Can I ask a very personal question? Are there no black mothers or Hispanic mothers or Asian mothers capable of caring for and raising a black child in America?

 

Yes, I said it. I’m asking that question so many of us thought when we saw the People magazine cover with Sandra Bullock proudly hoisting a black child in the air.  Well, at least she adopted an American child my Facebook friends declared. Not like Angelina Jolie or Madonna. Can you believe those ladies? A black child from Africa?

 

Once considered “cultural genocide” for the child (think Losing Isaiah), black/white adoptions have since gained acceptance in the white community and have a new found celebrity in actresses like Sandra Bullock and particularly in the film The Blind Side. But does that make it right?

 

“Bullock's case shows, a white celebrity adopting a black child raises questions as well as suspicions. Why do they want a black baby as opposed to a white one, when there are also white kids who are up for adoption?” asks Lola Adesioye on the site Black Voices. “Are they buying in to the idea that poor black children must be saved by altruistic white people? Or in the case of celebrities, is a black child just another accessory or another save-the-world mission that they embark on in between movies?”

 

The white savior claim may be true (or untrue) for celebrities but what about normal people? Like the Tuohy family, the subject of The Blind Side or, more recently, the Hill family of West Dallas recently featured in The Dallas Morning News. The Hills, a white couple, have four white children and are raising two inner city black teen boys (with the consent of their parents).

 

Melissa Hill, or MaMelissa or Lady M, is a sorority sister, raised in a privileged area of Houston and her husband, Trey, was raised in Highland Park. Trey decided to join the ministry and moved the family to West Dallas. He founded the ministry Mercy Street Dallas which is where Melissa first met Darius and Deandre. The brothers previously lived in a crowded apartment with seven other people in West Dallas. Their biological parents have an informal arrangement with the Hills.

 

Melissa writes about her adventures on her blog “A Long Way From the Theta House.”

 

"I feel like I've gotten a greater perspective on what's important in raising my kids. Before, I wanted to shelter them. I'm a real mother hen. Now we have to talk about crack addicts and why we are going to feed them, but we're not going to give them money," Hill told The Dallas Morning News. And, yes, they all have copies of the book The Blind Side.

 

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious in these scenarios. But I feel like I have the authority to do so as I am a child of adoption. My father is Mexican, my mother white. I was born into and raised the first part of my life in a Hispanic neighborhood but was eventually adopted by white parents and raised in a Caucasian household. No quinceñera. No Spanish language skills. No familia in the way Hispanic families have a community of support.

 

I lost something I can’t get back. Yes, I’m glad I was adopted by a decent family but what would life have been like if the people who raised me were Hispanic? If my social workers had tried to place me based on my Mexican heritage and not my white genes? I had three other Mexican foster siblings that were adopted by a Hispanic family. But not my brother and I. We were white by default.

 

But Adesioye writes that African American children are overrepresented in the adoption system (some 32 percent) stay longer in the system, and experience multiple placements and if we don’t like the fact that white people are adopting black children, says Adesioye,  remember, “Black kids are in foster homes because black parents put them there. If we would prefer not to have black children raised by non-black parents, we should do a better job of keeping them out of the foster care system in the first place.”

 

“And, if we black people do feel strongly about this, it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that we help people like Sandra Bullock make sure that their child is well adjusted and supported,” Adesioye concludes.

 

I think the last issue is important.

 

It seems to me the thing these white families are giving their black children is a sense of stability, education, knowledge, love and support. And most importantly, the financial means to access things like private tutors, good schools, access and experience (college, the working world). But isn’t that enough? Isn’t that what’s important. Maybe. But why aren’t other black families doing this? Or Asian families? Or Hispanic families? Why aren’t other mixed families being heralded on the cover of People magazine or in movies?

 

And while we may praise the Tuohys and Hills and Bullock we aren’t acknowledging what these mixed families cannot provide. They cannot give their children culture. They cannot give their children the black experience in the way my parents could never give me the sense of being Mexicana. They cannot give their children family and racial history. They cannot give their children that feeling you get when you sit with your daughter and braid her hair or when your father blares canciones when he picks you up from school. And they cannot overlook the fact that at every family reunion and in ever family portrait someone is always sticking out—I know this from experience!

 

I’m not saying adoption is wrong. Let’s face it. The alternative children face in the foster care system or out on the street or in a crowded West Dallas apartment is much worse, but don’t over credit love and hugs and discount the importance of identity and belonging in the process.

 

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