Adopt, Then Adapt

David Glotzer and Charlotte Meyer adopted their first child 11 years ago. They flew the birth mother to San Francisco from North Carolina and put her up with Meyer’s sister. They were in the hospital room when Aaron came into the world. Four years later, the white couple adopted a daughter, Hannah, so their African American son would have a sister of the same race.

Then their life began to change in directions they could not have anticipated. They moved from San Francisco to Oakland to be in a mostly black community. They enrolled their children in a mostly black Catholic school. And they began to experience racism, through their children. It shocked them. And it hurt.

“Your sense of identity changes,” says Glotzer. “You go from being Caucasian to a family of color.”

At a time when the Bush administration is pushing adoption from foster care--launching the first federal adoption Web site late last month and creating a series of public service commercials featuring Bruce Willis and the first lady--an increasing number of adoptions are trans-racial. And the success of such adoptions, whether through foster care, private agencies or attorneys, requires more than simply matching a child with a loving family. Trans-racial families often experience uniquely challenging issues of race and identity.

Matt Plut and his wife, Hazel White, have a 4-year-old adopted African American son named Jake. Jake attends a private preschool in San Francisco that Plut estimates is 40% minority and 60% white. Plut serves on the school’s board of directors and is working to introduce the school to some of the methods and activities proposed in a book called “Anti-Bias Curriculum: Tools for Empowering Young Children.” He said he is just trying to be proactive.

“We are white parents. We don’t know what it is like to grow up black in America. Looking back, I know I was a sheltered white person in a white community. I remember how my peers and everyone talked about race. It is not a comfortable feeling to know this is what you were taught, how you absorb racism as a child.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a person who wasn’t racist. But when you actually start learning about it or are very close to it, you realize you didn’t even know.”

In 2001, about 30% of an estimated 50,000 adoptions from foster care involved at least one parent whose race is different from that of the child, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Trans-racial adoption has increased steadily in the last five years, largely as a result of federal legislation to get children out of foster care, but it remains a hot-button issue. This is particularly true when the parents are white and the children are black, reflecting, perhaps, lingering racial tensions in American society at large.

“It is no surprise that families with black children have more complexity,” said Adam Pertman, author of “Adoption Nation, How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America.” “Racism in America is focused primarily on African Americans. The cultural stereotypes about Asians [and Latinos] are not as bad as they are about blacks.”

Recognizing these unique challenges, the health and human services agency annually awards $2.5 million in grants to help move minority children to adoption. Federal money is also available for training and education of parents adopting trans-racially; in July, these funds helped a group of more than 100 parents from across the country come together for the first trans-racial summit. The conference, which took place in this city just west of San Francisco, was sponsored by Pact, a nonprofit adoption organization based in Richmond, Calif., that has also received a federal grant to study trans-racial adoptive families.

For four days the parents, most of them white, attended workshops on everything from issues for Chinese girls, to African American hair and skin care, to Latin American identity and how to talk about racism with your kids.

Passionate Debate on Where to Live

Perhaps the most heated of the sessions was one on how to make connections to racial groups that evolved into a passionate debate about where multiracial families should live. Agonizing decisions that tap into issues of race and class sprang vividly to life. One mother told of her difficulty making friends with black adults. “It’s not as easy as saying, ‘I have a black child, can you be my friend?’ ” she said.

“You need to pick up and move,” another mother told the room of parents. “It’s about your child’s comfort zone. To pick your comfort zone over your child’s is selfish.” She told of how she had moved her family to a very diverse community in the Midwest when her African American daughter reached high school age, so that the daughter could forge African American friends on her own.

A woman across the room challenged that wisdom. She has adopted two children from Paraguay and now lives in what she describes as a “very WASP community in Los Angeles.” Her children go to an elite, mostly white private school, but she hosts numerous cultural events at her house to keep her children in touch with their roots. She has traveled with her 7-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son to Paraguay to let them see their native country. She and her husband made a documentary film, “Building Bridges,” about the experience. She hired a Paraguayan to work in her office so her children would have access to an adult from their country. She has done a lot, she says. She does not feel she has to move her kids to a poorer, ethnic neighborhood to hook them up with their culture.

Parents around the room jumped on her. “Not all people of color are poor,” shouted one woman. “That’s your assumptions!”

Joseph Crumbley, an African American therapist and social worker who has been a consultant to the Los Angeles County Children and Youth Services in the area of trans-racial adoption, was sitting in on the discussion. He leapt to the defense of the poor. “I don’t want to say that nothing good can come from being poor,” Crumbley said. “My parents made sure I was comfortable going into the ghetto, hanging out in the ‘hood. Most of the people in their race may not be rich. They need to be able to know how to walk through the ‘hood, and know how to deal with law enforcement.”

An Increase in Adoptions From Foster Care

In 1996 a federal law imposed penalties on states or adoption agencies that delay moving children out of foster care while seeking adoptive parents of the same race as the child. Further federal legislation in 1997 stated that agencies had to strive to find permanent homes for children--permanent foster care is not an acceptable option. Incentive bonuses are now given to states for increasing the number of children put into adoption.

The result has been a 78% increase in the number of adoptions from foster care in the last four years, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Black children made up 38% of those adopted from foster care in 2001, according to federal statistics. Latino children make up 17%. While adoption agencies do not keep data on adoptive parents, experts say most of the adoptive parents are white.”More and more white folks are adopting children of color,” says author Pertman, who is also executive director of the Adoption Nation Education Initiative. “That is crystal clear.”

International adoptions are also increasing. Between 1995 and 2001, the number of immigrant visas issued to orphans coming to the United States more than doubled, from 8,987 to 19,237. More than half of these adoptions are from countries where non-Caucasians are the dominant racial group, while people adopting are overwhelmingly Caucasian.

Because of these increases, many parents, social workers and adoption agencies have been forced to move beyond the trans-racial debate, to try to reconcile same-race family ideals with mixed-race adoptive family reality.

“Where I am at now is recognizing that trans-racial adoption is happening,” said John Raible, 41, an African American at the Pact summit.

He was adopted by a white family in the early 1960s and has been speaking publicly about the issue since he was 17. “There is a controversy, but I’m not really interested in the controversy anymore. I’m interested in helping kids in that situation.”

Children in trans-racial adoptive families confront issues of race at an early age, sometimes voiced heartbreakingly at ages as young as 2 or 3. They cry to their parents that they just want everyone to match. External pressures--and scrutiny--from people of all races becomes a fact of life. As these children grow up, they want to know their own cultural history--something their parents may not always be prepared or able to teach. Children of color--particularly African Americans--need to learn the tools to navigate racism and discrimination, experts say, something that their white parents often have never experienced.

Crumbley, the African American therapist and social worker, spoke on numerous panels at the summit. He believes placing children with same-race parents should be a priority, and he believes state agencies aren’t doing enough to recruit minority families to adopt children out of foster care. Nonetheless, he writes and speaks extensively to white parents on the topic--including at the Concord summit--because he sees how critical their role is.

“It’s real important that people know that love is not enough,” said Crumbley. “There is a tendency to gloss over that. Love should be enough, but it isn’t as long as we are in a race-conscious society. You are neglecting the child if you don’t address race and culture.”

How Adopted Child Clashed With Family

Liza Triggs, 31, an African American raised by white parents, said her biggest struggle took place while she was still at home. Triggs was adopted at birth and grew up the youngest in a family of four children. She has a Korean sister, a black, biracial brother and a white brother. During her elementary school years, the family lived in a diverse community in a college town in Ohio. Some of her teachers were black, as were many of her classmates. Race wasn’t an issue. But when Triggs turned 11, the family moved to Marin County.

“I learned really quickly that our family was not the norm and not readily accepted by society,” she said. “It was a big culture shock and a big reality check. It was the beginning of my long-term struggle.”

At the time, Triggs didn’t understand her feelings. All she knew was she didn’t fit in, and she had problems with other kids. As an adolescent, she took matters into her own hands.

Near the bus station where she transferred for school, Triggs found a community that was predominantly black “but was not the safest community.” She made friends and started hanging out there. A clash with her parents ensued.

“They had concerns because of safety issues. And I felt they had concerns because they didn’t want me to be with my people. I felt I had finally found a comfortable place, and they were trying to keep me away.”

Gail Steinberg, Triggs’ mother, co-founded Pact and was the organizer of the recent summit. She also co-wrote “Inside Transracial Adoption,” a book that describes her experiences as a mother in a multiracial family. She says Triggs took risks in her after-school exploits that left her “terrified.”

“She had many connections who were middle-class African Americans like herself,” Steinberg recalled. “But only the ones on the edge were interesting to her.

“Forget the racial issue. Every adoptee thinks ‘I might be the Queen of Sheba’s daughter, or maybe my mother was a tramp.’ Then they try on all the roles and see which one fits. They were very stretching times. Thank God they are over.”

Triggs’ struggle continued until she moved away from home for college where she could play with her identity and decide for herself if she wanted to be “as white as I can be or as black as I can be.”

Today, she identifies as a black woman.

“That is where my comfort zone is,” she said. “My friends are black. My husband is black. Every friend of mine isn’t black, but I spend more time in the black community.”

The perspective of these parents and children who have already survived the long-term challenges of creating a trans-racial family forced some attendees to confront realities that are hard to foresee when you’re holding a beautiful baby for the first time.

Raible, the African American speaker who grew up in a trans-racial family in the suburbs of Milwaukee and Boston, said after the conference that he saw parents at the summit realize for the first time that “the way you look at America is not the way it really is.”

“Parents were walking around almost in a state of bewilderment,” Raible said. “This was poking a hole in the bubble that a lot of white people walk around in. It kind of scared them.”

But some experts believe there are positive social side effects to trans-racial adoption. First, it cannot be hidden, helping to break down the stigma of adoption.

Pertman believes that trans-racial adoption--precisely because it is so visible--is having a profound effect on how we conceive of families.

“Do you think kids in L.A. grow up thinking kids look just like Mommy and Daddy? Of course not, because they have a little Chinese girl in their class who has two white mommies. We are raising a generation who will not have the same notions of family that we do. And it’s because of this trans-racial stuff.”

In big ways and small--from challenging racist comments at adjacent restaurant tables to trying to introduce new perspectives into school curriculums--these white parents have the potential to become a new breed of activist.

“This is the new civil rights movement,” said Crumbley. “These parents are on the cutting edge, whether they know it or not.”

Adoptive parents are struggling to make the world a fairer place for their children, he says, just as parents in any minority group have for generations.

“When you see your child hurt, there is no form of motivation like that in the world,” Crumbley said.