Asia, Central America or elsewhere. [emphasis added]
Yet states could and should be doing much more on behalf of the HAC. To date, the United States has not provided foreign aid to help countries in the developing world meet their Hague Convention obligations. Since U.S. citizens adopt a large share of the world's adoptable children, and those prospective parents want clean and transparent procedures, the United States should allocate some foreign assistance to educating national governments and judiciaries on their responsibilities under the HAC and relevant U.S. legislation. Other countries whose citizens are active in international adoptions, such as France, should make similar efforts. The United States should also lead a multilateral initiative to provide resources for inspecting and improving conditions in orphanages. Much as the efforts of global activists forced many corporations to open up their factories in the developing world to outside inspectors, a similar movement should work for transparency on behalf of orphaned children.Kapstein also takes a swipe at Elizabeth Bartholet's excessively simplistic "human rights" argument in support of international adoption:
Some have argued that the emphasis in adoption policy should not be on enforcing the HAC but rather ensuring that the adoption process serves what has been called "the best interests of the child." This view has in turn produced two disparate arguments: one, that children are better off in their own national and cultural environment, and two, that a loving home is nearly always preferable to an orphanage. After all, would it not be better for orphaned children to be raised by families in Europe and the United States than to remain in institutions in the developing world -- even if this process contains hints of so-called baby buying? Bartholet, for example, has compared baby buying in international adoptions to surrogacy. What is the moral difference between these two approaches to having a child?Kapstein made the same call to strengthen the Hague Convention in this 2003 essay in Foreign Policy. This current piece shows we haven't made much progress on that front in the past 7 years.
Yet, surely, there must be an important legal distinction between eggs carried by a surrogate and orphaned children who have already been born. Ironically, this so-called human rights argument risks transforming children into mere commodities or utilitarian goods. This is the real lesson of the recent controversies over the Haitian children and the Russian adoptee. In both cases, the children were treated as goods that could be freely traded -- or returned -- across borders.
A controversial new immigration law in Arizona has fanned public furor over its perceived anti-Latino aspects, but increasing arrests of Chinese illegal immigrants has brought the issue to Asian communities.
"The Arizona law is an affront to all people of color and all Americans, and especially people of color who have been subjected to racial profiling," said Norman Eng, spokesperson for the New York Immigration Coalition. "Chinese people are no strangers to that."
* * *Interesting to read this in a China paper -- sure to stoke anti-American feeling and confirm China's belief that the U.S. is a hotbed of racism and discrimination against all people of color. All Chinese school children learn about Mao's support of African-Americans' struggle for equality. America's treatment of African-Americans, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., were powerful propaganda tools for the CCP. This article in a Chinese paper suggests that the treatment of minorities in America is still a powerful propaganda tool. It's all well and good to say the China's record with minorities is not unblemished, and its human rights record far worse. That's not what the people of China hear or believe.
"What is happening in Arizona is a very familiar pattern of anti-immigrant efforts on the local level to discourage immigrants from coming to the US," said Bill Ong Hing, an immigration expert and law professor at the University of San Francisco and UC Davis.
"It's analogous to what happened first against Chinese immigrants with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese immigration for 10 years, and later against Japanese immigrants."
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"Characteristics like language fluency, accent and style of dress will be major factors in whether a police officer decides a person is worthy of suspicion," said Ronald Lee, senior attorney for the Asian American Justice Center.
According to Lee, about one-fourth of Asian Americans in Arizona are classified as limited-language proficient.
"Do you want to take my daughter?"The radio report can be read or listened to at this link.
Convicted baby trafficker Duan Yueneng uttered those words moments after I stepped into his apartment to interview him. As far as I could tell (and my assistant Cecilia Chen next to me), Mr. Duan was not kidding. His daughter, by the way, stood about five feet away. This man has been busted for selling Chinese baby girls, and he's trying to offload his own child. I declined
Does it offend me? I am not sure. Do I like it? No.It just disturbs me.I was also intrigued with another post, Why Do They Smile At Me:
Perhaps it is because he has been forever torn from his roots.
Perhaps it is because he will always battle with who he is and his place in society.
Perhaps it is because I know that we have missed the opportunity to raise our own children.
Perhaps it is embarrassment that we can’t take care of our own.
It is a complicated issue that simply leaves me with complicated and confused and helpless emotions. Appreciation for those who want to help and yet an awareness of the consequences for all action and inaction.
Today was no unusual day in the life of an Ethiopian in America. I took a day off to enjoy the city and ended up at the Smithsonian where a nice Ethiopian man working at the espresso bar offered me some tea while we chatted. Then a white couple possibly in their late 50s came to order and looked at both of us and smiled.A trenchant insight into standing out because of your race and/or national origin, and a kind of condescension of first worlders to people who represent the third world to them.
Oh the smile, I see it almost everyday now that I live in DC.
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So what do those smiles mean? I compiled a list of things they may be thinking:
I built a well for people that look just like you!
I had something to do with you being here, I worked for the INS!
I donated money during the live8 concerts!
I used to work in Addis Abeba!
I love Ethiopian food!
I just adopted an Ethiopian boy!
Ethiopian women are SO-O-O beautiful!
I know she is Ethiopian, I just know it, I am soo smart!
I know how to Eskesta!
I have an Ethiopian friend called Asefa!
I can’t logically hold anything against people who recognize where I am from. They probably don’t do it out of malice or ill-will. However, I do feel that there are all sorts of generalizations and labeling going on in their minds- which is probably why it makes me feel uncomfortable.
