Racism

1. Adoption is different in person

A new report reminds us of the challenges some adoptees have in forming their identity, and what could make it easier.

A major new study finds adoption has a profound and enduring impact on the identity of adoptees. Based on input from the experts on the subject - adults who were adopted as children, the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute released a major study on identity formation for adopted persons: Beyond Culture Camp: Promoting Healthy Identity Formation in Adoption (2009).

I am the white parent of a 12-year-old boy who is African-Canadian. How do I support him in dealing with stereotypes about Black men and youth?

The best way to deal with stereotypes is to understand them, provide counter-examples, talk about it openly, understand that not everything that may look or sound like a stereotype, actually is one, and to become a social activist.

Mom Tanya describes how her family lost its privacy when she and her husband adopted transracially.

Before we became a transracial family, we were accustomed to a certain degree of privacy; now, all that’s changed.

Heritage camps for adoptive families

“There’s lots of brown people here!” exclaimed a 5-year-old Ethiopian girl upon arrival at E Camp last summer, an Ethopian heritage and culture camp. And as the weekend came to a close and everyone was leaving for home, that same the little girl told me, “I wish I could stay here forever.”

Starting school for the first time, or a new school year, can present challenges for adoptive parents and their children. We have prepared this brief guide to help ready you and your child for the school experience and, to, circumvent some of the problems you may encounter.

Last week I expressed some concern about whether or not my first-grader was old enough to be learning about some of the more violent aspects of the civil rights movement. One of the frustrating outcomes of that conversation is that the teacher (and a few commenters) misinterpreted my concern as being over conversations about race in general, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I am a firm believer that we should be talking to our kids about racial differences from a very young age.

Ola Zuri, a transracial adoptee, has written a children’s book Why Can’t You Look Like Me? Siobhan Rowe interviewed Ola about her experience growing up and what she’d like parents who adopt a child of a different ethnicity to know.

Why did you write the book?

Andrew Martindale, an adoptive parent, and assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, explains that the concept of race is man-made and, though it holds enormous power, has no biological basis.

The history of race relations makes transracial adoptions deeply personal, and, at times, very public statements of reconciliation. What do we say to our children, ourselves and others about the nature and significance of racial difference within our families?

Loving our children has been easy. As transracial adoptive parents, however, it has been much more difficult to develop strategies for dealing with individual and institutional racism.

In our experience, the best lessons we can offer are those that teach our children to externalize racism and assure them we will always be there for them.