FEDERAL ADOPTION POLICY, as embodied in the 1994 Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) and the 1996 Interethnic Adoption Act (IEPA), needs to be adjusted to address the inadequacies that leave so many children languishing in the U.S. foster care system. Although both measures were designed to move more children, a disproportionate number of whom are children of color, into permanent homes as quickly as possible, both measures have had an adverse, albeit unintended, effect. Neither measure requires agencies—whether public child welfare agencies or private agencies under contract to them to place children—to have expertise in preparing or training potential adoptive parents to care for the cultural and racial needs of children of color, nor does either law provide incentives to adoption agencies that hire professionals of color, despite the demographics of the children these agencies are serving. Moreover, neither measure includes clear guidelines on how adoption agencies can institute targeted outreach and educational efforts in communities of color for the purposes of recruiting potential adoptive parents. As a result, when adoption professionals place children of color with white adoptive parents, they do so with minimal attention to the cultural and physical needs of the child, which leaves these children to fend for themselves in their adoptive homes.
Because MEPA and IEPA take a color-blind approach to placement, adoption agencies fear they will be breaking federal law if they prepare white transracial adoptive parents for meeting the racial and cultural needs of the children of color they will be raising.1 Doing so requires specific parenting skills and connections to these children’s ethnic communities of origin. Adoption agencies need to be freed of any legal repercussions if they require their staff to learn how to do this. Parents deserve to know how best to raise their children and have the support network to do so. Some may argue that adding requirements to current transracial adoption policy will slow down placements and/or face legal challenges, but I believe that it actually will give potential parents the confidence and awareness that they need to succeed in raising their child instead of feeling helpless and overwhelmed after the fact—or instead of rejecting domestic transracial adoption in favor of international adoption because they don’t know how to deal with the cultural and historical issues.
Further, before the 2008 release of the Evan B. Donaldson report “Finding Families for African American Children: The Role of Race and Law in Adoption from Foster Care” (Smith, McRoy et al., 2008), it seems to have occurred only to me, other transracial adoptees, and precious few others that the color-blind policy of the U.S. child welfare system is irresponsible and unethical because it essentially ignores the persistence of racial discrimination, an everyday fact for communities of color, and minimizes the uniqueness, challenges, and benefits that each child brings to a new family. The child welfare system should make it a priority to provide services and/or financial support to families and communities trying to raise children in challenging circumstances. I truly believe that whether children are placed with relatives, same-race couples, or transracial parents, public and private adoption agencies and their staffs must figure out how best to meet the needs of these children with compassion, cultural understanding, inclusiveness, innovative thinking, and with the support and clarity of good adoption policy.
Finally, I want to emphasize that while this book focuses largely on black and biracial children raised in white adoptive homes, the suggestions provided here are relevant to transracial adoptive families of all combinations. Transracial adoption includes international adoptions—of children from Korea, Ethiopia, Latin America, India, Nepal, Haiti, and many other countries. Thus Americans adopting from Korea need to learn Korean history and culture and figure out how to introduce their families to members of the Korean American community, just as American adoptive parents will need to learn the history and culture of Ethiopia or Thailand and befriend members of the Ethiopian American or South Asian American communities. My hope is that researchers, parents, adoptees, policy makers, therapists, and social work professionals continue to ensure that the discussion and study of transracial adoption is a priority so that we can increase our understandings of how best to meet the racial, multicultural, and emotional needs of children in transracial adoptive settings.