It fully enrages me that people I pay with my tax dollars refuse to give black babies to white couples because those babies might loose their cultural identity.

And I've come to realize people are just plain obsessive about this like when Wanda Sykes was attacked not for being a lesbian but because she married a white woman and had white babies.

...and I'm not sure what defines that cultural identity, given the number of my friends who have been faulted for not being "black enough."

I'm sorry, I just don't get the whole thing here. I live near New Haven, CT. And Bridgeport, CT (Milford, right in the middle of the two). I have friends of ALL colors, and I don't really care what color someone is, what I care about is how they treat me. I treat everyone the same way I want to be treated, and usually I get the same back and color doesn't even come into it. As far as I'm concerned it's a non-issue. The people who want to make it an issue are the ones with the problem.

Hubby and I are actually considering adoption. We are in the very, very early stages so at this point we are just agency shopping and getting a feel for the process. One agency I was looking into has an online "catalogue" (it seems so weird to say it like that but that's essentially what it is) of available kids. I was immediately drawn to a black little boy, of about 8, who had the most brilliant smile I'd ever seen. His description said he loved to play outdoors, his favorite subject was science, and loved to tell jokes. I was immediately smitten by him and said as much to a co-worker of mine. (She’s black and in this case, I definitely think that matters). She kept asking why I didn’t want a white baby. I said, “We just want a family. The path we take to get there doesn’t matter.”
Her response was, "Think of the child. You don't want to confuse him." I said, "If this little boy needs a loving home, and we are willing to give that to him, what is so confusing about that?" She kept babbling about kids needing to be with “their kind.” I then realized what she was getting at and said, “You’d rather this little boy be in foster care forever because the only people inquiring about him are a couple of white folks? Because, you know… racism.”

White people are given such hell when they have the nerve to adopt a black kid. Unless they are a celebrity single mom with Liberal political leanings (I'm looking at you, Angelina Jolie), of course. The ironic part is that you see a lot more white couples adopting black babies (or, adopting at ALL, really) than you do black couples adopting babies of any other race than black. This thing about "cultural identity" is bullshit. Assuming the child isn’t from another country, their culture is 'American’. The rest is details.

And yet, whites are the ones accused of being elitist and racist all the time...

I'm sorry, I just don't get the whole thing here.

I'll explain it to you.

PMSNBC thinks that multi-racial families will send the vast right-wing conspiracy tea baggers into a frothing frenzy of undisguised hatred, and they tweet thoughts along those lines.

Until they got push back from those very people who are quite content with their own multi-racial families, such as the linkie our lovely hostess posted above.

Same network that made fun of Mitt Romney and his adopted grandson, who happens to be black. Which is some were in this site's archives.

Notice a pattern? someone at PMSNBC says something really stupid, deletes tweet/post/host, apologizes profusely, then proceeds to do the same damn thing at some time in the future. We're talking days, maybe weeks, not months or years.

They're just using apologies as an enabling mechanism since for the most part they issue non-apology apologies of the we're sorry you were small-minded enough to be offended by what we said variety.

As Goldfinger so famously said: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it is enemy action. They're not actually sorry, because they're not actually trying to make a positive change. If they were, they'd have stopped stepping in the sh!t.

Ahhh, I get it now. Asshats, in other words.

The ironic part is that you see a lot more white couples adopting black babies (or, adopting at ALL, really) than you do black couples adopting babies of any other race than black.
-Sabrina
________________________________

Er, from what I understand, there's a perfectly good reason for that.

Namely: There just aren't enough eligible black (or partly black) couples to go around for all the black kids who need adopting, so they'd likely feel pretty guilty about adopting a non-black child, despite the surplus of such kids who are over a certain age. (There is, of course, no surplus of healthy white babies. Also, I don't know whether or not agencies balk at letting single black women adopt - assuming there are that many such women who WANT to adopt and are financially secure.)

That actually makes it even more infuriating to me, leona.

I know that you're correct, based on my own experience in the adoption process so far, when you say that the amount of black children available for adoption far outnumbers the amount of white children. Babies are even more rare. And the amount of qualified white couples far outnumber the number of minority race couples. I can't speak for single women in general and how that’s handled.

My issue is that it's the white couples that are vilified for it by those who wouldn't even consider adopting ANY child, much less a child outside their own race. More often, its people FROM the race of the adopted child who are the most critical. If there are fewer minority race people qualified to adopt why, then, are the couples who ARE qualified and willing to adopt the ones people are taking issue with? Shouldn't the shame be put on the those who aren't willing or able to step up be the ones that take the heat? If they are so concerned with minority race kids being taken care of 'by their own' than they need to find a way to make that happen with their own. Otherwise, they need to shut the hell up and let those who are willing and able to step up to the plate, do so.

The end goal should be this: A child who needs a loving, stabile home gets one.

The rest is bullshit.

lenona*
Pardon me. The spellcheck decided to change your name.

My parents wanted to adopt a 5-year-old Puerto Rican girl when I was 10 (Puerto Rican fom NYC, not Puerto Rican from Puerto Rico). The kid had been with us as a foster kid since she was born, and she called my parents Mommy and Daddy. The social worker gave them the whole "cultural confusion" speech. I wondered even then whether cultural confusion could possibly be worse than being torn from the only family she'd ever known.

Ultimately, her grandparents took her in. I'll never know whether that was for the best, but I sure do remember her screaming for "Mommy" and "Daddy" not to let "them" (the case workers) take her away.

Ahhh, I get it now. Asshats, in other words.

Well, yes. I'd like to come up with something more charitable, but I'm missing out...best I can come up with is that they like watching sacred cows being gored, so long as it isn't their sacred cows. In which case, they have a cow.

Perhaps they should consult this from the Volokh Conspiracy? nah, it would require them to...open their minds and admit the possibility of being wrong.

When I was raising my kids I told them I didn't care if someone was black, white, or purple with pink polka dots, all that mattered was their character. Some nebby old woman overheard me on the 6574th repeat, and told me that that was proof that I was a racist. I was a little taken aback, and asked her why? She said it was "Too scripted."

So parents, when teaching your children, consistency is bad, mkay?

Seriously, tho, how the hell do people think we teach a child to do what's right, without repeatedly beating them with the proverbial civilization stick until the little barbarians are safe for polite company?

About "character":
Martin Luther King said something about that – but you'll never hear it from professional race baiters. It interferes with the collection of money.

I bet it's one of the things your kids remember when they think of you: "Mom told us over and over to look to people's character."

Posted by: Amy Alkon Author Profile Page at January 31, 2014 8:39 PM
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Yes, well unfortunately, as I'm sure many will agree, there's a reason that many people get surgery, sometimes at very young ages, for things like ugly facial birthmarks or worse. Despite the fact that those children were born that way and couldn't help it. (Unlike, say, having bad hygiene habits despite good parenting, or wearing clothes with nasty messages on them.)

It also reminds me of this article from last October by Katy Waldman: "You Might Not Be Beautiful the Way You Are."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/10/02/nyc_girls_project_bloomberg_s_worthwhile_self_esteem_campaign_for_girls.html

It's about a NYC project to raise girls' self-respect.

Excerpt:

"This initiative gets so many things right. But to pick a nit, what’s with the slogan? As Kat Stoeffel at the Cut notes, 'There’s something slightly contradictory about the NYC Girls Project message— "Don’t worry about how you look. You look beautiful!" ' Isn’t the point of the program to encourage girls to disassociate their sense of worth from their physical appearance? Why couldn’t the slogan simply be, 'I’m Awesome the Way I Am?' ".....

"...For some girls, the slogan 'I’m Beautiful the Way I Am' is a lie. And surely, all else being equal, most of us would rather be beautiful than not. But all else being equal, I would also rather have 20/20 vision or a black belt in karate. Society’s solution for people like me is not to say, 'You are perfectly-sighted/skilled in martial arts just the way you are.' Why? Because needing glasses or lacking karate chops are not horrible, soul-destroying hardships that butcher our chances for happiness in life. That physical appearance does make such a difference in others’ perceptions of us (with all kinds of professional, legal, and interpersonal repercussions) only underscores why it’s important to rein in subjective beauty standards as arbiters of worth...."

(end of excerpts)

Trouble is, Waldman (and Stoeffel) only get it half right. That is, no, kids are NOT awesome the way they are, just as a great many adults are not - even after you take away the convicted criminals. If they were, what need would there be for them to change as they grow up so other adults won't think of them as immature? I.e., while some kids are unpopular for very unfair reasons, other kids DESERVE to be unpopular and need to change - and those 12-year-olds who are popular for the right reasons as well as being straight-A students are still not allowed to drive, vote, marry, or do any number of things without parental permission - and for good reason. How "awesome" is that?

To put it another way, maybe it's time we stopped the embarrassing American habit of trying to exaggerate everything in life when it's just phony - and we especially should stop flattering kids for qualities they don't really have. Complimenting them for working hard - IF they really did the best they could - is one thing. Telling them to keep cheerfully busy so they will at least appear socially confident is good too. So is loving your own kids unconditionally. Implying that they deserve to be popular when they're just boring and ordinary (and socially lazy) is another thing altogether.

And the moral of this story is, when it comes to the subject of adoption, you can be an inbred, knuckle-dragging, racist throwback, unless you're white, of course.