The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute issued a 58 page report of transracial adoption. Basically they want to adequately prepare white families before they can adopt black children and they want to seek out and recruit more black families to adopt black foster children.
I see two issues here……
1) I don’t care what color you are, unless you live under a rock how could black families not know that black kids are in foster care? Why do they need to be sought out? Are they trying to tell us that black families don’t know that black kids are wasting away in foster care…..they need to be told, be sought out and shown? Nobody had to recruit me or seek me out to adopt….I wanted to….if black families are not adopting foster kids….did anybody ever think maybe they don’t want to? I don’t buy that black families need to be recruited in order to adopt black foster children.
2) They want to take the group of people that IS adopting black kids and make them undergo some sort of “special training”…..would this be like the “special training” I had to go through to adopt an abused and neglected child. (And I would assume that only a black social worker would be able to lead this special training?) It makes perfect sense to make the process that much longer and more time consuming for the group of people that ARE adopting foster kids. (inject sarcasm) What about if the child is biracial? Do you only have to take half the class? What about if you’re in a racially mixed marriage….does only the white person have to take the class? Go ahead and add a required cultural class to adopting a foster child….knowledge is great….so why stop at adopting a black child? What about if a black family adopts a white child? What kind of special training will they get to assure that “prospective parents receive training as well as counseling related to the child’s cultural, racial, religious, ethnic, and linguistic background”. How about if you adopt a foster child that was born into a different religion than you? And lets not stop at foster kids! Let’s make it required for international adoption and private, infant adoption! Hell….let’s make it a requirement for racially mixed couples having biological children.
On a final note…this made me chuckle….
“To help families address their transracially adopted children’s needs, provide post-adoption support services from time of placement through children’s adolescence”.
Families who adopted through foster care, have to fight DCF to get post-adoption support and services when kids are so emotionally disturbed they attempt to victimize the families that adopt them BUT they’ll give us transracial adoption support it if we adopt a black child???? Give me a break! Tell someone who believes your bullshit. These people are so out of touch with the real world of adopting a foster child it’s scary.
Tags: foster care, Older Child Adoption, Transracial Adoption
I seriously laughed out loud at the biracial taking 1/2 the class. So much of that article made me roll my eyes!
AllisonKs last blog post..One of those days….
Hi Allison…..I’m glad somebody caught my little joke. LOL
This is an important topic, good post.
“Families who adopted through foster care, have to fight DCF to get post-adoption support and services when kids are so emotionally disturbed they attempt to victimize the families that adopt them BUT they’ll give us transracial adoption support it if we adopt a black child???? Give me a break! Tell someone who believes your bullshit. These people are so out of touch with the real world of adopting a foster child it’s scary.”
Joanne I so zgree with this comment! I asked/begged for three years to get help for my mentally ill child I was shut out everytime. He is now a felon because no one would help us! He neede mental health treatment! The color of his skin had NOTHING to do with his crime! Put you damn money where it is needed!
An interesting piece that you might want to consider is an NPR radio show aired June 2008 on the Institute’s report and commentary from Shannon Gibney.
http://www.hereandnow.org/shows/2008/06/show-rundown-for-6182008/
The problem with the previous law is that it treated transracial adoption as “color-blind” meaning if any support were to be given (say for black hair care), then it MUST be given to ALL families.
There must be a middle ground in this issue – one that doesn’t take things to extremes!