[Vogi2002]

Originally Posted by lisa in venice

That is another totally valid reason for picking one race over another HOWEVER how many times have we seen padoptive parents list EVERY race or combination of races except AA. What these people are experts on every other culture? I don't think so.

lisa

Okay, so I have to say, (almost shamefully, like i said before, already have a little guilt) I am one of these people. Now, this is why we must not judge others, let me explain. My dh's step father and half-sister (only say half to explain, we NEVER say half, she is OUR sister) are asian. For this reason, we have learned a LOT about asian culture/cooking/and many other things. Also, we have MANY hispanic friends and have had many growing up, so again, we are close to this culture. Being from KS and a small small town, there were not many AA families, there were some, and we weren't racist...but dh didn't have many AA friends so is very unfamiliar with thier culture, etc. Of course, having my little sister, I am more comfortable, but I have to respect his decision...

I guess this is why we must not judge others' decision. We don't know the whole reasoning. Now, I must say that I know that we are not amoung the majority, and I have heard the "lesser" of the races....pathetic and gross. Now, that being said though, society in general is a LOT more racist to AA. So, in a way, you wouldn't encounter "as much" racism adopting asian/hispanic. BUT it would not be "Easier"....

I hope this makes sense....I feel like I'm babbling. In the end, you have to be okay and comfortable with you are comfortable with. BUT, the more we explore out of our "comfort" zone the more we become a more educated society. Adopting transracially and transculturally comes with challenges and rewards....

I have always had a longing to adopt a AA child....but I think that is more about my little sister...and having her in my life. Hopefully dh will be comfortable with this one day...if not I must respect his decision (believe me I have pushed and pushed and talked and talked and he has seriously thought about it many times, he is truly not comfortable with it at the present time).

Natalie

[Vogi2002]

Oh and as far as family goes, yes, you will lose some adopting transracially. Some families will lose more than others. This IS something that you have to consider, but in the end should not be the final reason. I have to say that every person in my very CC and small townish family have opened thier hearts to my little sister...something I probably wouldn't expect....so don't take everything you "think" you know as the bible. MANY people would surprise you (good and bad) and you'd be surprised how much you could really not care if they WERE in your life if they DON"T respect your family.

Natalie

[Fran27]

I'm almost sure that our family would accept a child from another race... but I just don't want to bet everything on a 'almost'.

Lisa, I agree, I wouldn't be able to associate with really racist people either - but there are different levels of racism IMO, from people really hating them, to people just being uncomfortable with them... so I wouldn't put them all in the same basket. That, and there is a ways between not being racist and accepting someome from another race as a grandchild, too. I'm not sure it's always racism stricly speaking though, but there are still lots of more old-fashioned people who have a hard time imagining that CC people could adopt hispanic or AA children, while AA people could adopt CC children.

Personally, my main issue right now is to get the child to be accepted in the family - I can't say my inlaws have really bonded to any of their grandchildren unfortunately, so I don't want to take the risk with a child from another race. And I would be really scared to see my child come home crying from school because of the neighborhood we live in, too.

Natalie, your post made sense to me. I think another reason why lots of people are most open to Asian or Hispanic children is just because they look more like us... and I think it's a valid reason, too.

On a side note, my agency has two different programs - CC/mixed and AA - so they realize that lots of people seem to think that way (or maybe it's just an insensitive to adopt an AA child, as the fees are much cheaper).

[adoptethiopiablog]

In our case our 'comfort' with race was something that grew. Now we have two Ethiopian daughters and are so fully comfortable with our status as a transracial family that we can't imagine it any other way.

But at the beginning, when we were just wrapping our minds around the idea of ADOPTION, Asian kids felt to us like they would draw less attention and be more easily accepted into our very white family. Don't skin me.. I'm cringing as I write, because now we have gotten so far beyond that.

As it turns out, our family is way more accepting than we initially gave them credit for. And we have come so far that now I have to *remind* myself how we were back at the beginnning, so as not to judge people too harshly who are still back at the beginning stages of race acceptance. For many of us it is a process, a gradual evolving.

Another issue that has been alluded to is the infertility/non-matching issue. To adopt transracially means everyone knows the child is not yours by birth. People who've suffered from infertility may long for people to just assume a child is theirs by birth-- I can totally understand that. They don't WANT their infertility flung into their faces every time people ask about their child's adoption. So for them, the larger issue may be the infertility, and it may take some time to heal from THOSE scars before they can even think about being an 'in your face' transracial family....


Just my thoughts.

[mommmmy]

Well to answer the OP - I think it's a cop out!

It's almost always about DH, other family/friends, the area, etc. Which always brings me to - then why would you marry dh? Why would you tolerate that from your family/friends? And why would you choose to live in that neighborhood? It's always a conversation about...well I'm NOT racist, but. Oh come on. Face it, we all have our own racial issues. I have much more respect for those who tell the truth about it than those who hide behind someone else.

And yes the whole - well we are open to this and that but not AA or AA biracial/multiracial always blows me away. Or we are open to biracial (which they always seem to mean as AA/CC LOL or multiracial but NOT 100% AA) I ask this often of people who bring this up - so what's that about? If it's about thinking that you will be less conspicuous - you may want to think again. If you think it's because you won't have to deal with certain things...again you may want to get a reality check on that. I often will ask...if it's about skin color and standing out...do you realize that many children of other ethnicities could end up to be much darker than most AA folks you've seen?

I've learned so many awful things on our journey. I've seen paps ask for photos of potential birth families to see if they would be "light enough" and so on.

I've watched people do backflips and jump through all sorts of hoops lining up for white babies that have had all sorts of drug exposure and family health issues, but would NEVER think of adopting a healthy black baby.

One thing I often wonder about too - I've seen pbmoms lie about the bdad's ethnicity or her own even, because they know it will be harder to find families for their babies. So I wonder...for those who are open to only CC babies (or whatever other ethnicity OTHER than AA) what happens when the baby comes out different than expected? Or what happens when down the road the truth comes out? Or when the grandbaby comes out different than expected? With adoption, we often will not know the full story. For those who are open racially then it would be a point of interest but probably not devastating in any way. For those who are not open...wow what would that be to them?!

I don't know it makes me wonder...are certain things "ok" because they will try to "pass" the child?

And sorry but Fran - those agencies that do as yours does and discounts rates based upon skin color - I would NEVER support them in any way. That's just beyond disgusting.

Ok then another little segway...I find it interesting that there are those who are ok with adopting black babies/children from other countries but not from US. I haven't seen anyone on here say this at all. I just happen to have been reading another spot where people were talking about this though.

Anyway ...the bottom line for me is that I think that there are usually many more issues that people are not addressing than what they are saying. It's up to them if they want to address them or not though. I certainly don't advocate anyone adopting if they are not comfortable with the situation fully.

I just find the whole thing sad though. And yes it's a reminder that racism is alive and strong in the US!

[WizardofOz]

Quote: (And I guess we're just weird, because there is no way we ever wished or fantasized to have a baby/child that looked like us! LOL!)

No Linny, you're not weird, LOL! I can so identify with this thought.

Since I was a little girl, I imagined that I would adopt one day an "African" and a "Chinese" baby. I wanted to adopt a child that looks very different from me because I thought that non-CC children are BEAUTIFUL!!

I guess I want to say that not all folks want to have kids who look like them. One thought that I had was "I already look like myself, why have a child that looks like me, too", LOL?

DH was very happy about the thought to adopt a non-CC baby. He thought that it would be more interesting to have a child from a different ethnic background in our family. So we asked our agency not to be presented CC situations.

About our family, well, the dynamics are such that we do our life-changing decisions by ourselves and our family accepts them About our neighbors: Since when do we (care to) live up to the expectations of our neighbors?!

We ended up adopting our beautiful Asian son, so I have my "Chinese" baby now ... so next will be "African", to follow my childhood dream ...

Having said all that - I fully understand and accept that there are couples who adopt CC children only. To adopt transracially or not is a highly personal decision and is very much based on the subconscious mind. I would not criticize anyone for making this or the other choice.

IMHO, the most important thing is that we adoptive parents love our adopted child unconditionally and feel as if he/she had been born to us, that's the bottom line. Our child deserves no less than this.

[mommamarci]

For me, I can understand when people choose a child the same race as themselves. It does take away all the questions and having to relive the infertility nightmare. So, I can see and understand that. However, I have a big problem when people are open to any race except AA. (I also understand being open to one other race because you are very familiar with the culture.) It bothers me when a family is open to Native American, Hispanic, and Asian, but not AA. It seems hard to believe they are educated in those three cultures and not the fourth. For us, we started the process truly not caring. However, after listening to our agency talk about the difficulties of placing AA children, we changed our mind. We only want AA (or biracial) children. I feel like God has a plan for us. By us not getting pregnant, He is showing us we have another plan. I think it is to provide a home to these children that are so often overlooked.

Okay, just my $0.02!! Take it or leave it.

[Vogi2002]

mommmmy- Okay, so I totally respect your opinion, it is just that, your opinion. I do hope you don't judge others that differ from your opinion. That would truly be as bad as racism to me. Judgement is judgement, especially judgement because of one thing or another without even knowing the whole situation (color of skin, what race they are open to, anything!!). I do wonder though, having the opinion that everyone should be open to every race...do you agree that adopting transracially brings challenges? Wether we personally are racist or not, the rest of the world (for the most part) is. You WILL be encountered with this, and for some, they are encountered daily with this (most ignore it, but the looks are there). I don't think everyone is able to deal with this. It IS hard, not only to handle the stares, but to keep your mouth shut.

As far as the dh part goes, well, I did marry him. To tell you the truth, i didn't go into the marriage thinking we WOULD have to adopt. So i didn't ask him " if we adopt would you adopt a AA baby?".

I think some people cannot "picture" them as mom/dad of a AA child, just like some can't picture themselves a mom/dad of a CC child....

Again, I totally respect your opinion, it's hard to read the tone of this post but I am simply amazed at this conversation (very close to my heart) and LOVE hearing everyone's opinion, including yours!!! I do agree that for a LOT of people it is a cop out, but not everyone...

I do though remind people to not generalize too much....

Natalie

[musemoon]

I am a fost/adopt CC single parent of a biracial AA/CC??? baby girl. I was open to any race and did not care at all what color my child's skin is. Everyone has been wonderful about her adoption, my family my friends, everyone.

Now that her skin is getting darker, people are starting to notice more that she is black. Most assume (as I am a pretty bohemian type) that she is my bio child. I used to tell people she was adopted and decided that if people think she is my bio child, I will not correct them because later in life it will be her right to tell strangers if she is adopted not mine.

What has happened regarding race, that I was not expecting was that an AA friend of mine would be down right rude assuming that because I was not AA I had no right to raise a black woman in America. She brought up some scary and sad questions about the way AA's are treated in America (or any race other than white) But face it folks AA's get most of the heat. When did you see a police officer accidentally shoot an Asian person? However when did a AA friend ever tell a CC mom how to raise her CC kid, nope only happened when a CC mom is raising and AA kid, did the friend think she had the right to tell me how to raise my kid. And that folks is the world we life in.

So for me it only raised the question of how to raise my daughter. I don't mind the attention, she's gorgeous, I'm very proud of her and I love when people want to say "hi" to her. But CC's are accused of "whitening" the AA children by denying their race, well I think I might be guilty of that....but then what does that mean exactly. Do I want my daughter to wake up everyday to me saying , "hey black kiddo, you're different than me, people are gonna treat you badly cause you're black and because I'm CC I can't help you."

Or do I want to say to her. Here are people of color....here they are all over the world. You are a person of color too...BUT First you are a human, then a loved/honored/chairished/valulable person, third you are my daughter, and fourth your skin is brown. Here is the history of brown skinned people, here are all the brown skinned people in the world who have made history. And you little kiddo get to be anything you want because we are changing the world.

So....as a parent of a transracial child in a multiracial family....I think the only question you need to ask yourself is if you are willing and able to help change the world and it's stereotypes....yes it will be hard....very hard, but it will rewarding. If you are not willing or able to love a child no matter the skin color then don't adopt a child you can not parent with all of your heart. You will only be perpetuating the pain and suffering we are trying to change.
Adoption is so very challenging on so many levels, while I would love it if the world were filled with transraciall families (it would make my job much easier) I have to say parent the child you can parent with all of your heart.

[MichelleL11]

There have certainly been a lot of valid thoughts expressed here and I greatly appreciate reading all the different views on this subject.

I just wanted to add one thing that I don't think has been mentioned. My husband and I are currently pursuing a domestic adoption where we are open to any race or combination of races. There are lots of reasons for this (not the least of which I know we can handle the social issues and additional responsibilities this brings). However, the bottom line reason is -- our goal is to find the birthmother who feels most comfortable placing her child with us and working with her to have a successful adoption (and birthfather, too) -- and we have no idea what race she is or the father is or the child for that matter.

It was actually a struggle to find an agency that wouldn't require us to select ahead of time to be shown only to potential birthmothers that were having CC children or only to those having children of other races. But we finally did and once through the process we will get shown to any potential birthparent who feels our family would be a good one for his or her child. In my opinion basing any aspect of the process on race alone is a real problem with the system.

Note-- this is not because we believe race doesn't matter -- we are not that naive. But we are just not certain that race should play such a central, "first step" role in finding the right family for each child -- which we believe strongly is the ultimate goal of adoption.

MichelleL

[Vogi2002]

musemom- the same thing has happened with us and my AA sister, my mom has gotten plenty of looks from AA women telling her that she has no right...of course by far the white race has been MORE racist, but AA are not free of this either....GREAT points though!!

michelle- I never thought of an agency doing that, but can understand where that would be very frustrating!!! So interesting!!

Natalie

[Fran27]

Wow Mommmy, your post sounds a bit extreme to me.

Originally Posted by mommmmy

It's almost always about DH, other family/friends, the area, etc. Which always brings me to - then why would you marry dh? Why would you tolerate that from your family/friends? And why would you choose to live in that neighborhood? It's always a conversation about...well I'm NOT racist, but. Oh come on. Face it, we all have our own racial issues. I have much more respect for those who tell the truth about it than those who hide behind someone else.

Sure, I'm going to go find another dh, another family, and get money from the sky to get a new house RIGHT NOW! It's really hard to have a debate on something when people have no respect towards people's opinions. See, I love my dh. He sees things the way I do about the whole race thing - we don't live in the right area for it, and we don't have the right family for it. We're NOT hiding behind someone else - we think about the CHILD, which way too many people tend to forget!!! We can't afford another house, and the public school here is great, we have a backyard for the dogs, it's a safe area for the cats - why would we move???? We are fine with adopting a CC child, and we don't want to make things worse with our already hard-to-please and sometimes narrow minded family. But it's FAMILY. Race doesn't matter for us, so why would we get out of our way and risk making our child and families unhappy just so we can brag about being open to all races?

We just want a child, we're not trying not going to change the world. Sometimes I don't get people.

And you know what? Even if people were open to mixed race, CC, hispanic and not AA, because they are not comfortable with AA, how is that your business????

Originally Posted by mommmmy

And sorry but Fran - those agencies that do as yours does and discounts rates based upon skin color - I would NEVER support them in any way. That's just beyond disgusting.

Oh yes, it's so disgusting to try to encourage AA adoption by making them more affordable, when so many AA children need a home...

Seriously, open up.

[karaleah]

I don't think it's inherently racist. Depends on the individuals involved. As another poster raised, is it racist for AA families to request only AA children? Should they be labeled as racists?

I wanted very much to adopt transracially. My husband had his fears and concerns. Some were unfounded (IMO), but none stemmed from hate for any race and ALL had the well-being of the child as the priority. Basically, at that time we felt, in our opinion, that it would be better for an AA child to be adopted by a family with strong connections to the AA community that we simply could not provide.

In the end, we planned to adopt a baby from Korea. Our area has a very large, active Asian community and we felt, based on our interactions with it, that there would be minimal reverse discrimination for our child to deal with. We were also open to Hispanic and Native American children for the same reason (DH is part NA and we have family members of Mexican ancestry).

What happened was that we ended up adopting a CC infant domestically through a series of surprises. It worked out fine for us. I do enjoy the little perk of not having to explain adoption to every curious stranger at the grocery store. It's not why we chose this course, but I'm not complaining, either. It's certainly not about "pretending" she was born to me.

Shari

[jaenelle]

Originally Posted by mommamarci

For us, we started the process truly not caring. However, after listening to our agency talk about the difficulties of placing AA children, we changed our mind. We only want AA (or biracial) children. I feel like God has a plan for us. I think it is to provide a home to these children that are so often overlooked.

That is exactly how I feel, Marci! You said exactly what I felt and couldn't word properly.

[dawnrenee58]

OK, here is my take. For what it is worth..... (not much!)

My Dh is Hispanic. 100%. I am White as can be. While there are differences in how we were raised, and the food we love, and the language we speak with our family, we fell in love with each other because of who the other was. The same will be true of a child you adopt. You will love them for the special person they are, not because of the color of their skin. Race has NEVER been an issue for us, mostly because we VALUE the differences! I love to go to his grandma's house for homemade tortillas and chile verde. He loves to go to my grandma's for chicken and dumplins. (Side note....stuck in Nicaragua for 3 months, chicken and dumplins sounds like HEAVEN!!) What I don't understand is when people say that the know nothing about another culture and therefore would not adopt from there. Why can't you learn? Go to places with large concentrations of that culture. Explore and step outisde of your comfort zone.
Children need homes. To say that you would not want a child because of their skin tone is so sad. How is your community going to become integrated and diverse if no one starts?
I think, and this is just what I think, that you adopt a child, not a color. You share love, values, a home, and SO MUCH MORE with them. If you are able to integrate other practices, traditions or whatnot into your family to include all the cultures, SO MUCH THE BETTER! Take it from someone who knows, Thanksgiving turkey is SO good with tortillas! I would never have believed it myself, but it is!

One last note......we have adopted a baby from Nicaragua, so now I am the odd one out in my family. The only one not Latin. Oh yeah, also, we were talking about an AA/Indian (from India) adoption when it fell through and this one fell into our laps. The Latin connection was not intentional. Now, when people say how much DS looks like DH, I say BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER!!!