Adoption workers usually advise people considering transracial adoption to consider how their families and communities will accept and support a child of a different race, realizing that the child will not be a baby forever–transracial adoption means having a teen-ager and grandchildren of other races. The next question is whether the parents have resources to help the child feel pride in his/her culture, and whether the child will see role models who look like him/herself. We felt that the first issue was not a problem. (In fact my parents had nearly adopted an African-American boy themselves—that adoption never took place for unrelated reasons.) We also felt that there were a variety of cultural resources in the Seattle area and that we would be able to access them. As for role models, in our particular area and in our church there were many Latinos and Asians but few African-Americans. Growing up, my primary experience of diversity was a large Filipino community at my church and school. My husband lived in a rural area and attended largely white schools. However he was a seasonal farmworker from age 14 all through college and worked alongside harvesters from Mexico and sometimes immigrants from Southeast Asia.
I was aware of the need for people to adopt African-American or biracial infants. Our agency did not at that time do transracial adoption of infants (we felt it better for any new children to be younger than our son). There was another local agency which specialized in placing African-American and biracial babies in semi-open transracial adoptions. (Semi-open usually means the birthmother has some say in selecting who the adoptive parents will be, and letters and occasionally visits are arranged through an intermediary.) I did feel hesitation about pursuing this route. I hope my discomfort was not racist. I know a large part of it was worry about how African-Americans would view the adoption. I knew many African-Americans were against African-American children being adopted by Euro-American couples. I heard a presentation by African-American social workers asking how we would prepare a Black teen-ager for being stopped by the police or tailed in a store. I had to admit, I had no idea. The idea was completely foreign to me (yes, I was hopelessly naïve—but at least I recognized that I was naïve).
I should point out that our deliberations took place nearly ten years ago. Not only have transracial adoptions become more common again, but our community now has many more Black people as well. (Interestingly, we have more residents who are recent immigrants from Africa than residents who are culturally African-American, although we have more of those now too–including a good friend who teaches at our children’s school.)
Our next idea was to adopt from Central America since there is such a large Latino community at our church. But then I began to wonder if it would actually be harder for a child to be in a church with such a tight-knit “community within a parish” when she would likely never feel quite at one with that community despite looking like she belonged there. Our parish had lots of Asian role models as well, and–perhaps since they were from many different countries–they seemed more integrated into the general community.
Finally, once we decided on international adoption there were other differences between countries—length of time we’d have to travel, medical history available on the children, the adoption situation in each country—which influenced our decision to eventually choose Korea.
See these related blogs:
African American Support of Transracial Adoption
Educating Yourself about Trans-racial Adoption
Should You Adopt Transracially?
American Children Are Being Adopted in Foreign Lands