Post–Civil Rights Era (1973–Present)
PASSAGE OF THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965 and inauguration of affirmative action programs (particularly on the federal level) opened up opportunities in education and employment long closed to members of minority groups, and legally enforced discrimination and discriminatory social customs began to disappear. The number of blacks elected to office also increased exponentially; prominent examples include W. Wilson Goode Sr., mayor of Philadelphia (1984–92); Harold Washington, mayor of Chicago (1983–87); David Dinkins, mayor of New York City (1990–93); and Douglas Wilder, governor of Virginia (1990–94). African Americans even began to dare to dream of a black president with the well-run presidential campaigns of the civil rights leader Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988. Other powerful black leaders in high positions included Colin Powell, secretary of state (2001–2005) and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989–93); Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser to President George Bush; Michael Steele, chair of the Republican National Party in 2009; Cory Booker, U.S. senator from New Jersey and former mayor of Newark (2006–13); and Eric Holder, U.S. attorney general (2009–15). The talk show host, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Oprah Winfrey became a household name and one of the wealthiest people in the world. Now little black boys and little black girls can see themselves in these men and women who look like them and are achieving greatness on the national and international stage. Even with these advancements, however, the socioeconomic, political, and emotional scars of racial inequality and injustice continue to take a toll.
Today many African Americans still battle disproportionate poverty and incarceration rates, unemployment, and drug use. The NAACP reports that from 1980 to 2008, the number of people incarcerated in the United States quadrupled, from approximately 500,000 to 2.3 million people. African Americans account for only 13 percent of the population nationally but constitute nearly one million of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United States. Nationwide, African Americans account for 26 percent of juvenile arrests and 58 percent of youth admitted to state prisons (NAACP, 2009–14). Five whites use drugs for every African American who does, yet ten African Americans go to jail on a drug offense for every white who does. African Americans also serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months) (NAACP, 2009–14).
Economically African Americans are losing ground. According to the Urban League, in a report issued in April 2014, the underemployment rate for African American workers was 20.5 percent, compared with 11.8 percent for white workers. (Underemployment is defined as high-skill workers who hold low-paying jobs or people working part time who desire full-time work.) The report also said African Americans are twice as likely as whites to be unemployed—the unemployment rate for blacks was 12 percent in February 2014, compared with 5.8 percent for whites (Holland, 2014).
Despite these well-documented disparities and structural injustices, many transracial adoptive families still insist on being color blind, although this also means overlooking their adopted child’s racial and cultural differences and needs. This “race doesn’t matter” attitude was further reinforced by passage of the 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and the 1996 Interethnic Adoption Act (IEPA). The purpose of MEPA was to (1) decrease the length of time children waited to be adopted; (2) prevent discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the placement of children; and (3) identify and recruit foster and adoptive families who can meet the needs of the children.
IEPA was enacted to allow the federal government to assess financial penalties on a state if that state was found to be in violation of MEPA and had not enacted a corrective action plan within six months. For example, a state social worker who delays placement of a child for no other reason than to place that child in a same-race household has violated MEPA.
By attempting to prevent discrimination in placement practices both laws sought to decrease the length of time children, a disproportionate number of whom are minorities, wait in foster care for a permanent adoptive home (Smith & Hjelm, 2007). Out of fear of being penalized, and with great pressure to place increasing numbers of children of color in available homes, adoption agencies inevitably struggle to fully meet the racial and cultural needs of these children who enter white homes. Doing so would treat these children of color differently based on race and would therefore be in violation of the law (Smith, 2011). In fact “many adoption agencies have therefore stayed away from imposing courses, seminars, and lessons to prospective adoptive parents altogether” (Smith, 2011, p. 94).
In Finding Families for African American Children, Smith, McRoy, Freundlich, and Kroll (2008) question the effectiveness of both laws in placing black children in permanent families. Their study suggests that while there have been small increases in transracial adoptions of black children from foster care (rising from 17.2 percent in 1996 to 20.1 percent in 2003), the improvement has not meant that black children are adopted from foster care in proportion to their representation in the system. Livingston and colleagues (2008) further reveal that even though the time that all children remain in foster care has declined, African American children still stay in foster care an average of nine months longer than white children. More research should be conducted on the long-term outcomes for transracial adoptions as a result of both pieces of legislation.
I consider the jury to still be out on the MEPA-IEPA requirements and whether placing children in families without ensuring that their adoptive parents have multicultural skills is in the best long-term interests of these children. I contend that mainstream adoption agencies need more people of color in leadership positions to better serve transracial adoptive families and recruit potential adoptive parents to meet the needs of a racially diverse group of children in the system.
In an effort to move transracial adoptive families beyond their embrace of a color-blind mind-set, an increasing number of black and biracial adoptees have begun to tell their stories about growing up in white families and in mostly white worlds since the early 1970s. Their powerful narratives discuss how they approached adulthood with fragile racial identities and few cultural tools to help them navigate in mainstream society or handle racial slights, discriminatory actions, and stereotypical assumptions (Hoard, 1998/2007; Simon & Roorda, 2000; Bertelsen, 2001; John, 2005). They were also often unable to move comfortably in either white or black America. Nor could they understand the multiple communication styles of black America or the varying cultural lifestyles within that world. Many transracial adoptees have revealed personal stories of shock, deep loneliness, low self-worth, emotional trauma, a desire to belong, and a desperate need for healing and direction. Central to their pain were issues around race and identity (Hoard, 1998/2007; Simon & Roorda, 2000; Bertelsen, 2001; John, 2005).
What many black and biracial transracial adoptees were not prepared for was that the societal realities they faced were the same as those facing other people of color. The information that white transracial adoptive parents needed to give their children did not exist in the white world; these parents would have to interact with black America in order to understand the problems most likely to trouble transracially adopted children.
THE PEOPLE INTERVIEWED for this third section come out of the post–civil rights era. They speak directly to white transracial adoptive families, foster and adoption agencies, scholars, and mainstream society from a place of love and unapologetic honesty on issues of race, discrimination, foster care, adoption, and family. In an effort to be especially transparent to transracial adoptees, nonadopted siblings, and adoptive parents, these interviewees do not hide their vulnerability or sheer grit in telling their stories. Clearly their hope is that readers will set aside color-blindness as a utopian but counterproductive notion and replace it with a thirst for social justice, racial equality, inclusion, humility, and self-reflection.
My interview with Vershawn A. Young powerfully demonstrates that race still matters. Young grew up in the projects of Chicago in a predominately black and low-income environment during the 1970s and 1980s. Despite his academic achievements, he feels that America continues to view him, like most black Americans, as unequal or—put another way—like an unwanted visitor in the country in which he was born. In our candid discussion Young shares his thoughts about race, culture, and class with vulnerability and academic rigor.
Michelle M. Hughes, a single mother, is a product of interracial marriage. She and her siblings grew up with a white mother and a black father in the Chicago suburbs. She credits her parents’ own strong racial identities for giving her a strong sense of self as a biracial woman. I especially wanted to talk with Hughes because of her extensive work with transracial adoptive parents and adoptees of color. She has witnessed the progression of the transracial adoption movement in recent decades and has done good thinking on the multifaceted issues affecting transracial adoptive and multiracial families. Not only is she an adoption advocate and adoption attorney in her professional world, she is also the adoptive parent of a black boy.
Mahisha Dellinger’s story is an example of how vision, hard work, perseverance, and being true to oneself can make dreams become a reality. She used her personal struggles in finding hair care products to establish her own line of quality products designed for multiethnic individuals with a spectrum of hair textures. What started off as a small endeavor has in a little more than a decade become a multimillion-dollar business that spans the globe. Before she became an entrepreneur, Dellinger experienced the fear, humiliation, and isolation caused by racial discrimination in the corporate workplace, the scars of which she still bears. Throughout the ups and downs of life, her biggest joys and satisfaction have come from being a loving wife to her husband, mother to her beautiful and smart children, and a member of a loving and supportive family.
Several years ago I read an article about the interracial marriage of Deneta Howland and Bryan Sells at Harvard University. Shortly thereafter I contacted Dr. Sells and asked her to lend her voice to this book. She represents the fourth generation of college-educated black women in her family. She was born at the end of the civil rights era and raised in a small town in Illinois. From a racially and economically diverse high school in College Park, Maryland, she pursued an education at Harvard University and then went on to medical school in Tennessee. Today she is the founder and owner of a pediatric center in Atlanta. Both she and her husband, a civil rights attorney, continue to fight for social justice, equal opportunity and care, and access to resources for all people. For them, expanding their family by adopting a child from the U.S. foster care system is a viable possibility.
It was important for me to talk with someone who has an insider’s view of the child welfare system, so I was delighted to be able to include an interview with Tabitha, chief of the child welfare bureau for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Concerned about preserving the privacy of her family, Tabitha asked me to use only her first name. In my discussion with her I was eager to know what she thinks are the societal issues that send children into the system. Also I was interested to know how she has handled specific placement situations. I was moved by her compassion for children, knowledge of the child welfare system, and her holistic approach to addressing the needs of children in the system. Her heart, knowledge of black history, and passion for strengthening communities are evident in every facet of her life.
Many transracially adopted children deal with trauma associated with the loss and grief they experienced because of their primal separation from their birth mother and from their physical and emotional separation from their birth family and community. In our conversation Bryan Post addresses trauma in the adopted child that is manifested in negative emotions and behaviors—anger, frustration, depression, hyperactivity, and stealing—and shares his strategies for teaching parents to calm their child using a love-based approach. Post is a national trauma expert and therapist for adoptive families. He also is an adoptee himself; as a child he struggled with behavioral problems, which he discusses in his candid and compelling interview.
Shilease Hofmann grew up in the inner city of Toledo in the 1970s and 1980s. She is the mother of two black teenage boys and is married to Kevin D. Hofmann, a transracial adoptee and author of the memoir Growing Up Black in White. I was pleased to be able to speak with Hofmann and was especially interested in how she and her husband respond when their sons have suffered racial insults. Because Hofmann regularly interacts with white transracial adoptive parents, she has developed a familiarity with this group. As a result she does a good job of unpacking some of the salient issues that transracial adoptive families confront and offers suggestions about how best to address them strategically.
My interview with Chelsey Hines is one of the most emotional conversations I had in preparing this collection. My purpose in interviewing Hines was to get her perspective on her experiences in the foster care system. She was born in 1992 in Aurora, Colorado, and entered the foster care system at a young age because of parental drug abuse and other problems reported to the child welfare authorities by a relative. When she was nine years old, she was adopted by a white family. This interview is quite intimate, touching on issues of loss, vulnerability, survival, loneliness, inferiority, race, and invisibility. I hope this interview helps readers see the child welfare system through Hines’s eyes.
Demetrius Walker, entrepreneur and cofounder of dN|BE Apparel (he says the acronym stands for “dangerousNEGRO Black Empowerment”), is the final voice in this collection. Walker grew up in New York during the crack era of the 1980s. He lived in the projects and saw some of the ugliest images of poverty, crime, hopelessness, and addiction. I wanted to interview him because he focuses on helping black youth to escape poverty and approaches issues that confront transracial adoptive families and adoptees of color with passion, vision, and thinking. He became involved with adoption heritage camps in 2007 after a transracial adoptive couple responsible for lining up speakers for a camp read about his work and invited him to participate. He has since formed special relationships with transracial adoptive families and regards them as members of his extended family.