You Say Adoption, We Say Genocide

Jacob Sullum | August 17, 2006

A front-page New York Times story about the recent rise in adoptions of black children by white parents claims we've come a long way since the National Association of Black Social Workers condemned such racial mixing as "cultural genocide." Nowadays the NABSW still opposes cross-racial adoption, but at least it has stopped calling it genocide.

The rest of the article details similar progress: Adoption agencies are not supposed to discriminate based on race anymore, but they still do, but then they get sued, and they usually lose. White parents who want to adopt black children have to demonstrate a high level of racial sensitivity, a commitment to "diversity," and a determination to maintain their children's connections to their African-American culture. Even when they meet these tests, they can look forward to second-guessing by black friends, neighbors, and total strangers skeptical of their ability to properly raise black children.

Who needs the hassle? When it comes to adoption, it's easier to deal with the totalitarian government of China. Yet the Times reports that many blacks are dismayed by white Americans' enthusiasm for foreign adoptions when so many black children are in need of decent, loving homes.

Comments

|8.17.06 @ 4:05PM|#

If any group could make a stronger argument for peaceful anarchy than yours truly, it is the National Association of Black Social Workers.

|8.17.06 @ 4:37PM|#

Isn't it just better for the kids to be in a home with a loving and caring family? Why should it matter what race they are? You can't, on the one hand, push for equality - essentially a blindness to race - in matters of employment and the justice system and then on the other hand discriminate against a race because you fear that they won't let their kids listen to rap, celebrate Kwanza, or do their hair cornrows. Is it better to just let them stay in the orphanage or foster care so that they can foster their as African-American Heritage? Come on people - the prospective white parents are willing to a chance. I'm pretty sure that most black kids would be willing to as well.

I hope that one day everybody will have some brownish-paleish-reddish kluge of skin color and that all of this BS would be done with. Then again, there will always be religion to push our own selfish, bigoted agendas.

|8.17.06 @ 4:38PM|#

Isn't it just better for the kids to be in a home with a loving and caring family? Why should it matter what race they are? You can't, on the one hand, push for equality - essentially a blindness to race - in matters of employment and the justice system and then on the other hand discriminate against a race because you fear that they won't let their kids listen to rap, celebrate Kwanza, or do their hair cornrows. Is it better to just let them stay in the orphanage or foster care so that they can foster their as African-American Heritage? Come on people - the prospective white parents are willing to a chance. I'm pretty sure that most black kids would be willing to as well.

I hope that one day everybody will have some brownish-paleish-reddish kluge of skin color and that all of this BS would be done with. Then again, there will always be religion to push our own selfish, bigoted agendas.

|8.17.06 @ 5:04PM|#

"...Adoption agencies are not supposed to discriminate based on race anymore, but they still do, but then they get sued, and they usually lose. White parents who want to adopt black children have to demonstrate a high level of racial sensitivity, a commitment to "diversity," and a determination to maintain their children's connections to their African-American culture. Even when they meet these tests, they can look forward to second-guessing by black friends, neighbors, and total strangers skeptical of their ability to properly raise black children."

One way to gauge discriminatory practices would be to look at the way agencies handle black parents who want to adopt white children. ...Are black parents required to demonstrate a determination to maintain their children's connections to their European-American culture?

|8.17.06 @ 5:25PM|#

Isn't it just better for the kids to be in a home with a loving and caring family? Why should it matter what race they are?

Oh, simple fool! Haven't you heard? "Tabula Rasa" is dead. You are your skin color. Your brain is programmed solely by your genes. All black babies love jazz and cornbread. All white babies love polkas and hot dogs. Accept the predetermination of DNA and bloodline. Teach them darkies ebonics and gangsta rap. Teach them whities science and banking. White people and black people can't mix.

|8.17.06 @ 5:27PM|#

Isn't it just better for the kids to be in a home with a loving and caring family? Why should it matter what race they are?

Oh, simple fool! Haven't you heard? "Tabula Rasa" is dead. You are your skin color. Your brain is programmed solely by your genes. All black babies love jazz and cornbread. All white babies love polkas and hot dogs. Accept the predetermination of DNA and bloodline. Teach them darkies ebonics and gangsta rap. Teach them whities science and banking. White people and black people can't mix.

Paul|8.17.06 @ 5:57PM|#

I'm not following here. Is the suggestion that black children's brains are wired differently than brains of white children? How does one 'properly' raise a black child? For instance, my neighbors recently adopted a baby from China. How do they 'properly' raise that child?

Call me old fashioned, but I thought raising children had to do with providing discipline, caring guidance, consistent rules, a loving home and several other things which have little (or so I thought) to do with skin color.
This further suggest to me that to 'properly' raise a black (brown, yellow?) child one must spend considerable effort in the childs lifetime concentrating on skin color. This seems perverse to me.

|8.17.06 @ 6:55PM|#

I'm not following here. Is the suggestion that black children's brains are wired differently than brains of white children? How does one 'properly' raise a black child? For instance, my neighbors recently adopted a baby from China. How do they 'properly' raise that child?

Call me old fashioned, but I thought raising children had to do with providing discipline, caring guidance, consistent rules, a loving home and several other things which have little (or so I thought) to do with skin color.
This further suggest to me that to 'properly' raise a black (brown, yellow?) child one must spend considerable effort in the childs lifetime concentrating on skin color. This seems perverse to me.

You mean that you think that people SHOULN'T define themselves by the color of their skin? Get with the times man. What are we if not skin color and whatever out ancestors did? Actual human beings with thoughts, feeling and opinions? MAD, MAD I TELL YOU!

What's next, people living up to and being judged by the same standards?

Wild Pegasus|8.17.06 @ 7:21PM|#

Mmmm...jazz and cornbread...

- Josh, about as white as it gets

|8.17.06 @ 7:34PM|#

No good deed goes unpunished, it seems...

-jcr

Larry A|8.17.06 @ 8:15PM|#

Actually there's a very simple way for NABSW to insure that white parents don't adopt black kids. Come up with enough black parents to adopt them.

Yeah, I said simple, not easy.

Even when they meet these tests, they can look forward to second-guessing by black friends, neighbors, and total strangers skeptical of their ability to properly raise black children.

"Yes, sir/ma'am. And how many black kids have you fostered or adopted?"

|8.17.06 @ 8:44PM|#

Speaking of racism that is still acceptable in our PC world, check out:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576753859/reasonmagazineA/

Sorry, I don't know how to link. I'm Irish.
Nevertheless, RANKISM is as pervasive and possibly just as deleterious, if not more so, than racism.

|8.17.06 @ 10:21PM|#

I read that NYT article. Those fools aren't colorblind, they said they would PREFER a black baby. That sounds pretty racist to me. Any white couple who said that they'd prefer to adopt a white baby would probably not only be ostracized and branded as racists by the Establishment, but would be in danger of being assaulted by PC goon squads like the ARA.

So your whole "we all bleed red, we're all global citizens" argument is moot.

Timothy|8.17.06 @ 11:23PM|#

I don't see a problem so long as they require all black parents who adopt white children to buy the entire Huey Lewis catalogue.

|8.18.06 @ 3:27AM|#

This was done before with Native American children. Throughout the middle of the 20th century there was an active movement to adopt out Indian children to white christian urban families. The adoptive parents were strongly advised to conceal the heritage of the child. It was a church driven & gov't sanctioned conspiricy.

It is unknown how many Indian children were lost. Many could be owed royalties & own an interest in Trust Land but they may never know.

I am one of those Native children but I was fortunate that my adoptive white family never hid my heritage from me. Growing up I enjoyed the benefits of white middle-class life, way better than if I had grown up on the reservation. For the most part I avoided being the victim of racism, I'm light skinned enough to have gotten through life fairly unscathed.

I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have not been aware of my heritage. How could they keep the child from learning why they are different from the rest of the family? It's not so much how others see you, it's how you see yourself.

As an adult I have searched out my blood family & continue to learn about the history & lore that is my Indian heritage. I now have a world that is twice as large as most peoples.

Cross-racial adoptions can be a good thing, but yes they can also be used as a way of diminshing a racial group.

|8.18.06 @ 3:27AM|#

This was done before with Native American children. Throughout the middle of the 20th century there was an active movement to adopt out Indian children to white christian urban families. The adoptive parents were strongly advised to conceal the heritage of the child. It was a church driven & gov't sanctioned conspiricy.

It is unknown how many Indian children were lost. Many could be owed royalties & own an interest in Trust Land but they may never know.

I am one of those Native children but I was fortunate that my adoptive white family never hid my heritage from me. Growing up I enjoyed the benefits of white middle-class life, way better than if I had grown up on the reservation. For the most part I avoided being the victim of racism, I'm light skinned enough to have gotten through life fairly unscathed.

I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to have not been aware of my heritage. How could they keep the child from learning why they are different from the rest of the family? It's not so much how others see you, it's how you see yourself.

As an adult I have searched out my blood family & continue to learn about the history & lore that is my Indian heritage. I now have a world that is twice as large as most peoples.

Cross-racial adoptions can be a good thing, but yes they can also be used as a way of diminshing a racial group.

|8.18.06 @ 10:01AM|#

Are black parents required to demonstrate a determination to maintain their children's connections to their European-American culture?

If this doesn't have long-running sitcom written all over it. I mean, the black kid funkifying uptight whites has been done to death, but this could be funny.

Robert|8.18.06 @ 4:09PM|#

"As an adult I have searched out my blood family & continue to learn about the history & lore that is my Indian heritage. I now have a world that is twice as large as most peoples."

What if you found out it was all a lie, and that you weren't related? Wouldn't you still have that expanded world?

|8.18.06 @ 6:20PM|#

"As an adult I have searched out my blood family & continue to learn about the history & lore that is my Indian heritage."

I like to think that history is owned by everyone. I can't imagine that only people of German Jew decent can take pride in Einstein any more than I can imagine only Black Americans can take pride in M.L. King or John Coltrane.

I have daydreams about meeting aliens and (if they could hear in our frequecy range) playing them some Coltrane with pride.

wingnutx|8.18.06 @ 11:58PM|#

Now I know what to blame for any of my various failings. My pasty adoptive parents did not keep me in touch with my Roman heritage.

White adopt Blacks|8.19.06 @ 11:50PM|#

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Audrey|8.21.06 @ 12:53AM|#

[aol voice]You've got racist[/aol voice]