Court strikes down Native American adoption law, saying it discriminates against non-Native...

Washington Post / MSN ^ | October 10, 2018

[Svartalfiar]

I’ve felt compelled to ask several posters to reread something I wrote. Now, it seems I’m the transgressor. How embarassing.

It happens. I know I've misread stuff before, especially when you're speed-reading 50+ comments on an article!

[LadyDoc]

In adoption, the child does best with his or her family. In the past often neglected children were not placed with relatives or friends but with rich affluent white folks, especially white folks who wanted to show off how “liberal” they were.

a lot of the kids ended up really messed up emotionally, especially those who were older when taken from their family. Part of this is the result of trauma from the neglected parent or from the ambivalence of the situation, but there is also a problem of how you raise a child... this is cultural and adding culture shock on top of the trauma makes things worse.

The rule was changed so that the kids could be placed instead with family members, even if that family member was older, didn't have a house with one bedroom per child, etc.

first choice is family member, second choice was to place them with a person from the same tribe, third choice was to place them with a person with AmerIndian roots, the next choice was a non AmerIndian family who has connections with the tribe and could help the child be proud of his or her heritage.

A similar argument was made for black kids.

Often these communities have a custom of caring for their kids by family or friends. Sort of like white families where grandmom raises the kid for her druggie or underaged daughter.

There is no easy solution, but it is not about race but cultural heritage. Also religion.

And now to make things worse: Often social workers are lesbians and discriminate against Christian families adopting, but are happy to place these kids with “same sex” couples, even though that might be against the wishes of the kid's birth family.

In the past, this would be a last resort for hard to place kids, but now they are adopting: some just want a kid to care for, so no problem, but some adopt to make a political point, just like some affluent white folks watched the show “different strokes” and decided they wanted to adopt a black kid to prove they were liberal.

Adoption is about finding the best home for a kid, not a political football.

and a million kids are being raised by relatives, often outside of the social worker system, by informal placement where the grandmother, aunt etc. just takes the kid in from her parents, who often are druggies...