Adoptees of Color

Here's a perspective you hardly ever hear about. A group that calls itself the Adoptees of Color Roundtable has published a statement that has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. The statement is in response to the many commercials and activists who have been encouraging Americans to look to Haiti to adopt children in light of the devastating earthquake that has left many children homeless and orphaned.

The Haitian government has declared that they will halt new adoptions, arguing that hasty adoptions could lead to children being wrongly identified as orphans or falling victim to child trafficking.

This particular paragraph stood out to me because it applies to Haitian children in this time of crisis, but also to children around the world who are put up for adoption by international aid agencies:

"We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti."

People hardly ever stop to think about how the meaning of family varies across countries and cultures. In many of the countries Americans adopt from, many people live in extended family units, and often take in distant relatives who have been orphaned by war, poverty, famine, or natural disasters. If the process is not done thoughtfully and in cautious manner, foreign adoption has the potential to break families.