Transracial adoption, Page 2

These are questions you must ask yourself, and your family, in the course of making your adoption plans. It’s not a pass/fail test of any kind, but honest answers will help you to learn what limits, if any, you need to set as you make decisions.

If you’re wondering if you may have some residual racism left over from childhood contact with bigoted Uncle Bob, you can take the Harvard University Implicit Association Test online. It’s just for fun, but may prompt thought.

“It is well known that people don't always ‘speak their minds’, and it is suspected that people don’t always ‘know their minds’. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology. This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.

We will ask you (optionally) to report your attitudes toward or beliefs about these topics, and provide some general information about yourself. These demonstrations should be more valuable if you have also tried to describe your self-understanding of the characteristic that the IAT is designed to measure. Also, a variety of factors may influence your IAT performance. The score is provided for entertainment purposes only.

Important disclaimer: In reporting to you results of any IAT that you take, we will mention possible interpretations that have a basis in research done at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Yale University. However, these Universities, as well as the individual researchers who have contributed to this site, make no claim for the validity of these suggested interpretations. If you are unprepared to encounter interpretations that you might find objectionable, please do not proceed further.

The new you

Adopting a child from another race or ethnic group does not mean your child is different: it means your whole family has suddenly transformed into that famous horse of a different color.

Just as if you grew an extra nose and sprouted purple fur, vanilla mom and strawberry dad out on the town with toffee baby get looks. Your family will suddenly be officially “different” from most others on the block, as everyone will see.

To some, different is great. There is no shortage of people who have dreamed of building a multi-ethnic family since childhood. Some see this as the way forward in the world, the logical conclusion of an ever-shrinking planet in motion. For others, their example of love that knows no barriers is a contribution to humanity.

Some folks, however, are uncomfortable standing out in a crowd … or the checkout line at the grocery store … and being identifiable or categorized by something as superficial as skin tone on a regular basis would have them breaking out in a rash.

Where you stand on this must be considered, and considered carefully.

Bringing the family up to speed

Members of the extended family should be taken into account, as well. If you really do have a bigoted Uncle Bob, or if Granny is known for throwing racially motivated insults around, you will have to deal with this in one way or another. Educating against prejudice may work, but it may not make a difference and you could end up having to sever contact. Think about this.

You’ll have to educate yourself, as well.

Understanding that divisions among races can be dangerous does not mean that pretending they don’t exist will take care of the problem. No matter how thick a blanket of love you surround your child with, you will never be able to provide a permanent and complete buffer against the rest of the world. You will have to learn how to teach your child to cope in a society that does see color, and sometimes reacts to skin tones in very negative ways.

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Credits: Sandra Hanks Benoiton