Interracial Adoption
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This paper is an overview of interracial adoption, an issue which has become increasingly important because of the dramatic increase in the number of minority children in the foster care system. Opponents argue that racial matching helps preserve the cultural heritage of the black community and, despite the evidence of long-range studies, is in the best interests of the child. Increasingly, many experts in the field contend that the limited pool of minority families seeking to adopt significantly increases the time in which children remain in the system, which is much more harmful; they advocate finding permanent homes for children wherever they are available, without regard to race. Studies support the contention that interracial adoption has not proved harmful to children and has in fact often had a beneficial effect on both children and their adoptive families. Nowhere else in American society can race be used as the basis of discrimination; it is only in the adoption process that it is openly encouraged within the established system. This situation is starting to change, but challengers face an uphill battle. Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard lawyer and an important voice in the movement toward race-blind adoption placements, observes, "How we deal with race in the intimate context of the family says a lot about how we will treat race in other social contexts" (1993, p. 94). Until the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, interracial adoption was practically unh
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e of Texas, seeking to have race-matching practices declared unconstitutional; if the suit is successful, it will pave the way for other such actions in states that still require social workers to seek black homes for black children. In those states that do not have such specific legislation, however, the struggle is not as easily fought. Indeed, Texas is one state that has passed legislation barring race from being used as a determinant in adoption, yet Bartholet's suit was inspired in part by the case of a family that charges "that caseworkers delayed the adoption [of a black child by these white parents] in order to seek an African-American home" (Coles, 1995, p. 51).
Advocates of interracial adoption are moved in part by the statistics: by most estimates, roughly two-thirds of the children eligible for adoption are minorities, while two-thirds of the potential adoptive families are white. Opponents argue that this is in part because the system that recruits and sanctions possible families discriminates against minorities. Karen Liptak observes that potential families may be turned down for the following reasons:
They are single, over forty, or have modest incomes. Yet . . . many [black] households are headed by single
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1466
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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