Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things
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Sharon's Muse.... Let's chat over coffee while I ponder some things |
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Friday, September 01, 2006 Adoption in black and white Rachel Sullivan of Rachel's Tavern is a sociology professor in New York who teaches on race, African American Studies, gender, sexuality, and popular culture. She has a great post up regarding the structure frame of how transracial adoption is presented in the media. She notes: "The recent New York Times article on transracial adoption, seemed to follow the typical pattern about how transracial adoption has been covered in the media in recent years. The stories tend to follow a sort of script. First, the authors start by telling the story of a white (American) couple (either in same sex or opposite sex relationships) who adopt a black (American) child. Second, the story goes on to note how much the parents love and care for the child and want to be ethno-racially literate. Next, the stories talk about how the Multiethnic Placement Act does not allow people to be denied adoption righs solely based on race, and somewhere soon after the authors cite the now famous statement from the National Association of Black Social Workers, which likened transracial adoption to cultural genocide. Fourth, the story will cite a few African Americans who are opposed to interracial adoption or leery of it. Then the story comes back full circle to the “loving white couple” who adopt the otherwise unadoptable black child. This sort of pattern is typical of almost all discussions of interracial families whether those families are created by adoption, marriage, cohabitation, or any other sort of interracial relationship that produces children." She then breaks down the structure frames: 1) love vs. race consciousness–The White adoptive family is viewed as loving, kind, and pseudo-colorblind. Black people are not even discussed in a family context. Individual African Americans are interviewed to give their professional opinion about whether or not race matters. When African Americans express reservations about the idea that love conquers all, they are viewed as indirectly attacking the love and commitment of the individual white families who transracially adopt. 2) black vs. white– One thing that is rather striking is that many of these articles is that the do not talk about all of the White families who adopt Chinese, Korean, or other east Asian children. These adoptions are framed as international adoptions, which is true, but they are also interracial. By the NYT’s own admission Euro-American families adopt Black children 1% of the time. Yes folks 1%, compared to 5% who adopt Asian children. Transracial usually means Black/White. 3) white savior vs. black nationalist–In many cases, the authors present the white adoptive parents saving the black child from some combination of “drug addiction,” “incarceration,” HIV, and/or impoverished mothers. (The NYT story is actually notable for not doing this.) Those who oppose transracial adoption or express concerns about its implementation are viewed as valuing racial solidarity over the well-being of children. She poses the question to her readers: "Every time I read these stories I ask myself how could this story be reframed to recognize racism. See the studies follow a “multiculturalism” model, but they do not focus on institutional or interpersonal racism. In a multiculturalism model, individuals can become more diverse, by associating with people from different backgrounds or reading about the histories and traditions of various racial groups. White adoptive parents may learn about how to do their child’s hair or what sorts of food or cultural practices are common in the adopted child’s biological parents’ culture(s). The problem with this sort of approach is that it completely ignores racism. As I said in a recent entry, race is all to frequently reduced to culture, but the link between racism and power needs to be added to any discussion of transracial adoption. This is where the mass media often misses the point. Even if everything they are saying is true, we also need to talk about some of thing things that they do not say." And unfortunately she's right on point here regarding the commodization of children based on skin color: "One way to look at racism is to think of adoption as an industry. While adoption agencies may be full of well meaning people, adoption is a market, like it or not. In the adoption market children are the commodity, and these commodities are assign monetary values. Sociologist Amanda Lewis has studied race in the adoption industry. In a presentation I saw in 2004, Lewis noted that Black children are put into a separate category in most adoption agencies. Lewis also found that the prices quoted for adopting Black children were significantly lower than those assigned to white children. In the adoption industry, healthy white babies are in high demand and low supply. I hate using economic language to talk about children in the ways that we talk about cars, jewels, or houses, but racism assigns a higher value to white babies. While love is certainly important in the adoption process, money and power are also important. There are more whites who want to adopt white babies and have the financial means to do so. Unfortunately, in some cases white families decide to adopt black children when they are unable to find or afford a healthy white child. The number of whites willing to adopt black children as a first option is very small, and if one were to read the chart presented with the NYT article very closely, they would notice the 1% figure cited above." A very informative discussion. Go over and read it.
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