Thoughts on this article: Born in America, Adopted Abroad - Page 3

[Sarahbunny]

Originally Posted by Tigerchild

I don't think it's a stretch either. But I also can see why some folks, particularly international adoptees themselves might choose to see them as very similar.

I hope it is a generational thing. Though I will admit that just like ROM and others have mentioned...sometimes when you hop on PAP communities you will see things that are pretty disturbing and come very close to commodifying the kids, even though all of those people would probably be very offended if someone said it that bluntly.

And vue, it's not all that apparent now, but these types of issues have been discussed quite a bit here, especially prior to the name change of the forum from "adoption" to "adoptive parenting". I do get what you're saying, and as a fellow adoptee I'm pretty sympathetic to it. But keep in mind that this is an aparent/a/fparenting forum, though I've personally found it to be quite welcoming of other sides of the triad. So I think if you really want to be heard, it's good to try to be sensitive towards the aparent side of the triad here. I am by no means a very tactful person, so I blunder around quite a bit in that regard. But SB is an adoptee as well, there are lots of other people here who fall into more than one category of the triad, and some of the aparents are just as vigilant as an adoptee-rights adoptee when it comes to calling out things even remotely disrespectful or troubling attitudes, if you know what I mean.

I think that a lot of the folks in this thread agree with you that a lot of things are really disturbing when they touch on being commodity-driven. And I know (at least for me) that semantics are important but sometimes they can also get in the way when there's actually more unity there than anything else.

The regulars here in the forum have made me feel a hell of a lot safer as an adoptee and for future adoptees, because I've grown to trust them implicitly, even when we have issues over language and other things.

I do personally try to do that. It can be hard to seperate adoptee from mama bear! Its a fine line and stuff that doesn't bother me if said about me (as an adoptee) can really send me over the edge if I apply it to dd. I guess like how if dd gets a papercut, I freak out for her. But for me...big deal. If this were being talked about in Personal Growth, I would hope I could be more objective. I mean, its fine here, imo, just saying that this is where I wear a mama hat most of the time. Not where I wear my adoptee hat.

[MusicianDad]

Originally Posted by vue

So are you saying people should get what they get and that there shouldn't be an ideal or the allowance of an ideal?

Isn't this specifically what Katherine was talking about - people deciding what's best for their family and their future child based on what they can handle?

I'm confused by "But then I'm in Canada and we don't care"

We meaning you and your family and we meaning Canadians?

If you're meaning you and your family then I'm not sure what being Canadian has to do with it. But if your meaning of we is Canadians in general then are you suggesting that PAPs in America are racist?

And I'm not harping on Canada - I'd move there in a heartbeat if it wasn't so darn cold.

By "ideal baby" I mean that there is a reason why some children never get adopted out. Because there are PAP's out there who only want white, heathly, infants. Even when portrayed in the media there is an overwhelming of middle class white families adopting white healthy babies. Even in another conversation on a different board, someone talked about a white family adopting a black baby and the general consesus was "I'm surprised, but happy." Surprised why? In DD's school there are three children she knows, one is black adopted by white parents, one is black adopted by a white mom and an asian dad and one is white adopted by black parents (of course there's one half asian girl who was adopted by her dad's husband too ). It's not so much about what the parents idealize when they think of adopting, but what the reality is. Yes there is a preference for same race adoption but it's more on an adminitrative level. The parents look at who the child in regards to their family then what the child is.

I'm not suggesting that PAPs in american are racists. Only they they have different ideals about the right child.

[queenjane]

So to bring this back around to the subject of the original posted article, does anyone agree that the subject of race and adoption in America is more complex than the article made it seem? That its not simply (although of course in part it is) that white adoptive parents dont think black babies are good enough, or that they are racist?

MusicianDad...the relationship between black and white people in this country (in general, not on a personal level necessarily) is much different, i imagine, than in Canada....wasnt Canada the end station on the Underground Railroad, after all? So we're dealing with an entirely different cultural memory.

During a foster care training, we watched the story of a First Nations (i think thats the term?) child, taken from his family and put in foster care (this was in Canada) where he was subsequently horribly abused...the way the white foster parent talked about this "Indian" (to use a US term) child was horrible. I doubt that Canada is free of racial bias, but the target of that bias might be different, yknow?


Katherine

[queenjane]

I also saw a program not that long ago here in the U.S. where they have "fashion shows" with kids from foster care parading up and down a runway in a shopping mall and people can come look over the kids and decide which, if any, child they would like to adopt.

Yknow, i've been involved in adoption for a loooong time now, and the only time i've heard of such a thing was on this board. So i must have missed that program. And i would have to see the program to know the exact circumstances of the show and why the people involved thought that was a good idea....but i know most adoption professionals and parents i've met would be pretty horrified by it. And i know most adoptive parents i've talked to, and many social workers, think "match picnics" and such are not so great, and kind of terrible in a way....they try to make them as "fun" as possible, games for the kids, etc....and the ones i've gone to have very clear instructions that you are to play with the kids, not monopolize any one child's attention and to, above all, not talk about adoption with the kids, period. The kids (unless very young) know why they are there, and thats got to be hard.

But social workers are grasping at straws trying to get kids placed....kids used to spend YEARS...whole childhoods...in foster care....and now many kids dont. As a PP said, these types of events (and photolistings) give people a chance to see past the idea of "a foster child" and see the child him/herself.
These types of events work at getting kids into homes. The vast vast majority of photolisting profiles i've read maintain privacy (no last names, no medical info or psych info beyond very general info), and try to be pretty child centered in the way they write up the little blurb (which is why you dont find out the child has significant issues until you inquire w/ the worker)....additional more private info will not be given to you unless you send a homestudy or have your worker call.


Katherine

[MusicianDad]

I doubt you would find anyone is Canada who would say Canada is free of racial bias. I do think we tend to be less tolerent of it in some respects. I don't remember the story your talking about, but our CPS programme leaves quite a bit to be desired in a number of respects and a majority would be (and has been) horrified about child abuse regardless of race. Unfortunaltly what happened with the child you heard about, happens to many children of all races. We do have a long, unhappy history in regards to the aboriginals though. Not too long ago, less then a half century even, Aboriginal children where taken from their parents for the sole reason of their race and placed in government run boarding schools. We're trying to fix that, the same way that people in the US are trying to fix the rift that has occured between blacks and whites because of history. I won't say which country has it easier, but in Canada it's a given that our own cultural image has been hugely influenced by the first nations people. Even our name, come from the word Kanata, the Mohawk word for Village. So for the most part, it's hard to find someone who would say horrible things against native people.

Just a thought... Canada doesn't use the term Indian any more in regards to aboriginals cause we have had such an influx of people from India that there's only one meaning for the word Indian now.

[Sarahbunny]

Originally Posted by queenjane

Yknow, i've been involved in adoption for a loooong time now, and the only time i've heard of such a thing was on this board. So i must have missed that program. And i would have to see the program to know the exact circumstances of the show and why the people involved thought that was a good idea....but i know most adoption professionals and parents i've met would be pretty horrified by it. And i know most adoptive parents i've talked to, and many social workers, think "match picnics" and such are not so great, and kind of terrible in a way....they try to make them as "fun" as possible, games for the kids, etc....and the ones i've gone to have very clear instructions that you are to play with the kids, not monopolize any one child's attention and to, above all, not talk about adoption with the kids, period. The kids (unless very young) know why they are there, and thats got to be hard.

But social workers are grasping at straws trying to get kids placed....kids used to spend YEARS...whole childhoods...in foster care....and now many kids dont. As a PP said, these types of events (and photolistings) give people a chance to see past the idea of "a foster child" and see the child him/herself.
These types of events work at getting kids into homes. The vast vast majority of photolisting profiles i've read maintain privacy (no last names, no medical info or psych info beyond very general info), and try to be pretty child centered in the way they write up the little blurb (which is why you dont find out the child has significant issues until you inquire w/ the worker)....additional more private info will not be given to you unless you send a homestudy or have your worker call.


Katherine

See, I knew someone could wrap up what I was trying to say, nice and succinctly. Thanks Katherine!

[queenjane]

Originally Posted by MusicianDad

Just a thought... Canada doesn't use the term Indian any more in regards to aboriginals cause we have had such an influx of people from India that there's only one meaning for the word Indian now.

Oh us too, for the most part.

I think in many ways Canada is more progressive and that includes issues of race. I live in MI, and so grew up watching alot of Canadian tv, and when i was a teen was really into Degrassi High....the kids on that show were soooo different from the kids in MY high school. So multicultural, so inclusive. Dont know if thats what the typical Toronto HS looks like, its tv of course, but i grew up thinking Canada must be this wonderful multicultural place.

However, the US is a pretty big place, with all sorts of communities and differing views...i live in a fairly white area, slowly changing, but the type of prejudice or racism a child of color might encounter would certainly be of the "polite" kind (meaning, not overt)...dont know how to explain it. The black children that live here i think are seen as "different" and "interesting" and "exotic" much as they were described in the article posted, in Europe. I guess my point is, that while the article makes sweeping judgements that white parents dont adopt black babies in America, that isnt true for ALL white parents adopting in America. And what is acceptable or the norm in San Fransisco or LA or NYC or Chicago might be totally different from some rural area in the middle of the country, or in certain areas of the South etc. Even within a small geographic area attitudes can be VERY different....i went to college for a time in a small college town in the middle of rural farmland Ohio (Yellow Springs)...a VERY multicultural place to raise children, very accepting, very liberal....go a half hour (or ten minutes!) in any direction though, and...not so much.

Did the article say how many AA children are adopted by white American parents, vs how many are adopted by non-American parents? I would assume that more Americans are adopting American children of all ethnicities, than children being placed with nonAmericans. Its easy to make an issue seem bigger than it is (like how the article made it seem like parents go overseas to get white russian children, when the vast majority of internationally adopted children are not white)....and in five or ten years, i bet we will see the number of white parents adopting AA newborns increase even more dramatically.


Katherine

[Tigerchild]

See, I think placing a child with a Canadian couple could involve more than race though. I realize that this is largely dependent on the province, but a common stereotype amongst Americans (unless it's an election year where we're bashing "socialized" medicine) is that Canadians get free health care, a lot of social benefits, and that things are more stable up there. Not all birthparents are teens (and this is not to say that teens don't think of these things ever), and the older you get I think the more you think about stability if youv'e not had a lot of it in your life.

And on the flip side, to be honest I would really be suprised if there weren't a few people more comfortable with adopting from the US because it would turn the adoption into a de facto semi-closed adoption (especially now that a passport is required to cross the border instead of getting waves through). I don't know how the trend is towards openness or not in adoptions in Canada. But it would be a way to be sure you had a comfortable distance while still being open in communication so you didn't have to say you had a closed adoption.

I also think the American perception is that racism doesn't exist in Canada like it does in the states. I am pretty sure that is not true (again, area-dependent), but it is a stereotype.

[MusicianDad]

queenjane: It depends more on where you are. Larger cities tend to be more racially diverse then small ones, just like in the US. My my experiances in the US (limited I'll admit since I've only visited) have been that even in diverse areas there tends to be more self-segregation. In diverse areas in Canada you don't often see the black kids over there, the white kids over here and the Asian kids over on the other side. It happens with newer immigrants, because of language and cultural barriers, but for the most part it's pretty much mixed. Which is easier to see in schools. In my high school 40% of the population was from Eastern Asia. In University, the campus I was at, a majority of the population was from the Middle East and India. For a long time though Canadian media has tried to encorporate diversity in their work. And we all have fond memories of Degrassi, we even got to watch it in high school once when we were discussing sexual orientation in Career and Personal Planning (yup, we talked about GLBT issues in public school ).

Tigerchild: Actually I think it's more of a prototype then a stereotype. It's not across the board, but most people in Canada feel safe assuming their neighbours and friends and family aren't racists or weren't raised in a racist household. I have one friend who was shocked to learn at 20 that her grandmother has some racist ideas. She had spent a lot of time with her grandmother and never saw them, not even when grandmas 80th birthday included her cousin and his black wife and biracial children.