I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the report. A transracial family cannot be color-blind as this is a huge disservice to the child (remember our recent thread on this very subject?).
And I have to admit that I doubt very much that the adoption attorney that we use does anything at all to recruit black families before matching the expectant mom.
You can read the full report here:
Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
I found it more helpful to read PACT's interpretation and assessment of the report (read below):
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What is all the fuss about - new report on transracial adoption
Ten days ago the Evan B. Donaldson Institute issued a report regarding the success and validity of the MEPA-IEP laws that govern transracial adoption for children in the US foster care system. The report has fostered many questions about transracial adoption from adoptive parents as well as the media. Many of you have asked us about our stance on the report. We want to provide our members with some history and context for the debate as well as its meaning for Pact and adoptive parents of children of color in general.
At Pact, we believe that the race-blind interpretations of the law have not served children of color because they deny the importance of race to the child themselves. In general, "good" adoption practice should place the child's interests first, over and above that of adoptive or birth parents and in the context of transracial adoption this means children of color need adoptive parents who place a high value on their child's racial identity formation and comfort, whether they share their child's race or not. We urge transracial adoptive parents who support their children's right and need to fully explore their heritage and genetic background, not to be afraid of this report as somehow being "against" transracial adoption. In fact, it is for children, for their right to feel comfortable in their own skin and for their right to have a family - both and not either/or.
In the 1970s many social workers and adoption agencies made a practice of placing children of color with white families in the belief that race should not be a factor in the placement of children for adoption. The National Association of Black Social Workers came out with a policy statement in 1972 objecting to this practice on the basis that race matters and children of color need to be in-culture or risk being handicapped as they move through a race-conscious and biased society. Over the next twenty years, transracial adoption was a controversial topic that prompted many debates over race matching vs children's need for permanence. In fact, children of color need and deserve both permanence and strong, supportive racial and cultural role models.
Too often, adult transracial adoptees who grew up in the 60s, 70s and 80s describe childhoods that took place in almost total racial isolation; which is debilitating and denies children their inherent right to explore and embrace their genetic heritage. At the same time, the number of children of color in foster care was growing disproportionately. The idea that permanence was less likely for African American and Latino children, in particular, was causing great concern among people of color and whites alike. In the mid 90s, the Senate passed a law called the Multi Ethnic Placement Act (MEPA), later amended as the Inter Ethnic Adoption Provision (IEP), which together mandate against using race as a placement factor for the adoption of children in the foster care system. The law was passed because white parents had complained that they wanted to adopt the many children of color in the foster care system; they argued that they were being barred from adoption because of racial matching policies that were in effect. While these laws do not apply to either private domestic nor international placements, the debate and attitudes about transracial adoption are relevant to all of these forms of placement and as such, make the report and discussion important for every adoptive parent of a child of color.
The report makes two overarching recommendations:
1. Amend the law to permit race to be considered as one factor (but not the sole factor) in selecting parents for children from foster care, and allow the preparation of parents adopting transracially.
2. Enforce MEPA's requirement to recruit families who represent the racial and ethnic backgrounds of children in foster care, and provide sufficient resources to support such recruitment.
Pact is wholeheartedly endorsing both of these suggestions and also urges:
3. Making post-placement education and support available to transracial families. Pact has long believed that high quality education about issues related to adoption and race is critical. It is essential that this education be honest and thorough, not designed to placate worried parents but rather asking them to dig deep into the painful well that is racism and become educated and connected to the communities of color that their children belong to by birth. In the end, this is the kind of support that parents want and need, because it allows them to become the effective parents that they want to be.
To place a child with someone who is not prepared to address the issue of the child's racial identity, or worse, believes that there is simply no reason to, is doing a lifelong disservice to that child. Adult adoptees of color who were raised in transracial families are the best evidence of how important education and support for their families can be to the kids' well being. Listening to their life stories and how they experienced race throughout their childhood, teens and into adulthood is often a revelatory experience for people who are beginning to think about race and adoption. After hearing their voices, it becomes clear that children must either be placed for adoption with parents who are share their race, and can truly foster and mentor the development of their full identities OR be placed with parents who understand that that child must have access to a community that can foster and mentor that child's full racial/ethnic identity.
Limited research has shown transracial adoption to be as successful (from the point of view of stable adoptions and "adjusted" children) as same race adoption. Adoption "failure" is more likely to occur the older the child is at the time of placement, regardless of the child's or parent's races. However, no child should have to give up his or her cultural identity in order to have a family. In the best of all possible worlds, transracially or transculturally adopted people should be able to fully identify with their family's culture as well as be a part of their birth heritage and culture. Not everyone will choose to explore or express their racial identity in the same way, but each individual should have the opportunity to learn the cultural cues and mores of their racial community so that they are able to be full members of that community without feeling handicapped because of what they do not know.
We urge adoptive parents (and extended family members as well) to try to keep in mind that transracial adoption presents certain challenges that don't exist in same race adoption. Transracially adopted children are often asked if their adoptive parents are their "real" parents and other such intrusive questions. Typically they love their parents but there are times when they wish they didn't have to "show" so publicly and be the object of strangers' attention and curiosity. Transracial adoption is harder on kids precisely because the world is so race conscious and racist. That is why we at Pact try so hard to help families and kids feel good about themselves and proud to be members of their family.
Perhaps recruitment of families of color to adopt will mean it takes longer for a white family to adopt transracially, but is there really anything wrong with that? Ensuring access to adoption for families of color is essential to promoting the healthy placement of children of color. Statistics have shown that children of color are much more likely to be adopted by a family who shares their race that one who does not, generally only 10% to 20% of children being adopted are adopted across racial lines. The very children who were targeted by the law at its inception, African American children, have not been adopted at a greater rate that they were prior to the law. In fact the majority of transracial placements that have occurred since 1995 have involved infants and very young children, who were always relatively "easy" to place - leaving older children of color still at the bottom of the placement ladder when it comes to finding permanence.
In this context a disturbing trend is the practice of private adoption professionals and organizations advertising their "African American" placement programs and offering their services to expectant mothers while they place no emphasis at all on recruiting African American families, nor expend any effort to prepare the white adoptive families who are their clients to parent children of color. Some of these organizations even transport pregnant women far from their home community to areas that are overwhelmingly white. The women deliver their babies without support from friends, family or any members of their own ethnic or racial community and are shipped back home as soon as the baby is placed. This practice flirts with coercive pressure to "get babies" for adopting families, when good practice should ALWAYS be about serving children's interests.
As a transracial parent myself, part of how I can make piece with my decision to adopt transracially is knowing that I also support adoption systems that work towards making sure that children of color have both same-race as well as transracial pre-adoptive parents waiting to adopt them. Practitioners who tell expectant parents that they can help them place their child of color before they recruit and educate families who are ready and able to adopt that child of color need think carefully about whether they are serving the paying client instead of serving the child in need of adoption. Recruiting such families is not impossible. We know that many of the barriers to adoption for families of color consist of misunderstandings about how adoption works and fears generated by media stories about adoptions that go awry. There is also the perception that the costs of domestic infant adoptions put them way out of reach for families of color. To recruit families we must counter the "word on the street" with real stories and concrete information about how adoptions should happen and about the organizations out there that do not charge impossible fees. We can give families useful information about how to navigate a system that can be daunting and at times offensive to families of color. Even if an adoption professional or organization does not have an active program to recruit families of color directly, they can always call Pact or other organizations that do such recruitment to ensure the expectant parent has choices. Bottom line - when adoption is driven by the service of children rather than parents, it is much more like to be done right.
Bravo to the Donaldson Institute for coming out with a report that will serve domestically born children of color over the long haul. Let's use it as an opportunity to support children of color, create more opportunities for education and community for transracial families and give families of color better access and service in an adoption system that too often institutionalizes racism to the benefit of white parents over those of color.