Race Dilemma at the Heart of Our Adoption Crisis
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Tracy McVeigh, Observer (Manchester), July 6, 2008
Fiona Graham is white, but she has been racially abused when out with her children over the past few years. ‘They don’t shout at the kids, but there have been a few choice things said to me,’ she says. ‘Paki lover’ is a favourite. That’s if she’s not with her oil rig worker husband, who is as white as she is and of an intimidating stature.
The Grahams have two children, Aisha, 10, and Burhan, five, who were born to a British Pakistani woman and a white father in the north-east of England.
The couple, from Stirlingshire, adopted the children three years ago and Graham knows they will have some unique issues ahead of them as a family, but she is determined to be as prepared for them as she possibly can. ‘Aisha had been in care for two years and Burhan for 17 months, all his life, when we first asked about them. But we were refused point blank because they were looking for a Pakistani Muslim couple. It took another five months before their social worker would consider us. But as far as I was concerned, the kids were being brought up with white Christian foster carers with no one else in sight for them. When Aisha first arrived here she had never even heard the word Pakistan. I do see how much they need to learn about their heritage; in fact, I see it more now than I maybe even realised at that time. Already Burhan recognises there is a difference in colour between us. The need to belong is inbuilt in them and as their colour and their heritage did not come from us, then we need to make sure they understand and explore that part of them.
‘I absolutely know we did the right thing and you have to consider children’s need for love and security and everything else comes after that. If I didn’t think that, my kids would still be in care.’
But as Britain becomes an ever more multicultural society, families like the Grahams are becoming increasingly controversial. The debate over transracial adoptions that has gone on, almost unheard, in Britain since the 1950s is hitting a crescendo, challenging the adoption agencies and social workers to clarify policy and accusing them of ‘taking the foot off the pedal’. The first government-commissioned report in nearly a decade to look at the issues around black and ethnic minority children in care is due to be published this month and tomorrow a major conference on the issue, organised by the British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF) and entitled ‘Why Am I Waiting?’, will take place in London.
Adoption has changed since the days when childless married couples toured children’s homes and, as long as they had a clean house, could choose the cutest baby. No longer are single mothers shamed into putting their babies up for adoption, and with more fertility treatment available there are fewer prospective adopters around too. In 1976 some 22,000 children were adopted. In 2007 it was less than 3,500—2,200 of them were children from care.
Most of the children who need new families have begun life with alcoholic, drug-dependent, abusive or potentially abusive parents. Finding them a new family has become intensely complex. For each child in their care, local authorities will look through their own books for an adopter. But if there is no match in their own pool of parents, then there are funding considerations—looking further afield and approaching other local authorities to search their waiting lists brings an ‘inter-agency’ fee.
Time spent in care is directly related to well-being. Research shows children in care fare far worse than adopted children and are susceptible to brain damage and emotional and attachment issues. One per cent of children from the care system reach university, compared to 40 per cent of the general population.
There were approximately 65,000 children in care in England and Wales in 2005, of whom around 40 per cent will return to their birth families. Just under 80 per cent are white in a country where 87 per cent of the population describe themselves as white British—meaning children from ethnic minorities are over-represented in the care system, and staying there longer. The issue has been sending a slow shockwave through the system and behind the growing calls for a rethink on the approach to transracial adoption are two phenomona. The first is that efforts to match children’s ethnicity with the ethnicity of adopters slows down the process for black and mixed-race children. The vast majority of available adopters in this country are white and middle-class.
The second are the new voices joining the debate—black and mixed-race children who were adopted by white families in the Sixties and Seventies are now adults and are becoming increasingly vocal about their experiences of lifelong identity issues, mental health problems and deep feelings of isolation that came with even the most loving of homes. Their mantra is that ‘love is not enough’.
David, now a 45-year-old academic, of dual heritage—white and Arab—was adopted by a white couple in 1962. ‘Love is not enough,’ he said, ‘and there’s a living community struggling with the consequences. Where do these children [placed in white families] get their linguistic, religious and cultural knowledge from? The main problem is the under-theorisation of the issues.
‘The experience of racism had a profound impact on me. It would have been helpful for people around me to have had an understanding of that and of the cultural issues that one inevitably struggles with. It’s about a sense of isolation—one never fits in with either community. We exist in a third space, outside other communities. It is a debilitating experience. We need a radical rethink on transracial adoptions.’
His parents were ‘supportive and loving’, but for David that did not counteract what he describes as a ‘lifelong experience of verbal and physical abuse and various types of sophisticated institutional racisms’. He has found tremendous similarities with other interracial adoptees and says: ‘All of us are on a journey, but it will have no resolution for us. I don’t think they [social workers] have a grasp of the enormity of it. People aren’t tracked through life. Mental health services have no grasp of it.
‘It’s not simply a case of whether children should not be placed in white families; a family setting is always preferable. But it would need parents prepared far more than they are, prior and during the adoption process. “We’re liberal parents, we’ll do all we can”—this is just tokenism. “We’ll explain Eid, we’ll explain Ramadan,” a few Islamic books around the house. . . . that’s not good enough, that’s just insulting.’
In one survey of adults who had been adopted as children, around 46 per cent of white people said that, even though it was a positive adoption, they felt a sense of not belonging. With transracial adoptees that figure leapt to almost three-quarters. ‘Research is scant: there are a lot of small-scale studies but there is a real drought of understanding. I think the foot has been taken off the pedal for black and ethnic minority children whose needs, meanwhile, have been continuing to grow. Interracial adoption is a relatively new phenomenon, an 18-year period really,’ said Sue Cotton, head of adoption services at the children’s charity NCH.
‘There’s a gap in knowledge. We know there’s an over-representation of black and ethnic minority children in care, just as there is over-representation in the prison service, in mental health services, but we don’t know why. The overriding thing we do know is that kids in families do better than kids in care, but one of the big driving forces behind everyone now is these testimonies from the adopted children of the Sixties and Seventies who are reporting that impact, those very human issues of identity that no one expected to be so fundamental.’
There are not enough adopters coming forward from ethnically diverse backgrounds, says Savita de Sousa of BAAF. The Soul Kids Campaign in 1975 in London was the first attempt to recruit black adoptive families and, along with another project in the 1980s, they blamed the shortage on the agencies themselves for showing ‘eurocentrism’.
‘Things have been constantly changing in this debate. The Blair government said, “Love and care is enough,” but it’s unresolved,’ said de Sousa. ‘Love is an important factor but it’s not the only factor. We cannot be colour blind. It’s what they do in the US; it’s illegal to consider race in the placing of African-American children, and it’s being challenged there as it’s not working. Current research sees delays in the system because social workers are so busy looking for the right match, but we need rigorous imaginative recruitment. That’s our real challenge.’
In the 1950s and 1960s black children were considered ‘unadoptable’. The practice was to match children in terms of physical resemblance, so adopted children should look as if they had been ‘born to’ their families, but race matches were seen as impractical at a time when many black communitites were socially deprived. In 1965 there was a recruitment drive to find parents willing to transracially adopt. Those who came forward were middle-class, educated, already parents and living in predominantly white areas.
By the 1970s there were three factors backing transracial adoption: it was seen as successful, there was a shortage of black adopters and the thinking was that ‘permanency’ was best. The practice began to be questioned, pushed by The Association of Black Social Workers and Allied Professions, in the Eighties. But transracial adoptions have never stopped. In the early 1980s it was estimated that over 80 per cent of black and ethnic minority adoptions in the UK were transracial. The Adoption and Children Act 2002 (enforced in 2005) was the first legislation in more than 25 years. It most famously gave unmarried and same-sex couples the right to jointly adopt, but it also enshrined the demand that social workers should ‘wherever possible’ put a child with a family which ‘reflects their ethnic origin, cultural background, religion and language’.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to social workers from local authorities around England, The Observer found anecdotal evidence that this has left many social workers feeling ‘paralysed’.
Every one of them agreed they would be ‘deeply uncomfortable’ with anything but a ‘same race’ match for a child in their care, even if the child had spent six to 12 months in care. ‘I have little confidence white people really can ever understand racism—now there’s a pretty big matter right there. Unless you bring me a utopia when everyone is colour blind, then I’m sorry but deep down I think we as a society are nowhere near ready to have successful interracial adoptions,’ said one recently qualified man.
Another, from one of the handful of authorities actively trying to recruit ethnic minority adoptions, agreed in part but said: ‘Our search for families is always having to be balanced by time but there is no point in pushing a child into a new life that may be wrong for them. For some, care may be their best option. We’re not taking out a colour chart and matching skin to skin, and sometimes you have to walk away thinking, “Well, that’s the best I could do.” There are so many backgrounds in some of the children we’re seeing now, a lot of East European mixes coming in now.’
For ‘Chris’, now 18, who spent nine years in care, never finding a family is something he finds hard to forgive. ‘I had some nice foster carers, some not so bright, but the only one I hated was the one who wasn’t white. I was let down. I would have found myself a family if they’d have let me. Now it’s like, “Well that was my childhood … that was shit, wasn’t it?” You know, when I was little I didn’t care about colour, I still have no colour—outside I do, but inside, no. They talk about heritage … you know I’d rather just have had a mum, thanks, black, white or even blue-dotted.’
Dr Perlita Harris pulled together the experiences of 57 transracially adopted people, including David, into a book called In Search of Belonging: Reflections by transracially adopted people. She says we need a whole new mindset: ‘It’s those questions—can we really be colour blind? Being transracially adopted is a complex, challenging, and at times very painful, lifelong experience. These are adoptees who were raised in families who, in the main, took a colour blind approach—we see the child but not the colour. They are just like our other (white) children.
‘Too many transracially adopted adults report feeling alienated, displaced and disconnected from their community of origin, unable to speak the language of birth relatives when they do trace them, of internalising the negative racist messages in society, of struggling to understand who they are. The narratives of transracially adopted adults demonstrate unequivocally that love, alone, is simply not enough.’
As people such as Lesley Allison fight to give a home to ethnic minority children, boys like Chris live with a deep need for a family, black, white ‘or blue-dotted’, and transracially adopted adults such as David endure a lifelong struggle for identity. The thing they all have in common is a deep desire to want the best for some of the most vulnerable children in Britain, but not all of them can be right.
The waiting game
· The US used to have same-race matching, and still does for Native American children. In the mid-1990s, Congress passed the Multi-ethnic Placement Act. Social workers are not allowed to emphasise race or ethnicity when matching children with parents.
· There are more than 4,000 British children at any one time in the UK awaiting to be found new families.
· Every month an average of 1,200 prospective adopters call the Be My Parent newspaper and website, which advertises children who need families, to ask about children featured there.
· More than half of all the children waiting for new families are siblings who need to stay together. Older children, especially boys aged over seven, wait longer than younger girls.
(Posted on July 8, 2008)
Comments
The latest federal figures showed 32 percent of the 510,000 children in foster care were black in 2006, compared to 15 percent of all U.S. children. 20 percent are adopted by white families
The real problem here is that there are way too many black children that their parents cannot or will not raise. They have babies, then expect “society”, really meaning Whitey, to do the work of raising them to adulthood. What needs change is the end to rewarding them for having babies without them having to be responsible for them afterward.
I should be more forgiving, perhaps; it’s not as if blacks have much of a role in the adoption process, except in filling the orphanages.
Fewer black adoptive parents? I’ve got news for the writer: It’s not just because blacks are “significantly poorer” than Whites. It’s because in a majority of cases, there is no “couple,” and also the fact that they just don’t care as much as Whites or other ethnicities do about their children.
Blacks are notoriously less charitable than whites or any other race for that matter. If they really cared about their children they would start spending more money on them rather than flashy clothing, cars and jewelry.
Sounds like a good idea to me to stop transracial adoption. All you casual race mixers out there take note, even the social workers recognize now that mixed race families are bad for children.
Posted by Trent at 6:07 PM on July 8
I think it would be perfectly embarrassing to see my own ethnic/racial group unable to care for its own via adoption. To sit and watch as Asian/Hispanic/Black couples adopted white children because there were a) lots of white children unwanted by their own parents and b) no qualified whites with the charity to take in cchildren not their own.
OTOH, sending adopted children abroad to naive but well-meaning whites in Europe and America is as good a way as any to spread your genes - better since you don’t have to pay in time and energy to raise them.
But the most interesting thing about interracial adoptions is how it’s pretty much help answer the question of whether intelligence and behavior are a result of nature/nurture: nature, without a doubt. And we know that thanks to interracial adoptions (not that we’ll ever be free to say it).
Posted by Alan at 6:11 PM on July 8
Not many Pakis in Stirling - and they’re not very popular
Posted by Dougie (Edinburgh) at 6:57 PM on July 8
I can’t for the very life of me understand why anyone would adopt someone outside their racial group. It seems 99% of the people in question are Whites doing this. Just one more symbol of the White disease of liberalism? I just don’t get it.
Posted by at 7:00 PM on July 8
So naive, but well-intentioned, whites scoop up all of the unwanted offspring of colored people but it is the decent white people who are the problem. These people complain of racism their entire lives yet never acknowledge there is no fence keeping them in Britain, the U.S. or anywhere else. Over 90% of the world is non-white. Go find someplace you can be happy and stop plaguing us with your identity crises.
Posted by Civilized Neighbor at 7:08 PM on July 8
‘I absolutely know we did the right thing and you have to consider children’s need for love and security and everything else comes after that. If I didn’t think that, my kids would still be in care.’
Once again we see a situation created by minorities (unwanted children in disproportionate numbers to those of whites) and then whites are left with and expected to clean up their mess.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 8:04 PM on July 8
To civilized neighbor……you are totally right on!!! And I say a big AMEN
Posted by lydia at 9:30 PM on July 8
My wife and I wandered into a couple of public houses in northern England between Edinburg and York back in January 2004. Both of us are totally English (very pale white) extraction yet both times the public house went totally quiet and everyone stared at us like we were from Mars. Both times, a very kind and sympathetic waitress seated us at a table away from the rowdies….but too close to the dart boards….and took our dinner order.
Rest assured. If my wife and I cannot fool anyone in rural England for even a second, I feel very certain there is no way a half-cast or pure Paki or Indian or Arab stands any chance whatsoever. He He. No chance whatsoever.
Posted by Memphomaniac at 10:26 PM on July 8
If White children had to be adopted by blacks because Whites were too callow or inept to raise them, I as a White would feel humiliated and ashamed of my own White race. You would THINK this is how blacks feel - but they have no shame. In fact they are happy to drop a ‘cuckoo’ egg among some misguided White fools. They spread and propagate their gene pool and at no cost to themselves.
Posted by at 8:04 AM on July 9
Weren’t there a number of studies done showing black children raised by whites were much more successful? Apparently this information doesn’t fit in with the hate-whitey grievance agenda.
Posted by at 9:55 AM on July 9
“The Grahams have two children, Aisha, 10, and Burhan, five, who were born to a British Pakistani woman and a white father in the north-east of England.”
So these two children have as much British heritage as Paki heritage. But notice they have Muslim names and that there is concern to raise them with Paki ethnic awareness. This indicates that Paki culture is the dominant one while British culture is the underdog. Much as black culture is dominant in the States while white culture is the underdog. What this adoptive couple is saying is this: “we acknowledge our own inferiority and submit to subjugation by foreigners. Not only that but we will dedicate our lives to raising the children of foreigners, within our own land, in order to expidite their invasion of our country. Usually such people are called “traitors”. When one looks at the situation objectively, he sees that no Paki couples are willing to take such children - but British couples are willing to do so. This implies that British culture is superior. Therefore, the children should have their names changed to British names and be raised as “British with some Paki blood” rather than “Paki with some British blood”. The woman gripes that people taunt her about her Paki children and make hateful remarks. Well excuse me! Isn’t it normal for natives to feel some resentment when their ancestral lands are being overrun by foreigners? How much more so when their own government bends over backwards for those invaders while supressing the native culture. Of course there is going to be animosity toward Pakis. When I was there (only for two days) I was subject to verbal attacks twice because people can’t tell the difference between an ethnic Jew and a Paki. Yes, they thought I was Paki and got in my face. I took it in stride and considered the context.
Posted by jewamongyou at 10:45 AM on July 9
I feel a PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION and requiring parents wishing to adopt non-white children to learn the many pitfalls and problems they could be in for is needed.
Just WHY would a rational, level-headed White couple even dream of wanting to adopt a non-White child. Particularly one of African or Muslim descent? To try to prove something? In hopes of displaying their liberal open-mindedness?
My wife and I were offered a mixed-breed (mulatto) when we visited a Catholic agency. My answer to them was blunt and to the point: We had no interest in adopting anything other than a healthy White child who’s mother was not a drug addict. End of THAT story (as far as the adoption agency was concerned).
For the record, yes, we were healthy, financially secure. But thank you but no thank you, to what we were shown and offered.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:14 PM on July 9
“I can’t for the very life of me understand why anyone would adopt someone outside their racial group. It seems 99% of the people in question are Whites doing this.” Posted by at 7:00 PM on July 8
I think the 99 percent figure is actually a fair guess - I believe very close to 100 percent of the Korean children adopted worldwide since WWII have been adopted by whites of any nationality, and disproportionately those of northern European ancestry. All this because Koreans will not even adopt other KOREANS (nor will Indians adopt other Indians, etc). It begs for a sociological study to be done.
Posted by Dave at 1:43 PM on July 9
“Weren’t there a number of studies done showing black children raised by whites were much more successful?”
Such studies were done- parents might as well have been black. They were no more successful, due to genetics.
Posted by at 1:45 PM on July 9
Fiona Graham is lying. First, racially mixed children would be more likely to be abused by non whites rather than whites.
Second. I see a lot of Pakistanis around Los Angeles. As a group, they are black haired, browneyed light tanskinned big noses. They are as white cacausion as the Irish or Germans.
A pakistani english mix child would have light tan to fair skin, brown or hazel eyes and dark brown or black hair and would blend in as white english to any person who saw them in the street.
This Fiona reminds me of that hysterical lunatic woman from Maine who was all upset that people noticed that her african american adopted daughter was well, african american and assummed the child was adopted. REmember that loony lady??
Posted by at 2:10 PM on July 9
>>>You would THINK this is how blacks feel - but they have no shame.
The majority don’t seem to have anything else going for them either. Fathering 12 kids with 10 females. Spending half their adult lives in prisons. Incapable of ever rising above themselves and becoming productive worthwhile citizens. But that, in a nutshell, is why so many Whites secretly feel nothing but contempt for Blacks. Blacks truly are their own worst enemies. They’re simply not smart enough to understand that.
Posted by Fed Up at 5:15 PM on July 9
Reply to FED UP:
“Blacks truly are their own worst enemy. They’re simply not smart enough to understand that.”
Good point. I have often noted how so many blacks seem to have such a high opinion of themselves, justified by neither their intelligence or their accomplishments.
Posted by at 2:33 PM on July 12