Advice needed for white parents of black African child

[peskykids]

Ok - I need your honest opinions (and from reading past posts I imagine that's just what I'll get!) Don't pull your punches and let me have it straight.

We're hoping to adopt a black African child, who we have been fostering since birth for 16 months. We've managed, finally, to get ourselves an adoption assessment, due to start some time over the next month.

Since he arrived we have been doing everything we can to 'gen up on' the history and culture of the places his parents came from but I just feel that it's still not enough. I feel like the assessment may set out to catch us out.

Anyone got any ideas, or advice, for me? Is anyone reading this black who has been raised in a white family? Or raising a child transracially? (ugly term, I know) What was your experience? What are the real pitfalls?

I have done lots of research, and read lots of stuff, so I'm aware of the issues but I just feel I can't possibly get enough advice or opinion on this...

So come on - get posting!

no experience but want to wish you the best of luck with adopting your son

Wishing you well with the adoption. Friends adopted 2 black girls and asked me what else they could do to show they would be good candidates. Apart from the obvious which you are clearly doing make sure you are fully knowledgable about hair and skin care and typical foods. I know it sounds daft but I'm always amazed at what questions are asked.

Lots of luck - a child is esentially a child - if you were adopting a spanish child would you go to this extreme?
(Sorry DH gets so cross about this if you are both brunettes and the child is a red head - would it matter)
You have our total support and adopting is such a marvellous thing to do - lots of respect

It does often matter to the child though and you are quite right in making sure they will be in touch with their origins. Dont forget October was black history month and there will be loads of stuff on the net etc about this.

My sister has just adopted a two year old and has also to be very careful about his origins and original background despite them all being white and born here.

black history month online

when i was a child we lived in a small village in the back of beyond. There were two black boys who were adopted by a white couple and to us all that was different was the fact that their parents had chosen them- the skin colour wasn't an issue. Hope it all goes well for you

I do disagree. I think it is really important that a child is aware and in touch with their origins. I am all for inter race adoptions though as long as the child is made aware of their origins so helping the child deal with any issues they may well have. Just as you are doing peskykids.

my bf recently adopted a white muslim child & had to really go through the hoops taking him to mosques, synagogues (dunno why?) everything. They had to really demonstrate their willingness to keep him exposed to his parent's adopted religion. But they didn't feel they were out to trip them up or trap them, but the sw's were very hot on this. sounds like you're being thorough & I wish you all the best. my bf's little boy is gorgeous and I hope it goes as well for you as for her

My cousins are black (one afro-carribean, one asian) and were adopted into a white family in a little white English village. they didn't find it totally easy, but are still both close to each other and to their adoptive parents. the main problem was the white village, which my cousin (afro-carribean origin) found quite racist. My cousin was quite tall, active and good at sports, often getting into trouble at school and sometimes with police and he feels they stereotyped him as troublesome from the start.

My uncle, his father, wanted to move to a multi-racial city but my aunt refused. I think they feel in retrospect that having a multiracial community around would have been really helpful. My cousin as an adult went to the Dominican republic, where his mother was from, to "find his roots". he's recently married a Cuban woman, also afro-carribean origin.

My other cousin, the Asian origin one, didn't really get over being adopted, and being rejected by his birth mother, had drug problems as an adult, but I know less about him. the first cousin is a good advert really for multi-racial adoption.

hope some of that makes sense.

I believe quite strongly that in a society where ignorance and racism still exists you can't just say 'skin colour isn't an issue' etc - it may well be a serious issue for the child when they first experience it, and especially if they do not have black role models and support system. Peskykids, I have no doubt that you would (and hopefully will) be wonderful parents to these children but I think that it would be important for you to have friends or a network through playgroups etc where the children could have close relationships / role models with other black people - or that you can show that you are sensitive to this and have thought how you could provide it.
Good Luck!

My goodness me, thank you all so much for your support and thoughts. I am very sensitive to the other point of view, that black children need black families, and although I have thought about it long and hard I still welcome any thoughts that play devil's advocate too! But I think, in our instance, there's a balance that starts to tip the longer the child has been with a white family. And for us to give up on this child says to him that we felt his race mattered so much we wouldn't keep him.

I think that anyone adopting, or fostering, transracially, has a duty (and hopefully a wish!) to ensure that a child understands their roots. But I also feel that all children should be exposed to lots of different cultures, as we do with our birth child anyway. There's also a whole load of assumptions that people seem to make by mixing up race / culture / ethnicity, which are driving me a bit crackers. A black family with a different heritage to the child's will have the same responsibility to promote his roots, albeit they have a head start on the being black in a white society issue - I grant you!

I think the point someone made about race mattering to the child, and particularly to an adolescent, if not to the adopter, is particularly pertinent. To me, a lot of the issues we will have to grapple with are things that we have never experienced eg: this scenario - as a young black man you are standing in a queue at a cashpoint. You happen to wearing, like may other people, a hoodie, but you can see that people are making judgements about you from the way you look. One of my black male friends said that I couldn't possibly understand what it's like for him. I think he means he faces those kind of issues on a daily basis and that white folk really can't get their head round the magnitude of it. I kind of know what this is like having been a dodgy scary goth when younger, but that was my choice to be intimidating. In the scenario above, the boy is simply existing, not aiming to intimidate!

There's a great Toni Morrison quote along the lines "When you know someone's race, what do you actually know about them? Nothing at all." DISCUSS!

honey, as a black woman I am glad to know that you care enough about this child to want to adopt him. that outweighs everything in my opinion. For those that worry, just make sure that you have good role models in place for your son. That's what I do with mine and they aren't adopted. Wishing you luck.

Actually, just to clarify, I don't disapprove of white people adopting children from other races (just in case it read like that after issymum's kind post). I just think that it's not a simple 'love conquers everything' scenario - as I'm guessing issymum would agree. You have to be prepared for the potential pitfalls, the extra lengths you will need to go to to ensure the child has a healthy self image etc.

Mars lady, thank you so much. I really worry that some black people (and I'm sure white people) will think we are denying him his heritage in some way and it means a lot to me when people don't think that way!

A very good book is AHMED, S., CHEETHAM, J. and SMALL, J. (eds) (1997) Social Work with Black Children and their Families. Free Association Books London adn is about teh importance of culture and roots and how to help overcome problems it has really made me think and I would recomend it. All the best

Fantastic - thanks for the recomendation - will be checking it out of the Uni library tomorrow - ta xxx

Issymum,
Words can barely express how enormously moved I am that you chose to share your thoughts in this way. Obviously you have thought about the issues relating to your own circumstances anyway, but to put so much thought, effort, and time in sharing them with me, and us, has made tears stream down my face (in a good way!)

Everything you have said is incredibly useful. I will form a more measured response to your post when I've stopped blubbing and started thinking!

It's very inadequate, but "thank you".
pesky kids xxx

Issymum - you have put in to words somethings I could never get my head arround.

As the mum of a mixed race (need a better term) child - I value her 'other culture' but am unsure how much to go into it. eg I 'know' far more about Jamaican history than DH - who denys he is decended from slaves.....

and how relevant is DD's african history......does just her West Indian heritage 'count' I'm going to print of your thoughts and look at them more closely

Thanks for giving me something to think about

Wow Issymum - good for you. I have been thinking about some of all this, partly as a result of Peskykids q (and others in RL I know are in similiar situations), and partly because some of it is relevant to me as the white parent of a mixed race child.

I completely agree with you about the 'heritage' issue.

I think the 'here and now' context is the one to think about, and principally isolation, the issue covered by peers and role models. What children of colour (if you like) have to cope with is everything from lazy assumptions, lack of representation, mis-representation, right through to out and out racism. While (I hope) a white parent can do loads to equip a child to navigate their way through that, it isn't the same as the shared experience. The support a white parent can give may well be as strong and valid as the help of a black parent, but it's not 'the same', Still - I don't think this would be a reason to block inter-racial adoption - to be flippant, my DS is a boy and has a disability, neither of which are in my direct experience...biological parents don't produce clones of themselves, so why should adoptive ones? And we can all make the effort to make sure that our children do have access to individuals and communities who do share their experience.

Mostly, mostly, I think one of the worst things that could happen is that a happy settled 16 month old should be wrenched from a secure and loving home with people (peskykids) who are aware of and sympathetic to these factors.

That was a great post Issymum, it was really useful to me, in fact I will be showing it to dh too.

Peskykids, something that hasn't been mentioned so far, but which as come up in our adoption assessment is that while being adopted isn't something that should be secret, it is private and it should be up to the child who they want to tell about it. But when the child is very obviously not the child of either of the adoptive parents then they don't have this choice. So I think you should be able to show the SWs how you will be able to help him deal with this. Since you're already fostering him I'm sure you have plenty of experience of the weird and thoughtless things the people can say, we haven't even adopted yet and we've already had some bizarre ones.

Do you have any sense of how your LA is feeling about your application? I know, for instance, that our LA would strongly oppose it unless they had tried and failed to find suitable adoptive parents. Best of luck whatever happens.