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A Prospective Adoptive Parent Writes:We are in the process of adopting a baby girl from Rwanda. As Caucasian queer parents we take white privilege and racism seriously. We are intentional in many ways to confront our own internal racism and the systems of white privilege. My question: To what degree is racial identity enhanced if you adopt more that one child of color at a time? We do not have any other children living at home and would consider adopting siblings. I appreciate your help
John Raible Answers:
Racial identity, like other identities, is influenced (I'm not sure it can be "enhanced") by the people we come in contact with, especially those we see and interact with on a regular basis. I find it more useful to think about identifications than identities. Thinking in these terms reminds me that identities are not fixed essences that get transmitted, let's say, from parent to child, but more like active and fluid choices and orientations. Children learn to make identifications in certain ways and not others through their interactions with their parents and siblings (if they have them), other peers in the neighborhood, and people at school and even in the media. If I wanted to influence the racial identities of my kids, I would make sure they were around the kinds of people I wanted them to identify with, at home and in the other environments in which they spend a lot of time.
You might want to think more about the connections between the second and third sentences you wrote and your question. It's not clear to me that the links are clear to you. That is, you speak of intentionally confronting privilege and internal racism, yet you are exerting great privilege and benefiting personally from globalized racism, poverty, and the oppression of poor women and children by participating in the system of international adoption. If you are serious about understanding the connections, you've got to read books such as Outsiders Within [Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin]. It won't fix a broken system, but it will certainly help clarify the connections for you.
As for adopting a sibling group, that's a noble goal. I would research families that have done this to better understand both the joys and challenges. Know that each adopted person responds in his or her own way to the adoption experience. If a brother and sister are adopted into the same family at the same time, the brother might sail through childhood and adolescence with few identifiable adoption or racial issues, while his sister might feel tremendous anger or depression and act out her grief in dramatic ways. Ensuring that both children are of the same race would not necessarily prevent these different reactions. Family members respond individually to life-changing events, whether they be trauma, loss of family, uprootedness/displacement, changes in social status/stigmatization, immigration to a new culture, or adoption.
Lastly, you have not mentioned anything about where you live or where you plan to raise this Rwandan baby girl. I do hope you already have Rwandan friends and other adults in your social networks who are immigrants from Africa, along with black American friends. In terms of furthering your education, if you are on the east coast of the U.S., look for workshops offered by Deborah Haynor and Lorie Miller from the Boston area. Out west, look for training provided by Jane Brown in Arizona and the folks at Pact: An Adoption Alliance in the Bay area. I have experienced trainings by all of these people, and they know their stuff. The Boston women are white anti-racist lesbian moms, one through adoption and the other through birth. You will learn a lot from them, I guarantee it. Good luck!
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08/23/2007