Pros And Cons Of Interracial Adoption

Orphaned children should not be denied a family who wants to adopt them and they should not be stripped away from their adoptive families due to their race. Children are said to be the greatest gift that God blesses humans with. Sadly, some people struggle in receiving this precious gift due to infertility. Thankfully, adoption is an option these people have. However, due to racial diversities, families are often unable to adopt a child.

What does “The Law Sees Only Race,” written by Aditya Dynar, mean to you? Do you think someone could brutally strip a child away from their loving adoptive family? A six-year-old little girl was ripped away from her family and sent many miles away to live with another family of her race. This little girl

was 1.5% Choctaw. This law was the only difference between her and her adoptive family. She did not see any difference between her family and herself and did not understand what was happening. Her race was never important. She had a family to take care of her. While she, and many others, thought this need for a family was taken care of, they were heavily surprised when she was forced away. In fact, the best interest of the child is usually brought into consideration when dealing with the location of the adoption, however, government policies such as, “The Indian Child Welfare Act opens a loophole for Native American children…” (Dynar). This act forces many Indian children to have to live with an adoptive family of the same Indian race.
While adoption has been around since 1693, the first recorded interracial adoption wasn’t until 1948. During these years, the quantity of white people wanting to adopt, exceeded the amount of white children up for adoption. Meanwhile, this is the turning point for interracial adoption. Adoption of Asian and mixed race children was promoted when Pearl S. Buch established the first international, interracial adoption agency called the Welcome House. The Refugee Relief Act was also passed which allowed an additional 4,000 orphan visas over a three-year period (ProQuest). These steps also show how our world is adapting to this demand for interracial adoption. Nearly 70 years later, interracial adoption is a major problem for families wanting to adopt and families who are in fear of their child being stripped away.
A recent random study was conducted as a result of a statement regarding the well-being of a child in a different ethnic culture. This study of adopted adults showed that children raised in a transracial household are capable of creating their own self-identity. Also, regardless of race, children are not prevented from creating their personality or their likes and dislikes. While white adoptees and transracial adoptees were surveyed, they did not differ with their feelings regarding the problems any child might endure in a different ethnic home and how a child may benefit from being in this different way of life. With that being said, this does not mean that an interracial adoption is easy. The struggles of name calling, discrimination, and culture blocks are still definite problems that every interracial adoptive family has to deal with. Also, adoptive families say many new struggles appear every day and these struggles are different for each family. Anyhow, the results from this study show that being open with your child about what they could face allows the child to be prepared for their future (@PsychToday).
Children often have a hard time coping with various and unique situations dealing with their adoption. In one place, specifically, China, their one child policy has left many children abandoned. Surprisingly, most of these children that are abandoned are girls. A couple wants a boy to be the one child they have. They want their child to be able to protect and provide for their family. In addition to most orphanages containing girls, they also have an abundance of special needs children. With the phrase “special needs,” it also includes children with missing limbs or birth defects. Adopting interracially causes many to worry about what they can provide for their adoptive child. Many want their child to be comfortable with them and allow them to know their ethnic background. A statement from Edward Solomon’s story of taking his adopted daughter back to her culture in China, provided us with information that Canada adopts more children from China than the United States. He also provides us with information on specific actions that are being took to help these adopted children. With the mass of children entering Canada, organizations, networks, and groups became popular to help these families with whatever they need. This help and support allows families to be prepared for the struggles they might face with a child of a different race. It also helps prepare families with what they could do to help the child be the most comfortable with the struggles they might face (Solomon).
Considering this, China has a new international adoption law that prohibits international adoption to the U.S by single adults. In the United States, many people are starting to adopt internationally as well as interracial. With this law in China, it hinders the adoption of children into a different ethnically centered family. The center of adoption from China is an agency called the China Center for Adoption Affairs (CCAA) who regulates all international adoption from China. While this agency helps keep China corrupt-free, it also creates all the laws prohibiting some families from adopting a child from China. It is ironic that this agency seems to be helping the children in China by finding families that will best suit the child’s interest, however, they require families to be within standard qualifications to be able to adopt. This law is another step to try to prevent interracial adoption. This ignorant law is forbidding kids to have a life with a loving family. A child is worse off being left alone in foster care. (Fisanick).
Do people know how many children with different ethnic backgrounds do not get adopted? Statistics from Tim Loughton, a children’s minister, allow us to get this image of the real number of children. “One in five children waiting to be adopted is from an ethnic minority and for them the wait is three times as long as for white children. Twenty per cent never find new homes,” states Loughton (Muir). Many people think that every orphan, or foster child, go through the same issues with being adopted. Admittedly, this is far from true. But even so, some people think a child should only be adopted into a family of the same ethnic background. An adopted child, Chris Atkins, now 47, shared with Joanna Moorhead, what it was like being a child adopted from Hong Kong and having to live in London, England. He says, “Neither my ethnicity, nor my heritage, were reflected in the way I grew up. I felt I didn't belong anywhere; I didn't know other Chinese people; I knew nothing at all about Hong Kong. I wished I was white, because all the positive role models around me were white, and I wanted to be like everyone else. I internalized my situation: there was a lot of self-denial, and it had a huge impact on my self-esteem” (Muir). While this is all true, should we allow a child to forever be without a family? Even though a child might struggle dealing with their family differences, this does not mean a child should be denied a loving family. Anything is better for this child, than having to live alone and not be wanted.
A law known as Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) has changed interracial adoption for the better.

It prohibits any adoption agencies from denying a child from being adopted based solely on their race or ethnic background. Before this law was passed in the 1990’s, children were left in foster care for most of their life. Also, many children had the chance to be adopted by a loving family, however, they were denied because the family was of a different race. Despite this law changing the way adoption is looked at, it is also very inconsistent. MEPA is the belief that children should not be placed with a family of the same race. That it would benefit the child and their interests if they were placed in a family of a different ethnic group. To strengthen interracial adoption, Elizabeth Bartholet, a professor at Harvard Law School, provided information on the topic, “A law pending in Congress, known as Children in Families First, would begin to change this picture, redefining U.S. policy to support international adoption as one of the best options for meeting children’s basic human rights to parenting.” This law will change what MEPA deals with. Now that the law Children in Families First takes the place of MEPA, it will now deal with children of Native American families and children living abroad. Instead of completely prohibiting a child a family of the same race, it allows children to be placed in the first family that is best for the child’s

needs.
In 1972, a convention called the National Association of Black Social Workers (NABSW) passed a resolution condemning transracial adoption. They believed that, “Black children belong physically, psychologically and culturally in black families in order that they receive the total sense of themselves and develop a sound projection of their future” (Silverman). This convention received harsh criticism from many, but most of all from families waiting to adopt a loving child. This criticism and the increase in this transracial placement widened, it has caused the convention members to alter their position. They now stand with children being placed in the same race families, but if this is not available to do, adoption by families of a different race is then allowed. The statement for the reason for their change in position is, “We are well aware of the negative social and psychological impacts of childhood institutionalization and foster care, agency leaders saw transracial placement as one way to avoid these problems” (Silverman). While at first, they were against all interracial adoption, the convention as a whole realized that it isn’t worth the discomfort of the child to have to stay in foster care or orphanages all of their life.
Families often wonder what to do when they have adopted a child of a different race. They often admit that they are not as prepared as they should be in the situations a child might endure. Helpful advice such as “Acknowledge and discuss the reality of racism” and “Learn to understand and challenge institutional racism (Keleher)” is something every adoptive family needs to focus on. Love is not just colorblind. Sometimes, love from your family is not enough. A child has to be able to withstand the harsh treatment he may receive. Many families seeking adoption often do not want to go through the struggles of raising a child with a different race. They would rather wait and adopt within the same race. However, every child needs and deserve a loving family. Race should never be an issue. Jeneen Interlandi, a writer for News Week, provides her own experience of being adopted, “Like them, we indulged in all the rituals of our particular American upbringing. And like most internationally adopted children, we turned out just fine.” This statement diminishes the rumor that a child of a different race is automatically at a disadvantage. It all depends on the specific family. While a child is from a different ethnic culture, they will still live up to their abilities studying American culture and living here.
In conclusion, there are different opinions about whether it is right for a family of one race to adopt a child of another.

Some people think that race should never be a consideration--that "perfect vision is color blind.” Others feel that in an imperfect world where color matters, transracial adoptions are a kind of genocide that leave children unprepared to survive in a racist society. Robert Dale Morrison, a professor at Harvard Law School, sums up what interracial adoption is all about, “The quickest cure for racism would be to have everyone in the country adopt a child of another race. No matter what your beliefs, when you hold a four-day-old infant, love him, and care for him, you don’t see skin color, you see a little person that is very much in need of your love.” If everyone thought this way, a child would not go unwanted. This issue on race and the wellbeing of a child due to the color of their skin and where they are from, would not be a major part of adoption

today.