Intraracial (Same-Race) Adoption

The media loves to talk about transracial adoption. But what about intraracial adoption?

I'm going to sketch a framework for ways of thinking about intraracial adoption, both by white parents and parents of color. Some of this is just pure speculation on my part, but some is based on news and academic reading, and also on conversations on the internet and in real life during my licensing classes.

A. Intraracial Adoption is a Privilege?
White adoptive parents are often criticized for feeling "entitled" to a white baby. The premium placed on healthy white infants means that private agencies often charge much higher fees. White children are often adopted from the foster care system more quickly than black children of the same age.

Looking at it from a psychology viewpoint, it's quite a natural or kneejerk response to desire children that look like us. Most of us look very much like our parents. We're used to a world in which families have strong physical resemblances. We associate physical resemblance with emotional connectedness. But is it right to carry this association into the world of adoption?

Agencies used to match children and parents based on physical resemblance, so families could "pass". Today the public has started to realize this is unhealthy, that adoptees have a right to their true histories, and that kind of matching is going out of style.

I don't think it's fair to place extra blame on white parents for desiring to adopt a white child. It's a selfish desire, true, but it's the same selfish desire that parents of all colors have! I've met black adoptive parents who expressed a lot of pride that their child looks so much like them and that no one ever asks if their children are adopted (this didn't mean they weren't very open to talking about the fact that their child was adopted).

Some white parents build on this simple desire for a privilege and turn it into something more sinister: a sense of entitlement. Even if it means blindly supporting corrupt institutions, they've just got to have that white baby. Other white parents think about the topic more deeply and try to proceed in an ethical way.

Adopting within the same race also carries social privileges that are going to vary depending on the situation. But there's always some kind of privilege, I believe. Number one is that you will receive less attention, judgment and criticism. The adoptive mother doesn't get mistaken for the nanny, as I've heard sometimes happens in transracial adoptions. People don't ask stupid questions in the grocery line. You don't have to cut off members of your family who say uncomfortably racist things at the dinner table. You don't have to worry that you might not be equipped to give your child a positive racial self-image.

The privilege for African-American parents is especially important if they live in an African-American community. If they don't adopt a black child, they have to be ready to field plenty of criticism. "Why can't we take care of our own first -- they have so much more need!" Besides peer pressure, there are other kinds of social and economic incentives for parents of color to adopt intraracially. For example, Chinese-Americans who fit certain criteria can get expedited adoptions from China.

B. Intraracial Adoption is an Obligation?
This one doesn't really apply as much to white parents. I don't think there's really any powerful trend of thought that says white parents have a moral obligation to adopt within their race. But I believe this feeling of obligation certainly exists, either in the foreground or background, for parents of color. It's especially strong for African-Americans, I believe. Two things contribute to it: the disparate numbers of African-American children in the foster care system and the strong cultural tradition of informal adoption. I have often heard of the term "stepping up" when African-Americans talk about adoption. The positive connotation of course is to fulfill an obligation or responsibility to a community.

In the case of Asian-Americans, cultural and racial obligation is separate and distinct. There's not much media or data on us as adoptive parents. As a whole though, Asian-Americans don't feel racial solidarity in the way that African-Americans feel; our histories and cultural traditions are too divergent. I feel a strong connection to Japanese-Americans and nikkei in general, but zero sense of racial duty to adopt an Asian child from another country, say China or Vietnam. I imagine that cultural obligation could be an important factor, though. On the other hand, I know at least in both Japan and Korea there is an evolving but very mixed view of adoption in which negative attitudes ("adopted children will never fit in/might be treated like servants/are less than biological" etc.) are still very prevalent. How much have these attitudes carried over into Japanese-American and Korean-American families? In my case, not at all... my father's experience is so unique that my view of adoption was always "upside down".

When it comes to obligation in Hispanic adoption, this is a tough one and even harder to generalize. Hispanic group boundaries are kind of the opposite of Asians: one language and many races as opposed to one race and many languages. On one hand, I've heard anecdotally that it can be very difficult for Hispanic parents to get a Hispanic child through private adoption. The cultural pressure is stronger than in white families to keep children, not relinquish them. On the other hand, according to an article I translated last month from Mundo Hispánico, there is a huge unmet demand for Hispanic foster parents in Georgia. The article tries to create a sense of obligation in order to recruit Hispanic foster parents to meet the cultural needs of Hispanic children. I'd also like to add that I think the white parents in the article are doing a great thing. They're being painfully honest about their own shortcomings, like lack of knowledge of Spanish, and basically saying "we try hard but we know we're not the best, and if you can do better then please, please sign on and do it!" Plus, they're keeping a young mother and her baby together in the same family.

C. Intraracial Adoption is a Restriction?
There are views of adoption that says transracial adoption is always wrong, black people can only adopt black, white people can only adopt white, Asian can only adopt Asian and so on. I believe absolutist intraracial restrictions are a bad idea for a whole host of reasons. Just a few: race and culture are fluid, interracial couples mess up the rules, multiracial parents and children mess up the rules.

The other extreme is the idea that transracial adoption is a good thing in and of itself. An example is a well-meaning white parent who believes that adopting a black child will help solve racism. They send their child to an all-white school, don't keep them connected to African-American culture and as a result the child has lots of problems and anger about their racial identity. Children should be allowed to be just children, not little 24-hour-a-day rainbow envoys. White celebrity parents are the usual culprits but I wouldn't exempt other parents. For example, Josephine Baker: in so many respects an incredibly admirable human being, her belief that her multiracial adoptions were a kind of mission to the world strikes me as disturbing.

Critiques of transracial adoption are important. Some parents adopt transracially for terrible, terrible reasons. Adopting outside your race and/or culture can carry extra problems for your family and the self-esteem of your child, and you need to be prepared to handle those problems.

Here's an outline of some approaches to intraracial restrictions:

1) extremist white racist: white should only adopt white. Nothing else matters.
2) traditionalist white racist: The races should stay apart. White should only adopt white.
Other races should probably stick to their own. Multiracial/Interracial is suspicious.
3) white entitlement: white parents should have a choice to adopt intraracially or not. Children of color need to be saved. Parents of color are not important but should probably adopt intraracially.
4) white conformist: Hold diverse attitudes towards race; adopt intraracially for the sake of social conformity.
5) white self-aware: would willingly restrict themselves to intraracial if they thought they would not be an effective transracial parent; consider adoption critically but do not jump into judgment on parents of color.
6) extremist transracial critique: white entitlement is too engrained in the adoption system. White people should only be allowed to adopt intraracially. Other races and cultures should not adopt transracially. Adoption in all forms should be radically curtailed and international eliminated.
7) centrist transracial critique: white entitlement is engrained in the adoption system. Serious reform needs to be carried out in many directions at once. More intraracial adoption by people of color should be encouraged.
8) African-American ethnocentric: If AA parents adopt, they should adopt from the foster care system or take in needy relatives. "Take care of our own first" above all. Highly suspicious of any form of adoption requiring large sums of money, even including African international.
9) African-American diverse: Uses "family-building" as a primary model for adoption, not "obligation". Open (but not uncritically) to all forms of adoption. Highly focused on intraracial adoption by AA parents and suspicious but somewhat open to transracial by AA parents, especially those in interracial relationships.

There is one huge missing piece of the puzzle when talking about intraracial adoption: Native American/First Nations. This is the only group where intraracial adoption has privileged legal status under the ICWA. I honestly don't know enough about the present-day situation and attitudes towards adoption to make even the vaguest generalization.

So what do you think? If you're a parent who might be adopting intraracially, do you consider it a privilege, obligation, restriction, none or some or all of the above, or do you think my outline is dead wrong, or even insulting? Or any thoughts in general? I'll leave this post up for a while before I answer the question for myself (although I seriously doubt I'll be adopting intraracially).