Adoption, race and disability are all intertwined as part of the kyriarchy. From the mother who loses her child for being an unfit parent due to her disability, the over representation of children of color in the foster care system, despite the fact that rates of abuse and neglect are very close across all races, to what babies are most wanted for adoption, this can’t be ignored.
In my case, my adoption intersects with race and disability in some interesting ways. I’m also greatly uncomfortable with how the US adoption industry is run. That doesn’t mean I think all adoptions are unethical, but the system as a whole is often on morally shaky ground.
You see, my parents got a discount on my adoption for two reasons. The first one was that I am black. Black babies weren’t as popular in 1990, so I was in foster care for a while. The other reason they got a discount was due to the fact that I was supposed to be intellectually challenged, and had a few physical issues. Not being a white, healthy infant lowered my price.
I think this says something interesting about whose bodies we value. We don’t value black bodies or disabled bodies. Thus, in order to encourage potential adoptive parent to look at children like me involved lowering my adoption fees, my cost. This feels wrong. I will say that my parents didn’t put any preference for race on their application and there were only a few disabilities they didn’t feel able to handle.
If you look at country fees for international adoption, the prices are generally lower in countries that have a majority of children of color and older children and sometimes the governments countries lower standards for adoptive parents willing to adopt “special needs” children. On one hand, sometimes a country really is unable to provide the standard of care a child with disabilities needs to thrive, but something feels wrong about saying adopting “special needs” children means you don’t need to be as “good” as the other potential parents. Don’t children with disabilities deserve “good” parents too?
Even in states like Florida, gay parents are considered good enough foster parents for children with medical needs, but not for an average child. Of course, gay parents are just as good or bad as any other parent, but it seems like some people think they are only good enough for “defective” children. This devalues both children with disabilities and gay people.
I’m not sure what the solution is to get more people to consider adopting children with disabilities , but the current situation seems to frame children with disability and children of color as less worthy than other children. It’s a systematic devaluation of certain people and is disturbing. It reinforces ableism and racism in an insidious way.
There has to be an answer that don’t place some bodies in the position of being of less worth than other bodies.
The conflation of race and disability is absolutely striking here and breaks my heart. Beautoful post.
Thank you. The circumstances of my adoption have always made me feel uneasy, but I wasn’t able to really understand the ableist aspect until recently,.
Wow, that’s pretty sad to hear but we all have to admit that there are some things that will never change and the issue of race will always be one of those things. Just wondering though, and you can choose to not give an answer, what was the ethnicity of your adoptive parents?
Of course racism can change. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be so passionate about social justice.
My parents are white and I’m black.