I'm just going to jump right in here with some thoughts on transracial adoption and how this relates to the extended family. I recently read a thread on a popular adoption forum started by a person who was open to adopting transracially, though her family is openly racist (per her description). She was looking for support and advice around whether or not to persue transracial adoption. Many responses followed, both by adoptive parents who considered you racist if you refused to adopt transracially and by those that told the original poster to adopt a child that would be more easily accepted into her family.
This is a very tough call. I would never want to bring a child into a hurtful, racist family. Does it really matter if that child is of a race that is accepted by the family or not? I mean, as I was reading these posts, I just kept thinking, "How is it okay to bring ANY child into that environment?" Does the problem really go away if we only adopt children that will be easily accepted into the extended family because of the color of their skin? I should say not. Is there a difference between a child of the same color as the family (in the case of this poster, she is white) hearing this racist comments and child who is of a darker complexion hearing these comments? Yes, I believe there is a difference. However, neither is excusable in my opinion. Neither would be acceptable to me. With few exceptions (one, really), my family and my husband's family is very supportive of our decision to adopt, and they all know that we are open to a child of any race. And in the case of my one relative that is not supportive of the adoption (though not for reasons that have to do with race), I don't plan on ever having any contact between our child and him.
This is a really sticky situation. I don't know anyone personally that is in the situation of the woman from that web forum. What if many people in my family were openly racist? Would I disown them all in order to adopt my child? Could I work with them to get past their ignorance? Would adopting a child of a race different than ours change their views? In any case, it's a hard world out there and whether it's inside or outside our families, racism and hatred are all around us.
Phew. This is why people write books on this stuff.
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2 comments:
Congratulations on being a futura mama, and for inaugurating your blog!
Adoption requires people to really clarify what their values are, in a way that fertile people might not have to do.
You ask some tough questions.
So true. As adoptive parents, we certainly grapple with issues that people who don't adopt may never even think about, much less discuss at length. For us, it's been an amazing process. It's made us so much stronger as a couple!
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