Column: Make practical decisions about transnational adoptions

By ChaToyya Sewell

Published Feb. 5, 2010

Conversations surrounding transnational and transracial adoption are always fraught with assumptions, opinions and controversy.

Add to that discourse a natural disaster affecting a country that is often viewed in America as a poor little secret: Haiti. In the wake of those now infamous earthquakes, the paternalistic lens we have viewed Haiti through has found a new target: children.

After the arrest of 10 American Christians accused of trafficking, many fears for national sovereignty were incited in Haiti. The Americans were detained at the Dominican border while trying to pass through with 33 Haitian "orphans." However, officials claim some of these children were not really orphans. With fears of trafficked children, Haiti has stalled the process for adoptions, only finishing those that were in the process before the earthquake.

Do I think these 10 Americans were in Haiti with the express mission to traffic children? Probably not.

Do I think they were operating under the "white man's burden" banner U.S. hegemony taught us to fly? That is to say, do I think in their fight to save the children they acted prematurely and could have caused more harm than good? Definitely.

Recently, because of massive abuses on the part of international adoption agencies, countries, such as Guatemala, have banned international adoptions. These adoptions were made intra-national amid accusations of missing documents proving the children had no living relatives.

In Haiti, I'd like to avoid this neo-colonial way of thinking. This ideology that children (particularly minority children from the developing world) are somehow better off with us because we're Western, advanced and so entitled.

It is not easy to raise a child who is a different race than you, not impossible have you, but not easy. Nor is it advisable to decide to adopt a child during the myriad of emotions that occur while images from a travesty are being constantly displayed on our screens.

Examples abound of how wrong these impulses can end up. There are tales of Bosnian children being "returned" like an ugly sweater after they realized three years of war could have profound psychological affects on children.

Anita Tedaldi found 15 minutes of fame when she wrote about giving up her adopted 2-year-old African son. Tedaldi's decision was ill-planned to begin with. She had five children already and a husband serving in the armed forces overseas; she was not equipped to deal with the stress of not only a baby, but also one with abandonment issues.

Who suffers in all of this? Surely not Tedaldi with her New York Times articles, but the children.

These themes of isolation of transracial adoptees who are raised in homes that disconnect them from their racial/national identity and of the repudiation of children who cannot be cared for after adoption have lasting effects.

These effects have caused the Adoptees of Color Roundtable, a coalition of international adoptees, to come out in favor of slowing Haitian adoptions rather than fast-tracking them.

Before the accusations of my "let the children rot" bias appear, let me say this: I am not against international, interracial adoptions.

I simply believe the issues are complicated and require quite a bit of forethought and planning on the part of the potential adoptive parents. And if as an adoptive parent you do not want to do any forethought or planning, maybe you should not be an adoptive parent.

Because poor adoptions are not to be disposed of with a sweep of your pen, the American Christians in Haiti had 33 children with them at the time of their arrest, and isn't that who we're supposed to be here for in the first place?