By Rachel Garlinghouse

I’m an adoptive parent.  I’m white.  My two daughters, ages three and one, are both black.   It’s glaringly obvious that my kids and I don’t “match” and that they are adopted.

We have been asked a slew of questions.   “Are you girls REAL sisters?”   “Did you hear that Katherine Heigl adopted another baby?”  “Are your kids full or mixed?”  “Why didn’t their birth parents keep them?”   “Why couldn’t you have your own kids?”
One question that I found incredibly interesting, and one that the media is asking more than ever is, “Why didn’t you adopt one of your own kind?”   (Yes, this is exactly how the question was asked.)   It has been implied that there are plenty of white babies who need good homes, so why would we, as whites, pluck a black child out of the mix of available kids?  (This is actually not true.  Many adoption agencies have a tremendous need for families to be open to adopting black children, including sibling groups and kids with special needs, as many white parents only want to adopt healthy white infants.)

The media and the public are asking these questions of transracial adoptive parents:  Are you trying to capitalize on some sort of trend?    Why are you stealing a black baby away from her racial culture?  Are you trying to make your child white?   How in the world can a white family raise a black child properly?

The increase in media attention on celebrity adoptive parents, particularly transracial adoptive celebrity families like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Charlize Theron, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise, and Katherine Heigl, has brought transracial adoption to the forefront of pop culture.    I have read, much to my dismay, article after article that begins by prompting the public to question the integrity and intent of such parents.

I have to admit, I don’t necessarily blame people for their assumptions and skepticism regarding transracial adoption, particularly white parents who are raising black kids.   Whites have a long history of treating blacks and other races in degrading, dehumanizing manners.   There is a seemingly natural and underlying distrust between whites and all other races.  Despite people claiming to be “colorblind” and spouting that “the world is a melting pot” which is magically full of harmony and unity, I know otherwise.

You might question if parents are adopting minority children because it’s the trendy thing to do.   Here are some truths, from my experience, regarding transracial adoption:

1.  Transracial adoptive families are double-minorities, facing endless discrimination.

Until we adopted our first daughter, I was, unknowingly, enjoying white Privilege.  No one ever looked twice at me in a shopping mall or restaurant, no one questioned my motives, no one asked how authentic my family was, if we were a “real” family or not.
But when my husband and I brought our first daughter home, we were quickly inducted into the life of a minority.   We have been asked by an airline to provide our youngest child’s birth certificate to prove that she is actually our daughter prior to us boarding a plane. When we went to obtain a social security card for her, the attendant gave us several glares, making it clear she didn’t approve of our transracial adoption.  She then asked, quite judgmentally, a question that had nothing to do with the application for the social security card:   “Do they [our daughters] have the same parents?” I’ve been asked about the girls’ “real” mom, as if I am the fake mom.    A cashier at a local store asked why the hell my girls’ birth parents would “give them away” because after all, the girls were “so pretty.”    My family deals with, on a daily basis, discrimination related to adoption and race.

2.  Transracial adoption is a path to parenthood.

Individuals and couples adopt because they want to be parents.  Maybe they couldn’t have biological kids, couldn’t have more biological kids, had always wanted to adopt, didn’t want to wait for a partner to have children, or chose to adopt to avoid passing a genetic condition on to any biological children.  The reasons are many.

When I was twenty-four years old, I was diagnosed with an incurable disease:  type I diabetes.   I am dependent on insulin for life; without it, I will die.    Type I diabetes can be accompanied by a slew of dangerous side effects, all of which can impact the life of the diabetic’s unborn baby.    My husband and I chose not to have biological children because we felt the risks outweighed the benefits.     So we filled out paperwork to adopt, marked “open to a child of any race,” and waited.  We were chosen, twice, to adopt black children.    Without adoption, we wouldn’t be parents.   We wanted to be parents.  So we adopted.  It’s really that simple.

Theblaze.com

Another shock-jock columnist has bitten the dust for his attempt at being cleverly controversial with just a hint of racial prejudice.

Over the weekend, the National Review fired John Derbyshire for his online article, “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” which was written for right-wing publication, Taki’s Magazine, as a response to the conversations black people are having with their children as a result of Trayvon Martin’s killing. The columnist wrote a list of things white parents should be telling their kids about black people, and as you can probably guess, it’s quite off the cuff.

The article has been taken down in it’s entirety since this morning, but a few gems from the authors list of talking points lives on in other reports, including:

• You will observe that the means — the averages — of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences.

• While black-on-black behavior is more antisocial in the average than is white-on-white behavior, average black-on-white behavior is a degree more antisocial yet.

•  Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

•  Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

• If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

• Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

• If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

• Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

• Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character.

• Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

• If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

• The mean intelligence of blacks is much lower than for whites.

One could argue that black parents are telling their children the exact same thing about white people, and that both sides even have a point, but the thing is we’re not spouting this “advice” off as fact in national online publications or  making these claims to distract focus on the real matter at hand. When a black man kills a white guy for simply looking suspicious in his neighborhood and doesn’t go to jail for it (on top of hundreds of years of racial oppression), then white people can start having these sorts of “talks.” Oh wait, that will never happen.

Mike Lowry, the editor of National Review, explained John’s firing in response to the article, saying:

“We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation.”

Unfortunately someone else will probably give him a job in no time.

What do you think about John Derbyshire’s column?

Brande Victorian is a blogger and culture writer in New York City. Follower her on Twitter at @be_vic.

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