Transracial adoption debate continues in Pennsylvania
CVK
(Thanks to Geraly for this tip!) Last month, we told you about a legal battle brewing in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester County as a white couple claims they were forbidden from adopting their foster son because he was black.
The Philadelphia Inquirer digs a little deeper into the thorny issue of transracial adoption in this article by interviewing several transracial adoptees, parents who adopted transracially, and various adoption experts. Among the adoptees interviewed is Phil Bertelsen, director of the documentary Outside Looking In: Transracial Adoption in America.
Adoption today is a rainbow of color and country; thousands of multiracial families are created in the United States each year by the arrival of children from countries such as China, Guatemala, India and Liberia.
Yet it’s the pairing of African American children and white parents that stokes the transracial debate and sometimes provokes legal battles, most recently in Chester County.
Why? The answer, experts say, is slavery, the country’s primal wound, the issue that has tormented black-white relations for more than three centuries.
Though white people might view interracial adoption as evidence of societal progress, experts say, for many black people it is a painful harkening back to a time when their ancestors were treated as property - and proof that the child-welfare system discourages African American adopters.
Paul Kekai Manansala, Quests of the Dragon and Bird Clan wrote:
Adoption was used by missionaries for the purpose of spreading Christianity by raising non-Christian children as Christians, and cultural assimilation.
Posted 24 May 2006 at 6:28 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
PKMQDBC - keep looking for those birds and dragons, kid. Adoption is WAY older than Christianity - adoption and fosterage is in every culture’s mythos, and is therefore part of the human (or even primate) condition.
The issue has nothing to do w/ Christianity - what, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists don’t adopt? Get outta town.
Posted 24 May 2006 at 8:36 pm ¶
lyonside wrote:
Crap - and that was me…
Posted 25 May 2006 at 5:27 pm ¶
justin wrote:
If Paul’s a polynesian from my side of the world (?) he has every right to say that and he doesn’t need to speak in the past tense.
Posted 26 May 2006 at 1:04 am ¶
Brad wrote:
Adoption can be a good thing for many children. It’s about education, understanding, love, and not isolating your child in the wrong neighborhood for starters.
The otherday, I watched a show on PBS called “Daddy and Papa” about gay adoption. A couple of the fathers were white men who adopted black/biracial children. Although they seemed sincere, they also came off as being selfish because as one parent said: “I can only teach my son my culture. Kwanzaa! I don’t know anything about that!” Well, I don’t know many people who celebrate Kwanza but I can read a book. Another father lamented the fact that there weren’t many kids in his Castro neighborhood in San Francisco. So, his kids didn’t have friends in the neighborhood. Um, why not move to a gay-friendly neighborhood with kids?
The fathers just seemed lazy in not doing the simplest things to assist their kids like reading up on another culture or moving to a better neighborhood.
Posted 28 May 2006 at 5:19 pm ¶