Some statistics:

• African American children represent 15 percent of the U.S. child population, but 32 percent of the 510,000 children in foster care (FY 2006). They also remain in foster care an average of nine months longer than white children who are adopted.
• About 20 percent of the black children adopted out of foster care are adopted by white parents.

Research on transracial adoption supports three main conclusions:

1. Transracial adoption in itself does not produce psychological or social maladjustment problems in children.
2. Transracially adopted children and their families face a range of challenges, and the manner in which parents handle them facilitates or hinders children’s development.
3. Children in foster care come to adoption with many risk factors that pose challenges for healthy development. For these children, research points to the importance of adoptive placements with families who can address their individual issues and maximize their opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.

In other words, parents of children adopted from foster care need to abandon the “colorblind” approach – the assumption that “all kids are the same, and I’m going to ignore the fact that I’m a white parent of a black child.”

Instead, parents need to take a “color conscious” approach. They need to receive pre-adoption training that prepares them for the challenges transracial families are likely to face, and they need to intentionally help their child develop a positive sense of ethnic identity.

As you might have guessed, there’s a new research study on this topic: “Finding Families for African American Children: The Role of Race & Law in Adoption From Foster Care.” You can read the entire report at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

If you prefer a more conversational approach on the topic of transracial adoption and developing a healthy ethnic identity, you’ll find it in my book, The Adoption Decision: 15 Things You Want to Know Before Adopting.

A reader named Ron – who’s a new adoptive grandpa – writes:

My daughter and her husband have adopted an African American baby. My wife and I are both elated to have a grand-daughter. We want to do the right things so she, as an African American will be fine being adopted by a Caucasian family.  We love her dearly but love may not take care of everything.

Can you suggest any books or organizations that positively deal with this family structure?

My reply:

Ron, it’s great that you are so conscientious and supportive of your daughter and her husband’s new family structure.

• I recommend visiting Bridge Communications. Michelle Hughes is an expert at helping multiracial adoptive families. When I met her at the Ours Through Adoption Conference in Green Bay, WI this spring, she said, “I teach white parents how to raise black children.” That’s putting it bluntly, but it describes what Michelle does.

• My book, The Adoption Decision, includes a chapter about transracial adoption, with stories from new adoptive families who are experiencing the challenges and joys. The chapter also mentions several resources for helping families work through transracial adoption.

• One of my favorite books about transracial adoption is Black Baby, White Hands, a memoir by Jaiya John.

My Adoption Bookstore (from Amazon) lists many other adoption books I’ve read and enjoyed.

Readers, how about you? What resources, books, or organizations about trans-racial adoption have you found helpful?

Cindy Bigelow, founder and director of CHOSEN International, alerted me to the following:

Christian camp designed especially for teens, adopted at any age, both domestic and international.

Dates: August 28-30, 2009

Place: Eagle Fern Camp (near Portland, Oregon)

Camp theme: “The Father Heart of God,” and finding your identity in who God says you are

Speakers: Adult adoptees, including:

• Kim Deardorff, a musician from Nashville who was found in a garbage dump as a baby in Korea. He just finished touring with some of Christian music’s top artists on the Winter Jam Tour.
• Stephanie Fast, an internationally-known speaker whose story is one of Focus on the Family’s most requested broadcasts ever (I’ve heart Stephanie speak; she’s amazing).
• Michael Froke, who was in foster care and never adopted. He now is an adoptive dad, and leads a large recovery ministry in Southern Oregon.

Cost: $100, which includes a popular CHOSEN hoodie. Some partial scholarships are available through Chosen.  Also, some churches are paying the tuition for teens from their church to attend.

CHOSEN board member (and popular adoption author/speaker) Sherrie Eldridge has said:

Something extraordinary happens when adoptees connect with one another, a reassurance of being understood, an unspoken bond, a feeling of camaraderie, a sense of belonging…

Cindy writes:

The adult adoptees that we have as speakers have an incredible way of relating to the teens…they help them process many of the emotions related to feelings of abandonment, rejection, shame and loss by sharing the way God has taken them through these feelings to claim their inheritance from Him.

For more info and to download a registration form, visit the Events page at www.choseninternational.org.

CHOSEN International is a faith based nonprofit organization providing educational, emotional and spiritual support to teen adoptees and their parents.

Check out this intriguing interview with J.B. Watkins, Senior Pastor of St. Roch Community Church, a multicultural congregation in New Orleans.

J.B., who is bi-racial, offers some good suggestions about how white parents who are raising black children can help their children develop a healthy awareness of their black identity.

He also addresses how different-race parents can help their children deal with racism, how to offset raising different-race children when you live in a non-integrated neighborhood, and other important topics.

Source: From Hope to Reality, Oct. 10, 2007

For more news and information about adoption, visit www.laurachristianson.com, and
check out my Exploring
Adoption bookstore.

The complete series of posts about Jaiya John’s memoir, Black Baby White Hands, is now available at my Christian Adoption blog at adoption.com.

Part 1: Book Review: Black Baby White Hands by Jaiya John 

Part 2: The pervasiveness of White culture

Part 3: Growing up Black in a White Culture

Part 4: Adoptive Siblings: Black Brother, White Sister

Part 5: How to Handle the ‘Ancestral Map’ School Assignment

For more news and
information about adoption, please visit my Web site, www.laurachristianson.com.

Part 1 in a 5-part series

Book Review: Black Baby White Hands by Jaiya John

An adoptive mom e-mailed me, writing: “We focus more on our children’s Christian heritage than on their racial heritage. We don’t have contact with the black community, but we don’t think that is altogether necessary.”

That got me to wondering: Is it better for parents who adopt transracially to be ‘color-blind’, or should they be deliberate about acquainting their child with his or her ethnic heritage?

I came to the following conclusion:

Our ultimate identity is defined by our relationship with our Creator and by the fact that we are God’s children. However, race matters. More than we’d like to admit. Part of loving our transracially adopted children unconditionally means helping them develop a positive sense of identity with their race or ethnic background.

My thinking was shaped, in large part, by Jaiya John, author of Black Baby White Hands: A View from the Crib. Jaiya John has the distinction of being the first African American baby adopted by a white family in the state of New Mexico. John’s lyrical memoir details his life as a black child growing up in a mostly-white community during the late 1960s and ‘70s.

John describes himself as “an acutely sensitive Black child” who was imprinted from birth with African American culture—a culture his adoptive parents denied him—not of malice, but simply because they didn’t know better.

His memoir chronicles his growing-up years, focusing mostly on his perception of himself from birth to age 10. John enjoyed a loving family who doted on him. He never felt any sense of racial bias from members of his immediate family. But from a very young age, John intuitively sensed that he and his brother Greg (also an adopted black child) were somehow different from the rest of his family. That realization saddened and angered him because John wanted, more than anything, to belong.

He tried to fit in by being popular, athletic, and funny. Intensely aware of anything that could be construed as racial bias, John gradually withdrew from the world, marinating in self-hatred and anger.

It wasn’t until John was in his early 20s and had reunited with his birth family that he finally admitted to himself just how deeply resentment, negativity, self-pity and selfishness had taken root inside his soul. He writes, “I realized I had a choice.  I could either commit myself to becoming a healthy person, or I could to throughout life unhappy and forever isolated.”

John began to initiate conversations with his parents about why they had never addressed his Blackness, or the fact that he and his brother were adopted. His mother’s response simultaneously saddened him, enlightened him, and put his entire family on a path to relational healing.

While John’s memoir is ponderous in places and a bit repetitive, it is beautifully and poetically written. Adopted people who have grown up in transracial families will greatly appreciate John’s musings. Black Baby White Hands should be on the required reading list for all planning to adopt transracially, particularly for those who adopt a black child.

The next posts in this series will be posted on my Christian Adoption blog at adoption.com. I will add links to the posts as they go live.

Part 2: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands –The pervasiveness of White culture

Part 3: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands – Growing up Black in a White Culture

Part 4: Excerpts from Black Baby White Hands – Adoptive Siblings: Black Brother, White Sister

Part 5: How to Handle the ‘Ancestral Map’ School Assignment

For more news and information about adoption, please visit my Web site, www.laurachristianson.com.