My wife and I, both white, have adopted two children of color: Our son, Willie, now 27 months old, is a mixed-race boy from Washington, D.C., and our new addition, Alexander, is a black infant from Arlington, Va.
Because of our experiences with state and city social services officials, I followed the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act's slow movement through Congress. The recently enacted legislation, sponsored by Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, prohibits child welfare agencies from discriminating against prospective parents solely on the basis of race, color or national origin.
Several years ago, it became clear we would not be able to have biological children. When I attended an adoption workshop in Baltimore, which rarely has healthy white infants available for adoption, the social worker told me that the state would not help us make a transracial adoption.
'Cultural genocide'
The social worker explained that the state's position on transracial adoptions had been molded by the National Association of Black Social Workers, a group that says adoptions of black youngsters by whites is tantamount to "cultural genocide."
We expected to travel to the ends of the earth, to Central America or even to China, to adopt a healthy infant.
Instead, we turned to an expensive, private adoption agency. Through this agency, we completed two transracial adoptions in a period of less than two years.
It has been a wonderful experience, so I support any political changes that will make transracial adoptions easier. I also wish that the tax dollars we pay to finance the city's Department of Social Services could have been used to our benefit. When I discuss transracial adoption, however, I hate to feel like a spokesman for white backlash, suddenly complaining that, as whites, we are being discriminated against.
The black social workers' position has a firm historical basis, which grew in response to centuries of racism.
While I respect the position of the Black Social Workers Association and others who oppose transracial adoption -- I think they are wrong. Based on our experience, I believe it can be a positive situation for the children, the adoptive parents and the community.
Senator Metzenbaum estimates that about 450,000 children are now in foster care nationwide, and it is hoped that the legislation will make it easier for them to be adopted.
Loophole in legislation
But the newly enacted legislation has language that may undermine its original intent.
The new language creates a loophole by allowing public agencies to consider the "cultural or racial identity needs" of the child, and the prospective adoptive parents' ability to meet them. Consequently, I wonder if Maryland Social Services officials will use the loophole to discourage transracial adoptions.
I also wonder if it will broaden the outlook of private agencies which specialize in matching white parents with white infants because racism is apparent in these placements.
Several years ago, we attended adoption classes with an organization called Families Adopting Children Everywhere (FACE), which supports transracial adoptions. A white doctor in our class solicited a private adoption by passing around cards which said: "White Infant Only." If she adopted a child of color, her "parents just wouldn't understand," she said.
A pretty pathetic excuse, I thought, but I also notice that the crisis in eastern Europe and the old Soviet Union is proving to be a windfall for adoptive parents, and for adoption agencies, because there is suddenly a steady supply of white -- repeat, WHITE -- infants and older orphans. We have not noticed any particular change in our relations with our white friends, but our -- transracial adoptions put us into an exciting universe.
We are making new friends, who have become families of the world by adopting children from other nations. To help their adoptive children maintain their racial or ethnic identities, the parents recognize national heroes, holidays, food, music and traditions from the childrens' native lands.
In the past three years, moreover, I have had conversations with a number of black social workers in Baltimore, and none of them expressed any objections to our adoptions.
Several strongly oppose the official policy, believing as we do that a child is a child and a home is a home.
Racial policy unchanged
At the same time, the policy of the department has not changed. We have continued on a Social Services Department list of families in Baltimore who are interested in adoption, and we recently received notification of a group home study session.
I wrote back that we had just adopted another infant, using a private agency and a private home study. After several weeks, I was contacted by the Department of Social Services, whose staff person was courteous but surprised that a transracial adoption actually happened.
When I told her that it was our second transracial adoption, she was astonished, so I spent some time describing to her the mechanics of the adoption, pointing out that the department's policies make mixed-raced adoptions virtually impossible. She didn't disagree.
The Metzenbaum legislation could reverse this policy, though it is difficult to predict whether the state and Baltimore will recognize this change.
The bill provides a withholding of federal funds from agencies that continue to avoid transracial adoptions, and also allows individuals to sue privately under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Recently, I discussed race relations in Baltimore with two fellow employees, both black women. One of them mentioned a neighborhood dispute in Waverly when she shared a house with a white woman, and the neighbors were unhappy and distant. I replied that I was interested in this situation because I had two children of color.
"Is your wife black?," one of them asked. I said she is white and that the children are adopted. "Why?" they asked in surprise.
I have been asked this question many times, and I always give the same answer.
We believe that we are all parents of the world's children, regardless of race or background. We wanted to have the wonderful experience of raising our children from infancy, so that any mistakes that are made will be ours, and not the product of a chaotic and underfinanced foster-care situation.
Adoption is a companion to the poverty in black communities across the country. I'd like to see an elimination of the poverty which forces birth mothers to carry out an act both painful and courageous: giving up a child. In the interim, we want to do our small part to protect children.
Why? Because we love both of the boys (even at 3 in the morning) and because they make us a family. Sure, there will be problems as they grow older, but is this not true for every family?
On the wall in our older son's room, we have a poster of Frederick Douglass, with some of his famous text: "Without struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters . . ."
Will our children be regarded as odd and different? Perhaps, but we find every family configuration in our neighborhood -- children being raised by two parents, by one parent, by step-parents, by grandparents, by foster parents and, alas, by no parents.
We are a proud family in a happily mixed world, and we celebrate our diversity. It is important to realize that the growth of a child, unlike the rhetoric surrounding the adoption issue, is irreversible.
A child does not stop growing and needing a home situation just because its elders cannot agree on a proper policy.
It does not take long, moreover, for a child bounced around from house to house to absorb some permanent emotional and physical problems, which are not healthy and which affect their socialization as they grow older. To the opponents of transracial adoption, I issue a challenge: You can talk the talk, but are you ready to walk the walk? How many children have you adopted?
Bill Barry and his wife, Joan Jacobson, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun, live in Baltimore.