Adopting Idealism

The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute will release a report today calling for revisions to the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994, a law that aimed to end the inhumane practice of shuffling black children around to foster families while they awaited black adoptive parents, while white parents who wanted to adopt children sat on waiting lists for years. The new report, with backing from the Child Welfare League of America, the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, and the National Association of Black Social Workers, "calls for amending the law so race could be considered as a factor in selecting parents for children from foster care. The change also would allow race-oriented pre-adoption training," reports the Associated Press. The AP quotes the executive director of the Donaldson Institute, Adam Pertman, as saying, "The view that we can be colorblind is a wonderful, idealistic perspective, but we don't live there."

Well, put us down with the idealists. What have we come to in America that advocates of adoption, one of the most idealistic acts there is, are putting themselves in opposition to idealism? The success of Senator Obama's presidential campaign underscores the erosion of racial boundaries in America, an erosion that has been a healthy development for the country. If trans-racial adoption can contribute to a nation in which we see each other primarily as individuals or as Americans rather than as members of racial factions, so much the better. We know black children adopted into white families and Chinese children adopted into white families who had both strong personal identities and an appreciation of their parents. When the government starts making race-based placements for children needing families, it's an abandonment of idealism that goes a step too far. We may not live in a colorblind world, but changing the law to make it less colorblind would be a step backward.