NYHOMESTUDY BLOG

Transracial Adoptions Evoke Heartfelt Responses
Work on Emotional Topic Brings Personal Stories From Others
Commentary by HARI SREENIVASAN

Feb. 28, 2005 – - There are certain moments when sharing pieces of
information can elicit much more than a response and, for me, telling people
that I was working on a piece about transracial adoptions was a series of such moments.

One co-worker told me about the challenges and internal struggles she and
her family went through when deciding to adopt. Another said he was adopted
and told me about his personal journey in finding out about his birth parents
and the impact it has had on the relationships with the parents who have
raised him. These aren’t the type of conversations that flow freely in newsrooms.

When some of my friends heard I was working on this piece, their curiosity
was piqued by the race factor. The topic quickly started a debate about the
state
of racism in the United States vs. other countries, and the cultural
identity dilemmas that transracial adoptees could face. These conversations
are ones
that members of the adoption community are still having, some quietly, some
loudly.

Our piece focused on a few of the elements that enable transracial adoptions
in the United States and examined the situation of black babies from the
United
States being adopted in countries like Canada or Germany.

Transracial adoption basically means parents of one race or ethnicity
adopting children of another race or ethnicity.

My producer, Nils Kongshaug, and I visited a white family in Canada who had
just successfully adopted Ethan, a beautiful, bouncing baby boy in every
sense
of the phrase. We sat down with Phil Bertelsen, an African-American
filmmaker who had grown up an adopted child in a white family, and talked
about the
unanswered questions that forced him to make a film about the subject.

Contributing to the story were representatives from adoption link , an
agency in Chicago that specializes in placing black children into adopted
families,
and Bridge Communications, a firm that helps prepare prospective parents for
the transracial adoption process.

There are several different factors that have created the reality of black
children being placed overseas with white families and, in no particular
order,
they are: The dearth of black families in the United States in line to
adopt; the fears adoptive parents of other races have that they won’t be
able to
bear the challenges of raising a black child; ignorance or racism; wishes of
the birth mothers that their children be raised in a less-prejudiced society
than the United States; and the demand created by overseas parents who are
looking to adopt and find a supply of black babies in the United States.

Watching Bertelsen’s film, “Outside Looking In,” is a good primer to the
layers of complexity involved in these adoptions. On the one hand, there is
the
idealism of loving, prospective parents for whom race truly might not matter
when they adopt a child. On the other hand, there is also something to be
said for giving children a sense of their own cultural heritage and
preparing them for a world where race is still an issue.

In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers called the idea of
placing black babies into white families “cultural genocide.” Though it
hasn’t
made pronouncements as strongly since, the group still thinks it’s a good
idea to keep black children with black families. A recent law made it a
crime
to consider race as a factor when it comes to adoption and that’s one of the
reasons children of all races in the United States are available to
prospective
parents of all races.

There are several great online resources if you want to learn more about
transracial adoption. They include:

Adoption.com: http://transracial.adoption.com/

AdoptiveFamilies.com:

http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/transracial-adoption.php

About.com on race relations:

http://racerelations.about.com/cs/raceandadoption/

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children &
Families: http://naic.acf.hhs.gov/pubs/f_trans.cfm

Statement from NABSW on transracial adoptions:

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adoption/archive/NabswTRA.htm

About.com on NABSW’s statement:

http://racerelations.about.com/library/weekly/aa121700a.htm

Interracial Voice: http://www.webcom.com/~intvoice/point19.html

African American Adoptions Online:

http://www.africanamericanadoptionsonline.com/

Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures

Be Sociable, Share!

•