Posted on 02/07/2014 7:14:56 AM PST by SeekAndFind
About a year and a half ago, my wife and I flew to Ethiopia and returned to America with our newly adopted son, Amare -- the only black member of our now family of five. We expected his new brothers and extended family, our friends, church, and neighbors to embrace and love him, and they didn't disappoint us. We did not know what to expect, however, from the general American public.
We were optimistic that it would go well, but in our educational sessions about adopting internationally, some focused on the prejudices we would encounter upon our return. We were told to expect inappropriate questions, rude stares, and downright racist comments when in public with our new son. We reviewed fictional scenarios and determined how we would respond when faced with those types of challenging situations.
We prepared ourselves for the worst.
So how have we fared? Well, over the course of the eighteen months Amare has been a black American living in an 80% white family, our grand total of negative incidents is...zero. Not a single one. No rude comments or questions, no judgmental looks -- or even confused ones.
In fact, it's been the opposite. Strangers -- of all races -- have consistently gone out of their way to show us kindness. Any questions or comments have been of genuine support or interest in our family.
It's been phenomenal.
I don't say this to minimize the racial prejudices -- some quite severe -- that do still persist in America. Those are real and need to be called out. I know that other adoptive parents have encountered these issues and that we surely will as well at some point in the future.
But our experience with Amare so far demonstrates just how much America has progressed on this issue
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The ugliness will come from American ghetto blacks
“a black American living in an 80% white family, our grand total of negative incidents is...zero. Not a single one. No rude comments or questions, no judgmental looks — or even confused ones. “
I married a woman from Mexico. I’ve never heard any racist or negative comment. Interesting how race hustlers and victims are able to find them so easily.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
If he wanted a black baby why didn’t he adopt an American child ???
There are more black children available for adoption right here in the US than there are white or any other color...
I can understand people feeling they have to go to Russia for a white baby...
but to think they have to go all the way to Ethiopa and spend $1000s more than necessary to adopt a black baby ???
did he even try to adopt an American baby ???
We adopted domestically, but otherwise our story is similar. My wife received one glower from an old guy in a grocery story. For all I know, he may have been glowering because our eldest child (also adopted) is Caucasian, and he might have thought that my wife was going from man to man.
She also had two black women in her 30s or so THANKING her (no thanks needed, we LIKE having children!). Both incidents happened in Rockford, which should have as much racial tension as any city by common folklore, given the lawsuits of the past.
On another board a questioner i know to be a leftist asked if anyone noticed than during the SOTU speech, Boehner appeared to be darker than Obama.
I responded that I hadn’t noticed since I’m not a democrat and race and color mean nothing to me. The general response was consistent with the experience this adoptive family has had. It’s the 21st century, only the perpetually aggrieved care about race and color.
There is a heavy bias, or used to be, among black social workers regarding placing black children in white families. They said the kids would miss out on "the black experience".
but its not against the law...
White parents can adopt black children...
Black social workers might try to discourage an adoption but they cant overrule a judge...
Isnt the black baby the Romneys have an American baby ???
I thought I saw somewhere he was born here ???
That was just last year..
“If he wanted a black baby why didn’t he adopt an American child ???”
I recall some years back a white family tried to adopt a black American child and the black “leaders” pitched a fit. They claimed it would rob the child of his blackness. Ultimately the adoption did not go through. I don’t know what became of the orphan child, but I assume he still has his blackness.
I have four biracial black adopted at birth children. Adopted our first 26 years ago. The white community has been welcoming, a bit too welcoming at times. Nothing like leftist need for blacks in their midst to meet their leftist needs. The black community was very welcoming, but we found it not to be the best place for our family.
My BIL is a Mexican. One of the finest human beings I know. Met his entire family/relatives during the their daughters wedding—nothing but kind words for them. Tradition is strong. When one of their family members enters the house where we were all having the post-wedding party, that individual, FIRST, goes and meets the patriarch/matriarchs, and then on down, all around to each of us, introducing themselves. It was a wonderful and humbling experience.
So sorry that there were not any children (white or black) in America that you could have adopted thus saving air fare!
Can you even imagine how a child that lives in this asswads city feels when they learn that this person left the Country to find a child when they were right there.
My niece tried to adopt an American baby and was totally stonewalled. They had to jump through a lot of hoops to adopt from Ethiopia, at least there were hoops. In the US there were only closed doors, locked!
I know three couples who have adopted from overseas. In every case it was due to the fear that a judge would overturn the adoption of an American child down the road, as has happened.
Your niece’s experience mirrors mine from the mid 90s, although we ended up just not adopting any more (we had 2 from the Philippines already).
Apparently we prefer just killing our unwanted children.
My wife and I looked into this in NYS. We met so much resistance from the Social Services people that you can't imagine. We were told that we would not be culturally aware and could not present the child with the African American awareness that he/she would need to function in society.
I am a white woman. Thirty-three years ago, while living in the enlightened, prosperous, mostly liberal suburbs of Washington DC, I made friends with a lonely five-year-old black girl. My husband and I had no children yet, though we were trying. This little girl had no mommy, for reasons probably related to the fact that her father was a drug dealer. So she came over to our apartment during the day, and we spent time together doing the kinds of things mothers and daughters do: baking stuff, going for nature walks, reading books, practicing writing, swimming, shopping, planting flowers, talking. It was a golden time.
But when I took her shopping or ran errands with her, we encountered real prejudice. It was ugly. I had no previous experience of such attitudes and could not believe it existed. Both white people and black were full of spitting hostility. The blacks did not express it verbally, though I could see the looks in their eyes. The whites occasionally spoke to me. Their distaste was more open.
The assumption seemed to be either that this was my child by some black man, or that I had adopted her. White people said some very unpleasant things to us. To us, not just to me. The shock of hearing this cruelty toward an innocent child was like a punch in the stomach. It’s impossible for a naive person like me to comprehend.
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