Orphan still fighting effects of Vietnam War

From the BBC, a story about one of the Vietnam babylift orphans (still called an orphan in the headline after adoption decades before?!):

Lê Thanh is 40 this year. At least, he thinks he is.

His birthday was given to him by a Rhondda dentist after the Welsh family who adopted him at the end of the Vietnam War tried to establish his age through dental testing.

He doesn't know anything about his background - he was just told that when he was taken to an orphanage, he was well nourished, suggesting his family had cared for him before they were possibly killed.

Even his full Vietnamese name Lê Thanh Hung was lost in the confusion of his adoption. He now just goes by the complete name Lê Thanh, without a surname.

Apart from these few details and a photo of him clutching a doll at his orphanage, very little of his life as a toddler is known.

* * *

"Growing up in the Rhondda in the 1970s was obviously very difficult as there were no other Oriental people growing up in that area at that time," said Lê Thanh, who was adopted by a vicar and a health visitor from Penygraig and was brought up with their two other children.

"I was bullied by the school bully but I stood my ground. My philosophy is what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

"But I didn't really have a happy childhood. It wasn't impoverished but I have always been different and I never really fitted in. Even in today's society I still don't really fit in."

* * *

"I now co-ordinate reunions of fellow adoptees and although I mark it as a social reunion, the true reason behind it for a lot of people like myself, with my background, is that they're very much displaced," he said.

"They are still very much uncomfortable in their own skins and have their issues.

"Lots of people who went through this [being adopted] thought they were the only ones. The reunions let us connect and share experiences and feelings."

Children of Haiti: 2 Years Later

CBSThisMorning did a piece on Haiti and adoption today.  Watch the 6.33 minute video above, or read at this link.  Here's an excerpt:

Hill shared the story of a couple from Ohio, Jon and Julie Kraner, who want to adopt a child but face challenges with the process [they've only been married 2 years, Haiti requires 10 years].

The new head of Haiti's social services agency, Arielle Jeanty, is trying to turn things around in the country. But she doesn't see international adoption as the answer, calling it "the last option" for these children.

Jeanty has two major concerns: Child-trafficking, and also the future of this country -- if the children leave, who will lead Haiti into its next chapter?

Even before the earthquake, Haiti was the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. There is no free public education and barely half of the adult population can read. There are few social services. For many, daily life is simply a game of survival. And since the quake, it's only gotten worse.

"Where would I sit on the bus, mommy?"

I've mentioned before that each year around Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day my kids always have tons of questions about race, racism and Jim Crow. They learn about the black/white divide of MLK's time, and wonder where they fit with that duality. Usually, they're learning about Rosa Parks and the question has been about where they would sit on the bus. Today, the questioner was Maya, and the first question was about why the KKK burned crosses on black people's lawns. She wanted to know if that sort of thing still happened, and I had to tell her it did, but not as often.  She asked if "they" would have burned a cross on her lawn "back then," since she is "kind of a little dark." Lots to unpack there, hmmm?

If you have Asian children and are getting similar questions this time of year, you might want to check out a previous post, Asian Americans, Adoption and Jim Crow.

Biggest Misperception of UNICEF

At the Council on Foreign Relations, Dr. Susan Bissell, Associate Director and Programmes Chief Child Protection, UNICEF, answers questions, including "What is the biggest misperception of UNICEF?"

The biggest misperception is that UNICEF is against inter-country adoption. We are most certainly not against inter-country adoption. I think that there is some very deliberate and misleading journalism in this area. We support the continuum of care: everything from trying to support vulnerable families so they don’t have to relinquish their children; to permanent foster care; to having a child with his or her extended family on a permanent basis; to transparent and ethical inter-country adoption. We are guided by international standards like the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is saddening and it is personal. There is so much written about what my colleagues and I are trying to do in the field to fix these problems, and I think we’re making progress on addressing this misperception.

I've addressed this common misperception about UNICEF here and here and here.  Though Dr. Bissell thinks they're making progress on addressing the misperception, I'd have to say the UNICEF blame game in the adoptive parent community is as strong as ever.

Artyom Finally Finds New Home

The Shelbyville (TN) Times-Gazette reports:

Artyom Savelyev, the boy sent back to Russia by his adopted mother from Shelbyville in 2010, has finally found a home.

According to the Russian State News agency RIA Novosti, the 9-year-old has joined 16 other children who are being cared for by a woman that has raised several generations of abandoned children.

In April 2010 Nancy Hansen placed the boy, who had been known as Justin Hansen while living in the United States, on a flight back to Moscow with a note from her daughter Torry, his adoptive mother, saying she no longer wanted to keep him because he was violent and had severe "psychopathic" problems. The case sparked outrage and an international incident.

But nearly two years after being sent back to his homeland, Artyom is now living in an SOS Children's Village in Russia, cared for by teacher Vera Yegorova.

* * *

"Counting Artyom, I have 17 children," Yegorova told RIA Novosti. "He is so exhausted by plane flights and going back and forth between orphanages and parents," she was quoted as saying.

Artyom was accepted as a family member "in no time at all," the state news media outlet stated, and made friends with the other children. He started attending school, likes it there, and is bringing home his first good grades. The boy is reportedly very respectful of his adoptive parents, calling Yegorova 'mom' on the second day.

However, RIA Novosti states that Artyom "is still afraid of leaving the village," explaining that nothing can lure him away.

"He never deviates from one path -- the one leading from home to school and back. But he is fond of village life as it is. He is reluctant to recall his past experiences in America and says he has turned over a new leaf," the story from RIA Novosti stated.

Yegorova said they learned from the media that Artyom lived in America, but that the child "said nothing about that. He even claimed that he knew no English when we were buying textbooks for school," she said.

The newspaper's headline says this is a new adoptive family; the story doesn't mention the legalities of adoption, and SOS Villages are generally temporary foster care. Nothing on the SOS Villages Russia website suggests differently, instead saying:

SOS Children’s Villages Russia is an independent non-governmental organization that provides a family approach to the long term care of orphaned and abandoned children. We bring orphaned children back to the natural atmosphere of the family giving them back a mother (an SOS-mother), a home and a happy childhood in a supportive Village environment.

(There is a section of the website that talks about SOS Villages strengthening families, but it doesn't sound like that's what this is -- hard to tell since the full explanation of what that part of the program does is only in Russian!)

I'm not saying this is a bad thing for Artyom.  Obviously, family-like care is better than institutional care, even if it is not a permanent family (and 17 children sounds more like a group home than foster care).  I just think it's an overstatement to say in the headline that he has a new adoptive family.  And the distinction will make a difference in the lawsuit against Torrey Hansen for child support for Artyom.  If he's been legally adopted, her child support obligations for the future would end, though she would still be obligated for the payments between her adoption and the termination of her parental rights in a new adoption.

The Existing Indian Family Doctrine

There are obviously strong feelings in a difficult case, like the one I posted about, where a child who spent 2 years with adoptive parents is returned to birth parents.  I wanted to address one issue raised in the comments by various commenters, touching on the Indian Child Welfare Act aspect of the case:

"the indian law being used here is silly. he is not an active part of the indian community."
"Apparently he does not live within the tribe, so it's doubtful this child will grow up knowing her 'tribe' or any of it's true purposes."
"just because someone is an enrolled member of the tribe, as this dad is, doesn't necessarily mean grew up with the tribe, that he lives with the tribe now, or that he participates in the affairs the tribe in any meaningful way."

I think the commenters are alluding to something called the "existing Indian family" doctrine, that some state courts have adopted in applying ICWA.  That phrase does not exist in the statute, having been invented 4 years after the adoption of ICWA by a Kansas court seeking not to apply the federal statute to an adoption case.  As we say in law, hard facts make bad law. And these days, only 6 states are still following that doctrine.

Under the existing Indian family doctrine, courts would take one of two approaches. In a case of newborn adoption, the court would say, "The child was never part of an existing Indian family,"  emphasizing that the child hadn't lived with the birth parents as a family. Right, because the child was never ALLOWED to be part of an existing Indian family!  I especially like that argument in cases where the Native American parent, usually the birth father, was never told about the existence of the child or given notice of the adoption, much less the opportunity to bring the child into an existing Indian family. 

And as I mentioned, there's nothing in ICWA that requires an existing Indian family -- only that it be a child custody case involving an Indian child as defined in the act. An Indian child is "any unmarried person who is under age eighteen and is either (a) a member of an Indian tribe or (b) is eligible for membership in an Indian tribe and is the biological child of a member of an Indian tribe."

There's a pretty clear reason why ICWA doesn't include the phrase "existing Indian family" -- the intent of ICWA is not simply to protect Indian families, but to protect the sovereignty of Indian tribes and to protect Indian children, separate and apart from whether their families are existing Indian families.  The creation of the "existing Indian family" is some of that judicial activism that it's so popular to rail against these days.

The second way courts have used the "existing Indian family" doctrine is to  focus on the Indian part, and deny application of ICWA if the court feels the birth parent isn't "Indian" enough.  Like in a California case where the court noted that the birth parents didn't live on the reservation, didn't participate in tribal events, did not have Indian artifacts in their homes, and did not follow Indian traditions and holidays at home.

I find this particular use of "existing Indian family" doctrine particularly troubling.  Here we have white courts making judgments about what it means to be Native American.  With little knowlege of what it actually means to be Native American, courts focus on outward trappings, and tend to do so with stereotypical notions of Indianness.  Does he wear braids?  Do they have a dream catcher over the crib?  Do they have a peace pipe at home?  Yikes, how offensive is that! And the whole point of ICWA was to avoid this kind of prejudiced thinking by non-Indian courts.

Can you imagine doing that with any other racial or ethnic group?  "You're African-American, but you shouldn't be allowed to adopt an African-American child, because you don't live in the inner city, you don't speak Ebonics, you don't listen to rap. You don't qualify as an existing African-American family." China gives a preference in adoption to ethnically-Chinese parents -- what if they said, "What?  You don't celebrate Grave Sweeping Day? You can't use chopsticks? You didn't hang Spring Couplets above your door last Lunar New Year?  You don't qualify as an existing Chinese family!" Would we be ok with that?

ICWA is designed to prevent outsiders from deciding who is Indian -- the act gives the responsibility to the tribes themselves to decide who is a tribal member, and then hinges all of ICWA's protection from that definition.  The existing Indian family doctrine is completely contrary to ICWA.

And courts have come to recognize that. Kansas, the state that invented the existing Indian family exception to ICWA, has now rejected it. And Kansas isn't alone -- 13 of the 19 states that once followed the doctrine have since rejected it as contrary to the language of the statute.  That leaves only 6 states that still follow it, and two of those states have limited the existing Indian family doctrine considerably.

The pendulum is swinging back so that the actual language of ICWA will prevail, not the judicially invented "existing Indian family" doctrine.  If folks think the existing Indian family doctrine should prevail, they first have to change the statute. Without that, courts are not mis-applying the law in cases like this one.

Birth Father Wins Adoption Battle

CNN reports on the role of the Indian Child Welfare Act in the return of 2-year-old Veronica to her birth father, after the adoptive parents' failure to follow that federal law:

For the first few moments of her life, Veronica was with her birth mother.

For the next two years, she was with her adoptive parents.

And for the last week, the toddler has been with her biological father, over 1,000 miles away from the only home she'd ever known.

It's been a long, complicated journey for young Veronica -- one made possible by a federal law meant "to protect the best interests of Indian children" that, in the process, has tugged at the heartstrings of all involved.

The story began in 2009, when Veronica's biological mother and father, Dusten Brown, signed a legal document agreeing to put the girl up for adoption. Brown's attorney, Shannon Jones, says that her client signed the waiver but didn't quite understand it.

Soon after the girl was born, Brown -- a U.S. Army soldier -- headed off on a 1-year deployment.

It was then that the baby moved on as well, to the Charleston, South Carolina, home of Matt and Melanie Capobianco.

It was an open adoption, family friend Jessica Munday said. That meant the girl's birth mother could and did maintain a relationship with the girl.

But Brown, the biological father, wasn't on board. Four months after Veronica's birth, he began legal proceedings seeking custody of her.

"My client has been fighting for custody of his daughter since shortly after her birth," Shannon Jones, Brown's Charleston-based lawyer, said by e-mail. "He loves this child with all his heart."

Brown appeared to win that battle late last year. On New Year's Eve, he arrived in South Carolina, picked up Veronica from her adoptive parents, and headed west to his home in Oklahoma.

It's a pretty unusual case, in that birth fathers rarely win in adoption revocations.  One really important fact to note by all of those who decry the removal of the child after two years with her adoptive parents -- those parents have known since she was 4 months old that the birth father was seeking to reverse the adoption. I expect they were playing the delay game, which, as I posted here, usually benefits the adoptive parent in possession.  Now the adoptive parents are saying they will appeal, and the benefit of delay belongs to the birth father. . . .

Rock Center: Haitian Adoption Story Tonight

NBC's Rock Center is doing a report tonight about adoption after the earthquake in Haiti.  I won't have a chance to catch it, but wanted to give folks a head's up.  Here's an intro from their website, by correspondent Ron Allen:

It doesn't happen often, but sometimes a chance encounter can lead to a story that continues for a couple of years.

I hadn't been on the ground in Haiti for long after the earthquake-- which struck two years ago on Jan. 12, 2010 -- when a producer handed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it. Brian Williams had met a young pastor on a flight out of Port Au Prince, who had literally begged him for help. There were about 50 children in a life or death situation. They had survived the quake and been evacuated to a makeshift shelter, where food and water were running out. They were getting little help, because there was so much tragedy and mayhem everywhere.

What's more, many of the children were in the process of being adopted by American families. Some of those parents had flown to Haiti and were desperately trying to get their "almost-adopted" kids out.

All of this hit me at a deeply personal level. My 3-year-old daughter Siobhan was born in Ethiopia. We adopted her when she was just a few months old. I've spent a lot of years covering conflicts and disasters around the world and I've always been struck by the countless number of children I've seen living in such desperate circumstances. I didn't go looking for this story in Haiti, somehow it found me. It all felt a bit odd at first, and so close. But after mulling all of this with a few colleagues, I pressed on. And I'm glad I did.

Anti-Huntsman Ad Hits Home for Adoptive Families

This is the first piece I've seen addressing adoptive parents' reaction to the anti-Huntsman video I posted:

Presidential politics hit home for an Alexandria family on Friday after a web ad aimed at Republican candidate Jon Huntsman raised questions about his values, citing his ability to speak Chinese and his decision to adopt children from China and India. The ad, sponsored by a group identified as NYLiberty4Paul, urges voters to support Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the race, though Paul disavowed the ad and said his campaign had nothing to do with it.

"It's a very strange way to make a point," said Alexandria lawyer Nancy Jo Nelson, who has adopted three girls from China.

"I think there is nothing more American than adopting a child that has been abandoned anywhere in the world. It's a highly American thing to do," she said.

Any local reporting of this in your area?  Interesting response from the mom -- it's "a highly American thing" to adopt children anywhere in the world?  Of course, folks from other countries do the same thing!  And you could really turn that one on its head, too:  international adoption can be criticized as neo-colonial, imperialistic depradation of the so-called third world by the Western world, including America.  So in that way, international adoption is a "highly American thing" to do!

Connecting to Culture Through Food

The Indianapolis Star has an article about adoptive parents connecting to adopted children's home cultures through food, with lots of anecdotes and this reminder:

Families who adopt internationally often try to keep a child's heritage alive by playing music from that country, buying indigenous clothing or gifts or trying to master the child's birth language.

It's critical not to ignore the child's ties to another culture, said Nancy Janus, an associate professor of human development at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., who has researched international adoptions and has three daughters adopted from Colombia.

"That's unquestionable, because it's who the kids are," Janus said. "It's especially relevant where there's no racial similarity. . . . There's a need to understand their differentness."

Food offers one avenue for adoptive families.

Of course, food is a good place to start with culture-keeping, but it isn't the end of it.  Remember the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute's report, Beyond Culture Camp: "Positive racial/ethnic identity development is most effectively facilitated by “lived” experiences such as travel to native country, attending racially diverse schools, and having role models of their own race/ethnicity."  In that report, 84% of Korean adoptees said that they had dined in Korean restaurants or eaten Korean food, but only 68% said it was helpful in forming a positive racial/ethnic identity.  Still, that ranked higher in helpfulness than did having a Korean doll/traditional object (49%), or studying traditional dance or martial arts (38%).

I know my kids love Chinese food.  For special occasions like birthdays and adoption days, where they are given unfettered choice of restaurants, Zoe ALWAYS picks Chinese.  She definitely connects it to her heritage, wanting it especially on those trigger days that remind her of birth parents and heritage. It's not the only time we eat Chinese, but we inevitably do on those days.

So eating ethnic food won't quite get you there, but it is an easy place to start in most areas where ethnic grocery stores make the ingredients easy to get and ethnic restaurants are abundant.  Just don't stop there. . . .

Huntsman responds to video

Here's Jon Huntsman's response to the video claiming him to be some kind of Manchurian candidate for speaking Chinese and having adopted a child from China and a child from India:

Speaking before the College Convention, Huntsman was asked about the spot, which features him in Chairman Mao garb, and questions whether the former U.S. Ambassador to China values "American values, or Chinese" and implies that he would be weak on China.

"I saw just parts of it yesterday," he said. "First of all, it is just stupid. Second of all, yeah, I lived overseas four times ... I speak Chinese, of course I do. If someone wants to poke fun of me for speaking Chinese, that's okay. The thing I object to is bringing forward pictures and videos of my adopted daughters and suggesting that there is some sinister motive there. I have a daughter from China who was abandoned at two months of age and left in a vegetable market, picked up by the police and sent to an orphanage."

"I have a second daughter who was born in India in a very rural village ... and left for dead the day she was born," he added. "And luckily she was picked up before the animals got her, and she was sent to an orphanage for her safety, was raised and now she is in my family. So I have two little girls who are a daily reminder that there are a lot of kids in this world who don't have the breaks that you do and face a very uncertain future ... and now these two girls are on the presidential campaign trail. I say, how cool is that?"

 What do you think of the response?  I certainly agree with his "it is just stupid" characterization of the video.  But the description of his adopted children's beginnings?  Not so much. A little too much rescue-a-poor-pitiful-orphan for me. . . .

Adoption from China Incompatible with American Values?

Lord, what a bizarre video!  Thanks to Reena, who linked to it in the comments to the De-Americanizing Asian Americans post, we can see what at least one crazy person (the video-maker) thinks of the fact that Jon Huntsman can speak Chinese and has adopted a daughter from China!  Suddenly it makes him the Manchurian candidate, it makes him Mao, it makes him not-American.  Sheesh!

FYI, I have no dog in the Republican primary fight.  This is not meant as endorsement or condemnation of any candidate!  But I will say I'm completely jealous of Huntsman's fluency in Chinese. . . .

Competitive Adoption Mothering

Does this comment from Terra Trevor, author of Pushing Up the Sky, ring true?

Most of all, I'm wondering, when did writing about motherhood get to be so complicated? Toss in adoption. The home study process with its series of self-studies focusing on our ideas regarding parenting and our child rearing philosophy gear us toward extreme self-improvement. This is where the rubber meets the road, particularly in International and transracial adoption. It's the juncture where a fire is lit in us to question our values, and often this process leads some of us to judge others whose models do not match our own.

We accept the need to put extra effort into adoption mothering. We read everything we can get our hands on about adoption. We participate in adoption conferences, email group discussions, and support groups. In this setting, is it little wonder that in our eagerness to become enlightened, in our sincere desire to better ourselves, that we have a tendency to become overly critical?

For as long as I have been a mother which began on a joyful day in 1981, one thing has remained a constant. Within our sisterhood of adoptive mothers, we are a bit hard on each other. Comparisons are constantly made, and someone always draws the short straw. Perhaps it's because the adoption process with its long wait list to be matched with a child drives us to be competitive.

I remember my very first competitive mothering moment. . . . 

We had (and still have) a close group of friends who waited together to adopt from China, and all adopted within a few months of each other, with all the children aged within months of each other.  At one of our first big get-togethers after we'd all returned, one of the moms did the "look why my child can do" thing, and adorable baby could point to parts of her body as mom asked, "Where's your nose?  Where's your mouth?"

Zoe couldn't do those things (none of the other girls could, either!)  It hadn't even occurred to me to teach her those things.  I was still so exhausted with the oh-so-new day-to-day parenting job that it was a miracle we'd even made it to the party clean and clothed!

But by our next get-together? Zoe could identify a bazillion body parts!  And so could all the other girls! 

It Came from CyberSpace: An Epidemic of Epic Proportions!

The headlines are alarming:  "threat to adopted children;" "lives turned upside down;" "adopted kids at risk."  So what's so scary?  Why, birth parents, of course!  Or maybe it's facebook. . . . Or maybe it's birth parents on facebook. Or maybe what's so scary . . . is the truth our kids deserve.

There are a slew of articles out of England today about the scourge of birth parents contacting adopted children on social media:

Social media threat to adopted children grows in UK -- Reuters

Hundreds of children adopted after being abused have lives turned upside down as natural parents use Facebook to track them down -- [yes, that's a headline!] the Daily Mail

Adopted kids at risk from Facebook -- the Sun

Facebook allows natural parents to track down adopted children, charities warn --the Telegraph

OK, laying aside this popular meme of predatory birth parents stalking their children on social media for a moment, just how serious is this "growing" problem?  What evidence is there that HUNDREDS of adopted children have been contacted in this way, much less contacted to negative effect?

According to the Reuters article, "some birth parents" are contacting "some children" and tearing apart "some families."  This is as specific as they'll get:

It is not known how many birth parents are using social networking sites to get around this, but the BAAF said it was receiving "more and more cases."

"We have heard some horror stories, but how frequently it is happening we just don't know," Feast added.

Well, then, since the Daily Mail specifically mentions "hundreds of children," they must support it with data, right?  Not so much.  First, the only hard data point offered is a study about adopted persons contacting birth family, not the other way around:

A study by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering found that 53 per cent of adopted children have used unofficial means, such as Facebook, to trace their birth parents. A quarter said that this had been unsettling.

OK, I don't mean to completely minimize the potential problem of unexpected birth family contact for an unprepared child of a young age (why they'd then be on facebook is another issue). But if you're going to treat it like an epidemic, shouldn't you have a few more data points?!

The one helpful thing that the articles do offer is advice about preparing children for possible contact, especially if poor parenting choices led to involuntary termination of parental rights.  As the Daily Mail says:

Mr Pearce [executive director of AdoptionUK, a support organization for APs] said that it is now necessary to prepare children in advance of possible unplanned contact from their birth parents.

‘Currently adopted children tend to be told a rose-tinted version of what really happened,’ he told The Times.

‘Something closer to the truth will better protect and prepare children for the destabilising effects of unplanned contact, which often happens at a key stage in their adolescence.’

Which is why telling our kids the truth, even hard truths, is the best policy.  In an age of social media and other internet content, we can't very well insulate them from all information, and truth will out. So maybe the hysterical nature of these stories will have a salutory effect -- maybe more adoptive parents will see the value of being open and honest with their kids. . . before it's too late (cue the scary music!).

How to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, even when it's hard?  Here are the Ten Commandments of Telling as a starting point.

De-Americanizing Asian Americans

At the Huffington Post, law professor Bill Ong Hing writes about the "image of people of color with immigrant roots as perpetual foreigners," (which I have addressed here and here and much more extensively here):

Eight U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been arrested in connection with the apparent suicide of Pvt. Danny Chen, a 19-year-old infantryman who was Chinese American. The arrests came after family members pressured the Pentagon to investigate allegations that Chen had been repeatedly taunted with racial slurs. The alleged anti-Asian bullying and taunting started during basic training when fellow soldiers used a mocking accent while calling him Jackie Chen; others allegedly told him to "go back to China." The eight soldiers have been charged with dereliction of duty and manslaughter.

Asian American history is replete with examples of the de-Americanization of its members by vigilante racism.

* * *

Even more recently, de-Americanizing antics have been directed at Chinese Americans. In the midst of an international crisis in April 2001, when a U.S. spy plane had to land on Chinese soil and China would not immediately release the plane, many Americans took their frustration out on Chinese Americans. A radio station disc jockey in Springfield, Ill. suggested boycotting Chinese restaurants. Another commentator called people with Chinese last names from his local telephone book to harass them. Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Pat Oliphant ran a cartoon portraying a buck-toothed Chinese waiter yelling at a customer (depicted as Uncle Sam), "Apologize Lotten Amellican!" The American Society of Newspaper Editors was entertained by the renowned satirical group Capitol Steps, featuring a white man dressed in a black wig and thick glasses impersonating a Chinese official who gestured wildly as he said (in a manner reminiscent of the chant that greeted Mary Paik Lee on her first day in school): "ching, ching, chong, chong."

* * *

Somehow the soldiers who allegedly harassed Pvt. Danny Chen felt licensed to engage in taunting and bullying of a young Chinese American who was trying to serve his country. Perhaps that's the problem; those soldiers didn't think that the United States was Chen's country to serve. Somewhere the soldiers got the message that their private vigilante actions were condoned. That message has done much to solidify the image of people of color with immigrant roots as perpetual foreigners. This encourages private individuals to engage in discriminatory acts and reinforces their hostility. As such, Asian Americans become prime targets for de-Americanization by vigilante racists. And that can lead to death.

Irregular Adoption/Gray Identity in China

From China Daily, a story of an "irregular" adoption:

Wu Tiansheng rushed to pick up an empty soft-drink bottle a passer-by dropped at a busy city square in Qinzhou, South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, and handed it to his 75-year-old "mother".

Wu, 7, spends his days helping Huang Jinlian, his "mother", search through trash to collect recyclables. Huang, a widow, said one summer day in 2005, she and her husband found Wu, an infant with a cleft lip, abandoned in a cardboard box near an alley.

"No one on the street knew the baby or was willing to help, so my husband and I decided to take him home," said Huang, whose claim cannot be independently verified.

Since her husband, her second, passed away last year, Huang has struggled to raise the boy on a monthly income of about 600 yuan ($95) - half of it from a government subsidy, 200 yuan from scrap collecting and 100 yuan from leasing a 20-square-meter apartment her husband left.

Huang and Tiansheng live in a not-so-clean house filled with scraps and furniture recovered from the trash. A rice cooker and a radio are their only electric appliances.

Huang told China Daily she tried to send Wu to a kindergarten, but the boy soon dropped out because his classmates bullied and ridiculed him as the "son" of a scrap collector.

Being the object of mockery, however, is not the boy's only problem.

Worse, yet, is his "gray" identity status.

Because Huang did not report to the police when she adopted the boy and there are no witnesses to prove that the child was abandoned, the local bureau of civil affairs does not recognize the adoption as legal.

Without a formal registration with the civil affairs department, the public security authorities will not issue the child a hukou, a permanent resident's permit.

In consequence, the boy has not been able to attend primary school, and even registering to marry will be a problem for him.

* * *

The local civil affairs bureau has suggested Huang send Tiansheng to an orphanage so that he can get a hukou, but Huang won't hear of it.

"I'll raise him until my dying breath," Huang said.

* * *

There may be a solution on the horizon for Tiansheng's identity status: Zhang Daxiao, Huang's oldest son and a 37-year-old bachelor, plans to adopt the boy.

Zhang, a construction worker who earns about 1,000 yuan a month, said he plans to finish the paperwork for adoption and send the child to a primary school next year.

But the boy will continue living with Huang, Zhang said.

The article reports that 90% of adoptions in the city are, like Tiansheng's, irregular.  Huang is not eligible to adopt him because she had 4 children by her prior marriages and does not have the required above-average income.  Further, the article says, China is revising its laws to require a social worker to prepare a home study for domestic adoptions there. "'The revised rules will help orphaned children find a adoptive family rather than simply satisfying a family's wish to adopt a child,' Ji [head of domestic adoption department at CCCW (formerly CCAA) said."

So, reactions?  If he'd been taken to the orphanage when originally found, he might have been legally adopted domestically in China or placed for international adoption.  Or he might not have. Can we say "at least this way he has a mother?" Or should he be placed in an orphanage now, with the hope for adoption now, either domestically or internationally? But of course, it will be even harder for him to be adopted now than it would have been when he was an infant. Can we say, "at least that way, he'd have a legal identity?"

"Brown Babies" from Germany

At the Louisiana Times, an interesting story about the mixed-race offspring of German women & African-American soldiers, many placed for adoption by African-American families in the U.S.:

Daniel Cardwell was a “brown baby.” He found his mother after stumbling upon a newspaper article about himself while attending Howard University.

“What was a brown baby?” Cardwell asked a crowd gathered in the east ballroom of the Armour J. Blackburn University Center.

“A brown baby was someone searching for Mama, someone searching for love, a place to belong,” he answered.

Cardwell and journalist Dorris McMillon were on campus last week for a screening and panel discussion of “Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story.- The documentary is the story of Cardwell, McMillon and four other so-called brown babies who were born in postwar-occupation Germany to German mothers and African-American soldiers. These biracial children fell victim to their enemies who made them feel unwanted, abandoned and rejected. The word “mischlingskinder” means mixed race.

According to the film, 100,000 German babies were born to African-American troops and German women during the 1950s. From 1954 to 1955, that number would increase to 500,000. Women who dated or had children with Black soldiers were kicked out of their homes, disowned by their parents and shunned by their entire families.

“It was very difficult to marry back then,” journalist Heide Fehrenbach said. Permission was needed on both ends. Soldiers needed permission from their commanding officers, and the women had to undergo a series of mental and physical tests.

Brown babies were three times more likely to be given up for adoption. A woman by the name of Mabel Grammer, a socialite and journalist for the Afro-Ameri­can newspaper in Balti­more, found a home for an estimated 500 brown babies.

Adoptee Language Study Offers Insight into Language Acquisition

From the Boston Globe:

As Andy Ross learned to speak English, he progressed from simple word combinations like “Andy shoe’’ to the more complex “my red shoe,’’ just like any toddler.

But Andy was older when he began to learn English, after being adopted from Russia, and his chatter - taped in weekly sessions - has provided scientists important clues about how language develops.

Harvard psychologists are finding that preschool-age children adopted from foreign countries learn English in the same sequence as babies: starting with single words and progressing to word combinations and complex grammar.

That means it is not the maturity of the brain but the nature of language itself that dictates how it is learned, the Harvard scientists say.

“Because babies are immature in so many ways, it’s easy to assume their language is simple because their minds are simple,’’ said Jesse Snedeker, the Harvard psychologist leading the research. But this appears not to be the case, she said.

The research is helping scientists and families understand what to expect when a child who may already know one language is plunged into a new one. And it could eventually lead to better ways to teach language.

I'm always unsettled by research that uses adoptees to study something else, but this research does seem to benefit international adoptees in helping to explain their language acquisition while also offering insight into the larger picture of language acquisition. 

Dismantling the Theological/Scriptural Bases of the Christian Adoption Movement

David Smolin (whose work I've cited here and here and here) has a new law review article coming out: Of Orphans & Adoption, Parents & the Poor, Exploitation & Rescue:  A Scriptural & Theological Critique of the Evangelical Christian Adoption & Orphan Care Movement.  You can download a draft here.   

Before getting to the substance of the article, I want to make a few points.  First, Professor Smolin teaches at Samford University, which is a Baptist-affiliated college that lists as one of its core values "belief in God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord." Second, the article is being published by the Regent International Law Review.  Regent University, founded by the evangelist Pat Robertson,  says its mission is "to serve as a leading center of Christian thought and action providing an excellent education from a Biblical perspective," and lists Christ-centeredness as its first value. Thus, I think it is safe to say that this critique comes from within the evangelical Christian community, not from outside it.  I think that's an important point to note. Also, I think it is important to note that Professor Smolin is an adoptive parent; you can read a bit about his experience of adopting from India here.

As to the substance of the article, Professor Smolin describes it as follows:

The primary purpose of this essay is to demonstrate that the scriptural and theological analysis undergirding the evangelical adoption and orphan care movement is patently and seriously erroneous.  Thus, this essay will demonstrate that, based on the standards, methods, and presuppositions broadly shared by evangelical Christians in analyzing scripture and theology, the evangelical adoption movement’s specific analysis of concepts such as “adoption” and “orphans” has been seriously deficient and has produced conclusions that are demonstrably false.     The second purpose of this essay will be to indicate that these errors of scriptural and theological analysis have produced, and are producing, practices that in scriptural and Biblical terms would be called “sinful” and in more secular language can be called exploitative. 

And the professor brilliantly delivers on that description! After a cogent description of the Christian adoption movement and its theoretical and scriptural foundation, he systematically dismantles that foundation.  First, he explains the modern American version of adoption:

In addition, from a legal perspective the Christian adoption movement presumes the kind of adoption which exists in the United States, which in comparative law terms is called full adoption.   Full adoption involves a complete legal transference of the child from the original family to the adoptive family, so that after the adoption the child is a legal stranger to their original father, mother, siblings, and all other relatives, while being a full member of the adoptive family.   Full adoption generally involves both a new name and a new identity for the child.   In the version in existence in a majority of states within the United States, the law implements an “as if,” closed records system.  Under this system, the original birth certificate and court records are sealed.  Hence, adult adoptees are not permitted to discover their original name, identity, and family members and the original parents are not permitted to discover the adoptive identity of the adoptee.   Thus, the law of the United States builds the protection and legitimacy of adoptive relationships upon the legal destruction and suppression of the original family relationships.   Adoptive relationships in this system are designed to copy biological family relationships; since biological family relationships are exclusive—one mother and father per child---the same exclusivity is expected in adoptive relationships.   The only way to achieve this kind of exclusivity is to deny that “birth” mothers and fathers are truly mothers and fathers, leaving the adoptive mother and father as the only true parents.  The evangelical Christian adoption and orphan care movement has not critiqued the legal system of adoption within the United States, but instead presupposes it as the normative form of adoption, which can create expectations and presuppositions that minimize the significance of original family relationships for adopted persons.

Second, starting with Jewish law and the Old Testament, he shows that no such adoption existed in that time.  He illustrates how many examples relied upon as adoption by the movement -- Moses, most prominently -- are far different from adoption as we know it.

Third, Professor Smolin turns to the New Testament's portrayals of adoption, since the New Testament is the focus of the evangelical Christian adoption movement. He finds no more support there for the adoption movement than in the Old Testament.  He notes that one of the stories relied upon -- Joseph's "adoption" of Jesus -- is completely unlike adoption:

If Joseph had “adopted” Jesus in the modern sense this would have required the repudiation of God’s fatherhood of Jesus, for God would be the “birth” father.  Joseph, who was informed in a dream prior to the marriage that Jesus was the child of the Holy Spirit, surely did not intend this kind of displacement.  Jesus Himself makes it clear, even in his childhood, that he answered ultimately to God his father, explaining his disappearance to Joseph and Mary by explaining that he had to “be about My Father’s business:” indeed, Jesus admonishes Joseph and Mary that they should have known this already.  Since the Father-Son relationship between God the Father and Jesus is one of the primary themes of the New Testament and a basic part of Christian orthodoxy, it is spiritually obscene to envision Joseph’s act as an adoption in the modern sense.  

Further, Smolin questions how central the concept of adoption can be to Christianity when Jesus never used the term or the concept, nor did the gospel writers, nor did any other writer in the Bible, with the exception of Paul.  Professsor Smolin then deconstructs the biblical references to adoption in the letters of Paul. He identifies five specific verses, saying, "It is primarily from these five references, that the Christian adoption movement has sought to build an entire edifice of theology and practice."  He carefully analyzes each one,   first noting that there is serious question about whether the Greek word used by Paul can even be considered a reference to adoption.  Then, accepting for the sake of argument that the references are to adoption, Smolin deconstructs them.

First, he notes that Paul was Roman and that there was a concept of adoption under Roman law, unlike Jewish law.  Second, the letters with adoption references were to peoples under Roman rule, who would also have been familiar with the Roman concept of adoption.  From this, he concludes that Paul was using a familiar concept as a metaphor.  Still, the Roman concept of adoption bears no relation to modern concepts of adoption; it was merely a way to secure a legal heir for inheritance purposes when a family lacked a legitimate male heir. Third, if Paul's referent was to Greek adoption, it, too, bore no resemblance to modern American adoption as embraced by the Christian adoption movement:

[A] fundamental point is that neither Roman nor Greek adoption was focused on the adoption of child orphans.  Adoption generally had nothing to do with providing for the weak, the poor, dependents, or children.   Adoption took young adult males who generally had families and a position in society, and gave them a social promotion to a higher position in society through provision of a new legal identity; in exchange, the adopted adult fulfilled the responsibilities and duties of a son and heir of a great family, whether that meant leading the empire or managing an upper class, noble household.   While it was theoretically possible to adopt a young child, such was rarely done, since such a child was unprepared to lead the empire or family and his capacities to do so in the future were still unknown. 

Indeed, adoption in the Greco-Roman context was not even about providing a family for an adult “orphan.”  The men “adopted” by the Roman emperors generally were already related to those emperors through combinations of blood and marriage (their own and that of their mothers) in addition to their adoptions.   The distinctive purpose of adoption within this web of family relationships was to make them heirs to the empire, not to provide them with a family.

Professor Smolin does a similarly devastating critique of the orphan care part of the movement, noting that the biblical prescription to help widows and the fatherless/orphans presupposed them to be family unit -- a mother and child -- that was to remain a family unit.  Indeed, he says Scripture emphasizes the care of widows over the care of orphans. 

But what difference does it make if the Christian adoption movement gets it wrong theologically and scripturally?  Professor Smolin addresses this question as well:

For the Christian adoption movement, it is as though criticisms of adoption, the adoption movement, or adoption practices constitute a rejection of the foundational Christian gospel message.

Unfortunately, this perspective renders the adoption movement as astonishingly uncritical   Any activity or movement unable to be self-critical inevitably becomes destructive and blind to its own errors.   Thus, one of the fundamental harms of the Christian adoption movement has been so closely equating the modern practice of horizontal adoption with the gospel as to make criticism of such practices impermissible, contributing to an adoption system that lacks accountability and lacks practices, habits, and mechanisms of self-correction.

Professor Smolin also faults the movement for exploiting widows and the poor while seeking to assist orphans, demeaning the importance of original families, for encouraging adoption in situations where it may be inappropriate by employing inaccurate information about "orphans," and for its failure "to embrace the Biblical worldview where most forms of assistance to the “fatherless” or “orphan” do not involve adoption."

Professor Smolin offers his critique with the purpose of stimulating debate and dialogue WITHIN the evangelical Christian movement, and as I noted above, as an insider.  He states of the theological and scriptural claims of the movement, "It would not be wise or prudent to receive such a strong set of new theological claims without examination." This article is a respectful but devastating critique of the evangelical Christian adoption movement, and as an insider, Professor Smolin uses the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. 

Guatemalan Adoptee Returns to Work With Children

From the Nova Scotia Herald News, the story of a teen adoptee from Guatemala who has returned to Guatemala many times to work in orphanages:

She’s only 20, but Kahleah Guibault has already made a dozen humanitarian trips to Guatemala to work with children in orphanages and institutions.

The Central American country, beset by poverty, is Guibault’s birthplace, where she spent the first five months of her life in a foster home before her Nova Scotia parents adopted her.

She was 12 when she first went back with her parents to reconnect with her heritage. Conditions in the orphanages — in some cases, one staff member has to look after as many as 60 children — prompted her to start a series of trips.

"I’ve just kept going back," she said.

* * *

Guibault, who is studying international development and psychology, said she would like to have a non-profit organization in the country someday.

"Whether that will be adoption-related or not, I’m not sure yet, but we’ll see."

The profileof Kahleah Guibault  is for a series about the Top 20 young people in Nova Scotia.