More about transracial adoption
Jan 22, 2003 Adoption
I’m reading Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary American by Sandra Patton. The author talks to transracially adopted adoptees and also examines social policy that creates a higher number of black and biracial children up for adoption (specifically in the foster care system but I think it applies to private adoption as well). Some of the social workers she interviewed make a point of saying that before policymakers start trying to “fix” the system by creating “color-blind” adoption policies, they need to ask why more children of color are in that system in the first place.
I’m not sure what to do with this information. It’s nothing I didn’t know. People of color — specifically black women — were disproportionately represented in our shelter. It was depressing to know that our work was putting band-aids on gigantic wounds caused by institutional racism that effectively dismantled families. Issues of race and class permeate any social welfare discussions and it can be difficult to come up with solutions when the small crises of an individual’s life are just indicators of wide-scale prejudice, hatred and fear. Do you fix the crises and let the system run wild? Do you put your time and energy into fixing the system knowing that results won’t trickle down and that people are still bleeding out?
I was an in the trenches kind of person. My work at the shelter was about meeting the needs of one family at a time but very often the challenges seemed (were) insurmountable. I could help a mom find housing but I couldn’t change what racism, sexism, classism had done to her heart and soul; I couldn’t change the way they would continue to shape who she was. Internalized oppression is so damaging and so difficult to fix. People may write their own life scripts but some people are given a vocabulary that dictates the content of that script. It’s hard to change someone’s vocabulary. And what was I but the typical white, middle-class feminist full of big (naive) ideas? My limitations were always so apparent, both the limits of my power and of my experience.
I know that the system is unfair (
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