An adoption issue that seems to never go away, from the Philly Inquirer: "For adoptees, racial divide still wide: Families may be colorblind, but the world is not" (Via Negrophile)
Adoption today is a rainbow of color and country; thousands of multiracial families are created in the United States each year by the arrival of children from countries such as China, Guatemala, India and Liberia.Yet it's the pairing of African American children and white parents that stokes the transracial debate and sometimes provokes legal battles, most recently in Chester County.
Why? The answer, experts say, is slavery, the country's primal wound, the issue that has tormented black-white relations for more than three centuries.
Though white people might view interracial adoption as evidence of societal progress, experts say, for many black people it is a painful harkening back to a time when their ancestors were treated as property - and proof that the child-welfare system discourages African American adopters.
Winner of the Lost-in-Translation Headline for Science Research Award*, "X-Men may be closer than you think" (Via Genetics and Health)
Small damages to sequences in the human genome are causing evolutionary changes in our DNA, according to a group of Japanese geneticists.Their recent findings prove that a common form of DNA damage caused by oxidation (called 8-oxoG) is a primary cause of mutagenesis, damage to DNA during the genome replication process that causes mutations in the resulting DNA molecules.
Succinctly, the human race is genetically mutating, and we now may know how and why--at least in part.
Japanese geneticist Yusaku Nakabeppu of Kyushu University and his team released their findings Monday in Genome Research.
"Our findings suggest that 8-oxoG is one of the main causes of frequent recombinations and SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) in the human genome, which largely contribute to the genomic diversity in human beings," the researchers concluded in their Genome Research journal article.
(*Compare the news headline with the journal article one: "A Genome-Wide Distribution of 8-Oxoguanine Correlates with the Preferred Regions for Recombination and Single Nucleotide Polymorphism in the Human Genome.")
And just in case you thought the baby-buying/adoption disruption/immigrant-as-surrogate storyline on Desperate Housewives was 100% fiction: "Wombs for rent in India" from the Toronto Star. (Via Family Law Prof Blog)
ANAND, INDIA—As temp jobs go, Saroj Mehli has landed what she feels is a pretty sweet deal. It's a nine-month gig, no special skills needed and the only real labour comes at the end — when she gives birth.Posted by perry032 at May 9, 2006 10:45 AM | TrackBackIf everything goes according to plan, Mehli, 32, will deliver a healthy baby early next year. But rather than join her other three children, the newborn will be handed over to a U.S. couple who are unable to bear a child on their own and are hiring Mehli to do it for them.
She'll be paid about $5,000 (U.S.) for acting as a surrogate mother, a bonanza that would take her more than six years to earn on her salary as a schoolteacher in a village near here.
That article on transracial adoption was interesting. I just don't get it - human beings are so hard on each other. "talking white" is a class issue right? Those black adults would have had the same comment thrown at them if they had been raised in middle-class black families. Talking "ghetto" is not what defines a black person.
The couple who lost their black foster child because they are white must be crushed - so must the child. It's a horrible situation.
In LA I don't think these issues are as big a deal Spielberg has 2 black kids in his brood. Tom Cruise has a bi-racial son. Michelle Pfieffer and David E Kelley have a bi-racial daughter named Rose. And those are just the famous people.
I have always found the argument to be ridiculous. Yes there are issues with being adopted and with being "other" within your family, but it can be handled appropriately to minimize any negative effect. Right? This is your area of expertise after all. What about my three lily-white friends who are married to black men and their bio children? The daddies are all educated and successful. Some of the kids look "mixed" and others look more like their dads. The moms get double takes sometimes, but it doesn't bother them.
As the years go by this will be less and less of an issue. I hope.
I am really interested to hear your thoughts on this.
Posted by: Mieke at May 12, 2006 02:30 PMMy thoughts are pretty complex--definitely too long winded for a post comment! Definitely check out this blog, http://lilysea.blogs.com/peterscrossstation/ for an example of a White parent who (in my opinion) is really doing the necessary work around issues of race, racism and White privilege in order to raise her Black daughter.
I guess if I had to throw out a sound bite about this it would be this: Some people believe that Black children should be raised in a "color blind" manner: I do not. I think such a view is, as the metaphor suggests, handicapping for the child. Additionally, I think it robs the child--and the family--of a cultural richness.
As for Tom Cruise's recent statements about race "not being an issue" for him in his parenting, I find it hard to believe that anyone living in this country today can be so out of touch. (But then, many would say that Mr. Cruise is out of touch in many, many respects...but that is a different story.)
As with anything, transracial adoption involves a vast system of factors that transcend the decisions of any one White parent and any one child of color: including persistent poverty, educational gaps, access to quality reproductive health care, disparities in the child welfare system... I continue to be an advocate for adoption--including adoption across racial and ethnic (and religious and sexual orientation and ableness and many other) lines. But I also see the value in attending to these larger, macro issues when we speak of adoption.
Posted by: Yvette at May 14, 2006 09:11 PMWhile I see some parallels to being a biracial child with parents of different races or ethnicities, it is not the same as being a transracially adopted person, because at least you are reflected in one of your parents. If you are an Asian adoptee like I am, you don't see yourself in anyone in your family. I know from personal experience. Imagine being part of a family where you are reminded on a daily basis of your difference. When every family photograph, you are the dark head among blondes.
I think there are parents who are doing it right by their transracially adopted children, but they are actually a small minority.
Love is great while you are in the protected bounds of your family, but as the one person in the article mentioned, it's when you walk out your front door that the problems begin.
Ours is still a racialized society. Until it is no longer that way, we can not have a truly "colorblind" society.
Thanks for posting about this article. In the transracial adoptee blogosphere, it has sparked off a lot of discussion!
Posted by: Jae Ran at May 16, 2006 10:24 AM