Interracial Adoption Research Paper

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Pages: 8

Interracial Adoption of African Americans in America Statistically, the number of African American children in foster care is much higher than the number of Caucasian children, and African American children tend to wait much longer to be adopted. The rising number of African American children who are in need of adoption continues to be problematic in the United States because there is little effort being made to improve the adoption process. While there is some opposition to this stance, interracial adoption is the best choice for African American children as long as these children learn about their racial culture, belong to both ethnic communities, and develop a strong sense of self identity.
When African American children are raised in
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“Since 1996, it has been illegal to consider race when determining whether families are suitable to raise adopted children” (John). Even though people are aware of negative situations like the one in Reecie’s case, opponents of interracial adoption are against “Color-blind" adoption. These people claim that “some white parents…may not be mentally ready or have the appropriate social tools to parent black children…who may, in turn, experience social and psychological problems later in life” (John). This is why people who opposed interracial adoption still continued to insist that African American adoptees be placed with African American …show more content…
This could serve as a very important step in bringing two cultures because communication is very important when learning about different backgrounds and customs. Having this bridge in place can help communities understand and learn from each other. However, because “children see at a very young age and develop attitudes about those differences. Racial attitudes, especially racial prejudice, are found in very young children” people believe that interracial adoption can have a negative impact on the children being interracially adopted (Fine and Johnson). They claim that children can feel neglect and bullied, the people in their surrounding do not accept these children (Cho and So Yung). This can cause them to have mixed feeling because they cannot identify with either race and they don’t feel accepted in either culture. People against interracial adoption argue that only African Americans can teach African American children to deal with racism that they may encounter at some point in their life, because only African American adoptive parents have dealt with racial discrimination. Although Caucasian adoptive parents have not come across the same type of racism that African Americans experienced, it does mean that the Caucasian population has not