Adoption Bookshelf: transracial adoption

Showing posts with label transracial adoption. Show all posts

Odds and Ends

Various links I've been reading lately...

TIME published an article about the surprising statistics of adoption in the U.S. Would you have guessed the following?

— Minority women are trying to adopt at a higher rate than white women.
— Only 1% of single women put their babies up for adoption.
— Men adopt at twice the rate women do, but most of those are adopting their stepchildren.

Rainbow Kids has a new article by Dawn Davenport (of Creating A Family) about what to do "if your family doesn't share your excitement about your adoption plans." For prospective adoptive parents seeking advice about how to negotiate dicey family situations, check out "The Reluctant Family: Helping Your Family Find Joy In The Adoption Of Your Child."

Also, if you haven't already checked it out, Dawn's website offers (among many other helpful resources!) a weekly one-hour radio broadcast about adoption-related issues. The September 3rd program (called "The Connected Child") looks particularly intriguing, as it's an interview with Dr. Karyn Purvis, director of T he Institute of Child Development at Texas Christian University and author of the book, The Connected Child (which is in my stack of books that I will one day get around to reviewing!).

And checking out TCU's Institute of Child Development, I noticed their site has many free, downloadable articles about adoptive and foster parenting. Three cheers for free stuff!

And now for something completely superfluous...apparently, the 90s' teen drama, Beverly Hills 90210, has been resurrected (yet another one of the old-school shows kicked back to life by the creativity-starved television industry. I mean, seriously, do we really another go-round of 90210?!). Perhaps the only bright spot in this sucky TV revival trend is that the new 90210 supposedly features a "transracial adoption storyline." Of course, it is 90210, so I doubt that Emmy-worthy thoughtfulness awaits viewers on the horizon. But a girl can hope! Anyone actually watched this yet? Is the transracial adoption storyline actually well-done? Now, I'm curious...but not curious enough to watch it myself! ;)

More Thoughts On The Presidential Election...

On the heels of discussing Palin's and McCain's ties to special needs children and international adoption, I wanted to mention a potential positive of Obama's presidency for some adoptive families, as described in a recent post on Anti-Racist Parent, "The Black Family In America: Not Gone The Way Of The Dodo Bird Yet."

"There is one thing that I know for sure Barack Obama can help do that his opponent cannot: 'normalize' the black family in America’s eyes.

Last night, viewers of the Democratic National Convention spotted what is the rarest of things, according to media and statistics: a traditional, loving, black family. Wait…wait…I know that families come in all different varieties, and that families comprised of a single parent, same-sex parents, parents of different races and groups of extended relations, are as loving and valuable as the traditional model we insist on calling 'the all-American family.' It’s just that I rarely see families like mine and the ones my husband and I grew up in on TV and in pop culture. (Clair and Cliff, where did you go?) It has been decided that relations between black men and women are dysfunctional, that all black women are unmarried and unmarriageable, that black children don’t have fathers....

I probably shouldn’t need validation of normalcy from the culture at large, but sometimes that validation makes me feel good in spite of myself. It’s hard being invisible. The Obamas show the world that black families are still here. I am here."

Again, to me, this is a positive that transcends politics. I think anyone invested in racial equality (which would include the myriads of multiracial families made so through international and domestic adoption) would appreciate the value of a loving, successful African-American family being in such a prominent position in the public eye. Like the blogger notes, so many black families exist who defy misguided popular notions (e.g., that all black men abandon their families or are in prison), yet their representation in popular culture remains scant.

So maybe the Obamas will be viewed as the new Huxtables. If so, let's hope they have the same kind of impact on American culture as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. described the Cosby show as having two decades ago:

"If you watched television before 'Cosby,' you'd think that we talk about being black and poor all day long. What he [Cosby] did was simply present people as black; he didn't have to claim it for them....

The brilliant thing Cosby did was to put race and economic issues on the back burner so we could see a black family dealing with all the things black people deal with the same as all other people. It was the first time most of us as black people have felt a sense of identity with and resemblance to the kind of values we have in common, our relationships with our parents and our siblings."

Wednesday's World Wide Web Wanderings

I'm introducing a new feature on this blog, and I just couldn't resist the alliterative sound of "Wednesday's World Wide Web Wanderings." It's perhaps the most unwieldy blog-post title ever (in the future it will be shortened to "Web Wanderings" or something similarly more manageable!), but for today, at least, I harkened to the siren call of excess alliteration.

Anyway, so this new feature is a link round-up of sorts, a list of some of the articles I've read this week that I find interesting. And please note that I said "find interesting"--while I think these links are noteworthy, I may not necessarily agree with all of the opinions espoused there.

So what's interested me this week?

--I'm very much agreeing with this blog post from another prospective adoptive parent adopting from Ethiopia about the importance of not conveying only negative aspects about a child's home country. In our eagerness to help our children's home countries, it can be all too easy to post about numbers of dying orphans or food shortages. We want to raise awareness, and that is admirable. However, a constant stream of images of starving children ultimately reduces a country's rich history to little more than a Sally Struthers infomercial. Worse still, it unintentionally teaches our children that their heritage is tainted, that they have nothing to be proud of in their home country. Instead, we all must highlight the many positive aspects of our children's birth cultures--both for our children's benefit and our own.

--From The Times of South Africa, a lifestyle article called "Black, White of Adopting," which explores the idea of transracial adoption from the perspective of a black single mother wanting to adopt a white baby. Personally, I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I was surprised to read the comments after the article and see so many objections--and not the kind of objections you might think. Very interesting, especially when filtered through the lens of South Africa's racial history.

--And more on transracial adoption...Dallas Cowboys' All-Pro linebacker DeMarcus Ware and his wife recently adopted a beautiful baby girl. Nothing too extraordinary there, but this story seems to be getting an unusual amount of press (does the New York Times send out a reporter for every pro-athlete's child?). I can't help but wonder if it's because the Wares are African-American, and their baby appears to be white. (Actually, I think the baby looks biracial, but everyone on the Internet seems to assume the baby is white, and I can't find a factual description one way or the other.)

For the record, I'm very happy for the Wares (especially after reading their story), and I think it's terrific that they're providing a loving, Christian family for this child. They seem like really neat people. But what's strange (and potentially problematic) is the press coverage--none of the legitimate news articles about this story mention the baby's race, but they all include pictures. It's like race is the proverbial elephant in the room that journalists refuse to deal with directly, yet they make sure to prominently insert that picture. To what end, I wonder? I'd be curious to know what other people make of this press coverage (at least one other person thinks it's kind of strange, too...).

--And finally, this article: "Adopting Ethiopian Orphans May Not Be The Best Solution." It gets mentioned here for its sheer "No Duh!" quality, as well as having the unabashed idiocy to imply that more people are adopting Ethiopian children because of Angeline Jolie. Yes, it really does say that. Now, I will go vomit quietly in the corner and marvel at what passes for journalism anymore. (For a more specific, less vomit-y response to this article, check out Mummy Heart's blog post.)