I haven’t had my coffee yet but a blogger must blog while she can, strike while the iron is hot, type while the baby is occupied. Hopefully I’ll be able to form paragraphs that make sense. I don’t feel quite ready to tackle the emotional side of infertile/fertile adoption because I need to think on how I want to word it just a bit more. So I’m staying on the numbers.

I feel like I have to talk about this plethora of black babies myth.

We’ve established that there are NOT more African American babies up for adoption; in fact there are less. So why do we think there are more?

1. African American children are over-represented in our foster care system. According to this article published by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 2/3 of the children in foster care are black. People confuse domestic infant adoption with foster-to-adopt quite often.

2. While there are fewer black babies for adoption, most people who want to adopt are white and transracial adoption is not everyone’s cup of tea. Therefore, the wait for a black baby is sometimes shorter than the wait for a white baby.

Let’s talk about the shorter wait some more. Is it true? Well, it depends. It depends on where you’re adopting, where you’re looking for an adoption situation (Do you live in primarily white county? Are you willing to look outside your area? Are you willing to look outside your state?), and what kind of outreach your agency/attorney is willing to do. We waited nine months to bring Madison home; other people using our agency had their white babies before we had our brown-skinned daughter.

Then, too, some agencies are more active in recruiting black parents for adoption. Our agency had a whole outreach plan for the black community yet out of about fourteen or fifteen couples and singles in our adoption class only two were black. (Both had babies placed with them super-quick.)

Yes, it’s true that in the world of adoption a blond, blue-eyed baby is the brass ring for a lot of parents. Yes, it’s absolutely true that racism is still alive and well (alive and kicking, dammit, with steel toed boots) in the adoption industry. However does this mean that black babies are left abandoned because there’s no one to adopt them? No, absolutely not.

There was a lot of media attention recently on the fact that there are agencies who routinely place American black babies with foreigners — Canada got the most press — because of the dearth of willing white parents here in the states. But let’s look more closely at all of this. Here is an interesting commentary.

Correspondent Lesley Stahl never even suggested another big reason why adoption agencies might look outside of America for parents to adopt black children. For decades, the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) and others called transracial adoptions “cultural genocide.” In 1992, the NABSW issued a paper condemning “transracial” black-white adoptions between Americans, warning against “transculturation . . . when one dominant culture overpowers and forces another culture to accept a foreign form of existence,” and stated that “children need to be with those who are most familiar with their culture, heritage and family system.” I attempted to determine whether NABSW still maintains its official status against “transracial adoptions,” but as of final editing of this article, no one from the organization returned a phone call or e-mail.

This, I think, is significant. When I talk to adoptive or wannabe adoptive parents who don’t feel up to the task of transracial adoption (and when I lurk on the message boards), mostly what I hear is this: They don’t feel capable of doing it right. In other words, I have never heard anyone outside of an Aryan Nation rally every say anything remotely like, “Yeah, I don’t want me none of those awful black babies!” What I hear is: “I don’t think my extended family would accept my child,” “I don’t think my community is diverse enough to support a child of color as s/he grows,” “I’m afraid I would fail a child whose life will already be more difficult.” The statement by the NABSW certainly gave me pause (read my archives and you’ll see).

Every now and then I hear that it’s just really lousy that white people will spend tens of thousands of dollars to adopt an Asian baby before they will adopt a black baby. Does race drive these adoptions? Is a baby of Asian descent considered a “good” minority? Yeah, of course that’s part of it for some people. Ask the grouchy ladybugs and they’ll give you plenty of examples. But people who think like that — do we want them adopting at all? Lucky for the black babies that they’re heading to Asia but woe to the poor babies they bring home. In any case, let’s not fault every foreign adopter for the racism of some.

I have always contended that what drives many foreign adoptions is the lack of immediate birth parent issues. Plus the wait is a little more predictable, at least usually. There isn’t the up/down rollercoaster that goes with putting together a profile, waiting for it to be chosen, waiting for the baby to be born, etc. For families still uncomfortable with openness, the increasing trend towards more and more birth family contact must seem really scary. (Some foreign adopters come by this fear through experience, having waited for a domestic adoption to go through before turning overseas.)

You know what I say about all that? About people afraid of birth mom issues? I totally get it. And isn’t it fortunate for those babies who need homes that those people are led overseas. And isn’t it lucky for us domestic adopters that those people are able to self-select out and open the way for our waits to be shorter.

Ok, another thing about that commentary — this is notable — the author, Larry Elders also says (correctly), “Healthy black babies, like white babies, get adopted quickly.”

No languishing. Adopted quickly.

I contend that altruistic adoption of black babies by white liberals is pretty damn racist. If we really want to change the face of racist adoption, instead of adopting black babies we ought to be helping black families to adopt. But I also contend that most of us doing transracial adoption aren’t doing it out of altruism. Most of us — I believe — want children and we’re not daunted by the transracial issues. Or if we are, we get over it. This does not make us right, it does not make us better, and it does not make our children lucky to have us.

I think a huge emotional part of domestic infant adoption — infertile or fertile — is coming clean with our selfishness. We want babies and we want them early and we want them legally-free. If that wasn’t true, we would be doing foster-to-adopt where there really IS a need and where black children really ARE languishing in foster care. I’m not saying that we’re not good people — most of us are fine people — but the way we adopt says very little about what kind of people we are. Heck, people adopt from foster care for all the wrong reasons, too.

You simply cannot look at an adoptive parent — waiting or otherwise — and know anything about them by examining the way that they are adopting.

Here are some articles about adoption and black parents for those interested in the subject:

  • African-American Adoptions
    By midcentury, estimates were that up to 50,000 African-American children were in need of adoption, but would probably never find permanent homes. The U.S. Children’s Bureau began including race in its reporting system in 1948 and during the 1950s, a number of innovative programs around the country began recruiting non-white parents. From New York to Chicago and Los Angeles to Washington, DC, child welfare professionals and civil rights activists came together to promote culturally sensitive policies, integrate agency staff, and do community outreach. “You don’t have to be a Joe Louis or a Jackie Robinson to adopt children,” declared one encouraging radio spot created by the Citizens’ Committee on Negro Adoptions of Lake County, Indiana.

  • African American Perspectives of Adoption
    Most Black people have considered agency adoption to be a “for Whites only” parenting option. In spite of specialized adoption recruitment efforts targeted at Black communities, some African Americans still believe that the only children available for adoption are healthy White infants and the only people who can adopt them are rich, infertile, White couples. African Americans usually equate agency adoption with the child welfare system. And the one thing most Black people know about “child welfare” is that its first name is “problem,” its second name is “red tape,” and its last name is powerlessness….

    African Americans often identify child welfare with its protective services, and foster care components, not adoption. Child welfare doesn’t give kids to people; it takes their kids away. Although agencies are always lamenting that they do not have enough Black foster and adoptive families, it is common to hear African Americans tell that they contacted an agency to adopt children or “take in” a foster child, but that they either did not get a call back or got such a run-around that they finally gave up.

    A note about the above article — it makes the mistake of assuming that all black babies available for adoption have black mothers. In fact a number of black babies being placed for adoption have white mothers. (As an aside, I hear that our situation — where Maddie has a black birth mom and a white birth dad — is kinda uncommon in the world of adoption but I’m not sure if this is true.) I have no idea what the issue might be for a black family living in the African American community who brings home a biracial baby. Would have a white birth mother in an open adoption add to the challenge? Do white mothers of biracial babies look for black adoptive parents? There are no numbers about this but I think it bears some thought.

  • Finally, a great piece very relevant to this discussion. Points of Light: Informal Adoption in the Black Community
    Despite this high level of unwed pregnancy, the black community has a very low percentage of girls choosing formal adoption for their babies. In fact, the percentage is statistically insignificant at less than 1%.

    As a result, there is a common perception that the black community is not interested in adoption. Because there is such a low relinquishment rate, it is assumed that unwed black mothers will not consider adoption. And with black children comprising the largest percentage of the children waiting to be adopted, it is also assumed that black families will not formally adopt.

    Neither of these assumptions is entirely true. There is some evidence that both the girls and the families have an interest in adoption, but face barriers which lessen that interest.

    Researchers Kari Sandven and Michael Resnick recently published the results of a study of a group of 54 black inner-city adolescent single mothers who had made an adoption or parenting decision within the past six months. Twelve percent reported seriously considering adoption, a significant number in light of the nearly non-existent relinquishment rate.

    According to researchers Elizabeth Herzog and Rose Berstein, when family structure and income are controlled, black couples are somewhat more likely than white couples to formally adopt. The successful recruitment efforts of black adoption advocacy groups like Homes for Black Children and One Church, One Child support this viewpoint. “I have never ever had to struggle to get a family,” said Sydney Duncan, who has been working with black adoptive families with Homes for Black

    Children since 1969.

    I’m going to drink my coffee now (Brett just walked in with it).

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