You raise good issues and unquestionably there are problems in a system that leaves so many African American children unadopted. On the other hand, I think you are missing some information about how the system works, and as a result, your comments are oversimplified. Consider the following:

(1) White, middle-class adoptive parents who do try to adopt children of color, or simply try to adopt in general and are open to African American or mixed-race children, routinely experience very long waits and bureaucratic delays. Ask around and you will find lots of stories of this. People who can afford to adopt internationally often do so because they don’t want the wait. This is not to say there is no racism, only that there are other major factors that also drive the trend you describe.

(2) The U.S. domestic adoption system in most, if not all, states is a fiercely two-tier system. Most of the white infants placed for adoption are placed privately to couples who pay a lot of money to complete the adoption. Many of the African American and Latino children available for adoption come through the state social service system, and by the time they are placed, have been through multiple foster care placements, entered the system due to abuse or neglect, have medical issues, and/or are “legal risk” adoptions. When white parents (or, I imagine, any parents) go to the state agencies looking for waiting children, these are most often the children presented as needing families. When they go the international or private domestic route, the children awaiting families are a very different group, with far fewer difficult issues to deal with. Many families are not willing to take on the range of issues they face when adopting children from state care, yet I think most of the AA children awaiting families are in state care. Virtually all of the people I know who have tried to go through state child welfare systems to adopt have had this experience, as have I.

A system that works this way is undeniably racist, but not because adoptive parents make the choices they do. It was racist long before the white middle class adoptive parents got there.

(3) There is a long history in the U.S. of social workers being very reluctant to place African American children with white families, and for a time, I believe there was a strong effort to explicitly work against such placements in most cases, led by the National Association of Black Social Workers. I think there is still a strong feeling in this direction among many in both the African American and adoption communities. At the same time, there have always been more white families willing to adopt than African American families (when compared to the numbers of waiting children), which makes such a policy unworkable. The practice of making placements based strictly on racial matching is now illegal, but from what I’ve heard, it is still common, just not explicit. If so, that also works against white adoptive parents who are willing to parent African American or other children of color.

What is the point of all this? That the issue you raise is real, but the reasons for choosing international adoption are complex, and there are other key factors that either have little to do with race, or that are racial issues but that have their origins in racism in the social service system, in society at large, or in the complexities of how to raise children in a way that is culturally appropriate, rather than in the attitudes of adoptive parents.

Your final phrase, “the hidden racism of international adoptions,” to me is glib and unjustified. There is plenty of racism in society and the adoption system, but international adoptions are neither a source of it nor even in most individual cases a reflection of it. The system as a whole functions to leave African American children without families while white children find them, and that is racist. It does not do so only because white parents with racist attitudes are looking overseas for children needing homes — it’s also, I’d say more importantly, because parents are looking overseas in part because the racist system that exists makes it so difficult for them to successfully adopt domestically.

Yes there are parents who want kids who look like them and this perpetuates the racism. But it’s very, very far from the whole story.

Re: “These trends may be changing as a younger, more racially fluid generation becomes parents” — huh??? This is an interesting theory, but I find it hard to believe. I’m an older parent, and I have never seen any evidence to suggest that between my generation (people now in their late 40s and 50s) and those now in, say, their early 30s, there is some great divide of racial flexibility and consciousness. Certainly, earlier battles against racism have led to a different set of life experiences for those younger than me, so maybe I’m missing something. But is there any evidence to back up this assertion that the younger generation is more “racially fluid?” That they are moreso in a way that would affect their choices about parenting? I think of changes in the level of racism in the world as being mostly about institutions and how they behave, not about generational changes in consciousness. But I’d be interested to learn about something that suggests that’s wrong.

Another note — an international adoption can cost $40,000, but the cost does not “hover around” that level. It’s typically closer to half to three-quarters of that.

Also, FYI, the use of the word “export” to describe international adoption is widely viewed as offensive. Children are not products. Even in places where profiteering service providers are accused of treating the children as if they were commodities, that does not make them so.

—Tom

In The Fray Contributor