Race and Adoption
Check out some of Pact’s most timely and popular publications. For permission to reprint or repost, please contact Beth Hall at beth@pactadopt.org.
by Liza Steinberg 1998 Adapted from “A Bill of Rights for Mixed Folks,” by Marilyn Dramé. Every child is entitled to love and full membership in his or her family. Every child is entitled to have his or her heritage and culture embraced and valued. Every child is...
by April Dinwoodie 2018 Growing up as a transracially adopted person in the seventies and eighties, I never imagined it would be harder today than it was then to move through the world as a person of color. While there was a stark lack of diversity in rural Rhode...
by Amanda Baden 2018 Ten things I need from those who love me to feel supported as an adoptee of color: Empathy and humility. As an adoptee of color, a psychologist, an educator, and a parent, I have learned that the most valuable gift you can...
by Rebekah Hutson 2018 Listen, don’t dismiss The worst possible thing you can do is ignore me, to ignore my voice and my concerns. As someone who loves me, you should be there to support me through my transracial adoption journey, which is lifelong. Too many times,...
by Rebecca Carroll 2016 Give your black children some black to grow on -- black friends, black culture; work hard and tirelessly to make sure they are never the only one in the room, anywhere. Find a black person to teach you how to manage your children’s hair and...
2014 When we asked Pact members what they wish they had known before they adopted, we weren’t sure what kind of response we would get. The feedback we received, overwhelming in volume, was primarily from white parents parenting children of color. Clear themes emerged,...
by Dwight Smith 2016 A version of this essay was previously published on medium.com. What happens when a Black boy is adopted at birth into a white world where race and racism are ghosts of the past and racial identity is a silly thing to waste time thinking about?...
by Louise Derman-Sparks 2018 PART ONE: THE DEVELOPMENTAL JOURNEY Supporting our children’s learning to know themselves, and to like who they are—without feeling superior or inferior to others—is a fundamental task of parenting. This task is about both children’s...
by Stephanie Flores-Koulish originally published 2018, excerpted 2023 Recently, we heard the news of a Border Patrol agent asking two women at a Montana gas station for identification after the agent heard them speaking Spanish to each other. Social media also helped...
by Dr. Kripa Cooper-Lewter 2016 Transracial and transnational adoption not only connects children with adoptive parents, but in many instances also forms new sibling relationships across more than one race. Parents who have adopted children of different races face the...
by Rebecca Carroll 2016 It's said that a person’s story belongs to them; I don't know if that's true for people born into the same families in which they grow up, but mine has never felt like my own. Maybe that's because it's always been a little different, depending...
by Malaika Parker 2014 Shadism (a preference or privilege based on lighter over darker skin tones) is a conversation that gets directly to the heart of racism and its roots. In an effort to fight against these preferences and privileges, Pact does not engage in...
by Lisa L. Moore, LICSW, PhD 2022 Full disclosure: Writing about adoption from the position of being an adoptive parent is new for me. I find the experience of producing my own narrative around adoption from this position to be one that challenges me for two reasons....
by Robert L. Ballard, PhD 2010 Alasdair MacIntyre, a well-known ethicist, wrote: “We all live out narratives in our lives.”[1] If this is true, then each life is a story, with a beginning, an end, and a wide range of characters, plot changes, and climaxes that enrich...
By Beth Hall Originally published 2018, updated 2022 The irreducible price of learning is realizing that you do not know. One may go further and point out—as any scientist, or artist, will tell you—that the more you learn, the less you know; but that means that you...
by Kirstin Nelson 2020 As kids we are taught that it’s rude to interrupt others, that we should let people finish speaking or acting before we comment. In many cases this is appropriate, but what can we do when faced with bigotry, racism or other toxic speech? Often,...
by Malaika Parker October 2021 Dear Fellow Black Parents: With the beautiful Uprisings of 2020 there is a newfound awareness of something most Black folks have always been aware of: White Supremacy exists (welcome to the party, y’all are real late). There has been a...
How to Be an Anti-Racist Adoptive Parent by Beth Hall, with Michele Rabkin August 2020 “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It’s ‘anti-racist’….There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist.’” Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist As an adoption...