Following up on Faith and Julia’s recent blogs on race and adoption, I’d like to put in my two quetzals. Like Julia I am an adoptive parent in a transracial adoption. For me it was a “no brainer” to adopt a child of a different race. Racism towards people who are different than me has never been a part of who I am. I was raised in a home with zero tolerance for racism, ethnic jokes and racist remarks.

But the fact that transracial adoption is a no brainer for me does not make it a no brainer for my daughter. Let’s start with a simple fact that young children notice from a very young age: my daughter will never look in the mirror and say that her skin or hair or eyes are the same as mine.. She will never be able to physically identify with me. We are on the opposite ends of the physical spectrum.

As my daughter gets older these differences will be pointed out to her by her friends, classmates and from what we have already experienced in the 3 ½ years since Ella came home to us insensitive and downright ignorant strangers. I will never be able to truly understand her pain, discomfort and g_d forbid fear from discrimination because we are not physically the same. I do not have her beautiful brown skin, black hair and dark brown eyes. I am blonde, fair skinned and blue eyed. Even though I will be infuriated, frustrated and wanting to punish anyone who hurts my daughter, I will not feel the discrimination at the gut level like she does. She will know this as well, and perhaps hold that against me. Time will tell.

A reader wants to know:

Should race matter in the adoption process?

Whether or not race should matter in the adoption process, the reality is that race is a factor, just as age, gender, religion, and other differences matter in the adoption process. When I was going through the adoption process, I was shocked about how specific I was expected to be in what type of baby or child I was hoping to adopt. I had no idea that I was going to have to say yes or no to multiple health issues in both the baby as well as the birth parents. The process worked both ways – the birth mother was the one choosing which adoptive family would parent her baby, and she could specify the age, race, religion, and other factors that she felt comfortable with.

The race of the child placed for adoption and the adoptive parents does not matter in the sense of one race being “better” than another. What matters is that you have a good match. Any adoptive parents who are racist have no business adopting a child outside of their race, and thank goodness the screening during the adoption process prevents this from happening. No child deserves to be raised by parents who devalue him for any reason, whether it is for race, gender, or any other factor.

Anyone who is considering a transracial adoption needs to go into it with his eyes open. Transracial adoptions come with their own potential issues that are not experienced when people adopt a child of the same race.

If you are new to the foster care and/or foster adoption world, you might enjoy the article entitled NC empty-nesters decide to adopt, transform family by Robert Kelly-Goss. This is a sweet story about foster parents named Barry and Brenda Norris who adopted a two-year-old foster child named Jasani, who was initially placed in their home when she was only two days old.

Those of us who have been in the adoption world for (seemingly) ever can fail to see the forest for the trees. We hear the accusations about “adopters” wanting to tear apart birth families so they can adopt their babies, and we hear about people getting into fostering children solely as a means to adopt a child. However, there is a whole world out there of people who get into fostering children to help birth families reunite, and, in the case of the Norris family, the adoption just falls into their laps.

According to the article, Barry and Brenda got into fostering because they wanted to help out parents who needed time to “get right whatever it was that brought them to the doorstep of the courts.”

I came across this article on Newsweek.com and thought I’d share it with my readers. It is of particular interest to me being a parent with an adopted child of a different race.

A study was done of Caucasian families in Austin, Texas, a liberal minded city as cities go. Most of these parents wanted their children to grow up multicultural and be “color blind.” Well they are already off to a bad start if they think children are color blind – they are not. A study by Phyllis Katz of the University of Colorado found that 6 month old babies will stare significantly longer at photos of faces that are of people of a different race than their parents. And personally several children have walked up to my daughter and mentioned something about her skin color, a perfect “educational” moment in my opinion.