Depite Law, Interracial Adoption Is Still Volatile

When John Mould and Margaret Geiger dole out hugs and pep talks, it is easy to forget the passionate, persistent debate over interracial adoption.

Their house in a Philadelphia suburb overflows with toys, bicycles and cheerful din. The noisemakers include four adopted black children and the white couple’s biological daughter and son.

“We love doing this because we’re good at it,” said Mould, a special-education teacher. “To bring a kid into your home and build a relationship--it’s just a wonderful thing.”

Congress shares his enthusiasm for interracial adoptions. It passed legislation in 1996 threatening penalties against states or adoption agencies that delayed moving children out of foster care while seeking adoptive parents of the same race.

But four years later, the congressional initiative remains divisive. The National Assn. of Black Social Workers, backed by many white colleagues, opposes interracial adoption except as a last resort. Some prominent advocates of interracial adoption are upset, contending that the Health and Human Services Department has undermined congressional intent with halfhearted enforcement of the new rules.

Metzenbaum Targets the HHS Staff

“Nothing has frustrated me more in the entire time I’ve been in Washington than the unwillingness of those at the policy-making level and out in the field to enforce the law,” said former Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, the Ohio Democrat who initiated the legislation in 1994.

He asserts that the black social workers’ position is shared by many black civil servants serving under Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.

“She’s been overcome by her staff,” Metzenbaum said. “We’re talking about little kids with no one to look out for them who wind up getting the short end of the stick . . . all because of this false racism.”

HHS spokesman Michael Kharfen denies any systematic resistance within the department, and says it shares Metzenbaum’s goals. “We’ve done a lot to make his legislative legacy work successfully for kids and for families,” Kharfen said.

Preliminary federal figures for 1998 back him up: They indicate at least 15% of the 36,000 adoptions from the foster care system involved black children adopted by whites, up from roughly 12% of 31,000 adoptions in 1997.

“For years, the feeling was that even if you were willing to adopt a child of a different race, there wouldn’t be any sympathy for you,” Kharfen said. “Now, instead of skeptical and slow, the response is encouraging and supporting.”

There are stark statistics behind the push for more adoptions. As of last year, 117,000 children were in foster care waiting for adoption, 51% of them black. The black children wait longer than whites; relatively few are the infants and toddlers so prized by many adoptive parents, and most have medical or developmental problems.

Well before Congress confronted the issue, even before they married, Mould and Geiger discovered a shared fervor for adoption while teaching together in a special-education program. The oldest of their adopted children, 16-year-old Melissa, joined the household 10 years ago.

The rest of the family includes the biological children, Serita, 12, and Zachary, 9; Marquel, 11, adopted in 1995, and Asia, 8, and Eric, 7, half-siblings adopted two years ago.

It took six years to formalize Melissa’s adoption. Mould and Geiger said they were rebuffed repeatedly by a black social worker who opposed whites adopting black children.

“Ideally, yes, all African American kids would be adopted in African American homes. But the resources just aren’t there,” Geiger said. “These kids are rotting in foster care.”

The black social workers association shares a yearning to get black children out of foster care. But it says the priority should be to place them with black families who have a better understanding of racism and black culture.

Toni Oliver, who co-chairs the association’s foster care and adoption committee, worries that white couples underestimate the challenges of interracial adoption.

“Families need to explore their own prejudices, their racial insensitivities, their areas of ignorance,” she said. “Families who feel that ‘Love is all it takes’ scare me . . . I want to believe they have every intention to do the best thing, but I’m terribly frightened by their naivete.”

The complexity of the issue is reflected in the policies of many major adoption organizations. For example, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, based in St. Paul, Minn., offers programs for parents considering interracial adoptions. Yet it still favors same-race adoption, stating that black adults can best equip black children “with skills and strengths to combat the ill effects of racism.”

Countering such arguments, proponents of interracial adoption say there is no solid evidence proving that black children raised by white parents are prone to identity crises.

“Transracial adoption really works,” said Rita Simon, an American University professor who has studied the topic. “The children grow up aware of their racial identity. They’re not confused about who they are or where they belong.”

That doesn’t mean white-black adoption is free of anguish. Judith Ashton, executive director of the New York State Citizens’ Coalition for Children, cites lessons from her own experience raising two black children.

“As parents, we’d lay down our lives for our kids, but we can’t know what it feels like to be in their skins,” she said from her office in Ithaca, N.Y. “Injustice is part of everyday life. . . . We couldn’t protect them from it, and we couldn’t feel it ourselves.”

Ashton has compiled guidelines for whites seeking to adopt black children; the focus is on serving the child’s best interests.

“Adopted kids can develop a strong self-identity,” she said. “The bigger challenge is helping them develop a strong, positive sense of group identity.”

Mould and Geiger enjoy taking their family into predominantly black parts of greater Philadelphia. They also encourage candid discussions about race, for example alerting their adopted children about racial profiling.

“If Serita and Marquel are at a store together, it’s Marquel who will get watched by the guard,” Geiger said.

Worried about providing proper hair care, Geiger read books and sought advice to learn the techniques that resulted in Asia’s eye-catching, bead-bedecked braids. But cross-culturalism has its limits--”We checked out Kwanzaa, and we couldn’t get into it,” Mould said.

The couple received one anonymous hate letter complaining that “you’re making our neighborhood a ghetto,” but generally feel well supported by their neighbors. Most of their relatives also approve, although Mould said the adoptions strained relations with his father.

One reason for the strain: Mould and Geiger gave Serita and Zachary distinctive last names of their own, allowing all six children the common bond of surnames different from their parents.

Mould is not deterred by the fact that his black children face challenges that he, as a white, cannot fully share.

“You should raise all your children to be different from you,” he said. “If they look different from you, it’s a reminder that you’re not supposed to be raising clones.”

Under the federal legislation, states and adoption agencies were forced to scrap formal policies favoring same-race adoptions. But Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard Law School professor, believes unwritten policies continue to discourage interracial adoptions.

Instead of requiring black adoptive parents for a black child, an adoption agency may now pursue the same goal by insisting that adoptive parents demonstrate they are “culturally competent” to raise a black child, Bartholet said.

Besides encouraging interracial adoptions, the 1996 legislation calls for intensified recruitment of black adoptive parents. This has been a key factor in Illinois, which led the nation by tripling the number of adoptions over the past three years, from 2,229 to 7,315.

Interracial adoptions in Illinois increased from 36 to 306 during that period, but the surge was due mainly to adoptions of black children by their relatives. Illinois’s Department of Children and Family Services tries not to inflame passions on either side of the interracial debate.

“It’s almost like people are engaged in theology one way or the other,” said the department director, Jess McDonald. “But the kids, they want a home. They don’t care about the philosophy and rhetoric.”

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On the Net: National Adoption Information Clearinghouse: https://www.calib.com/naic/