Racial Behavior Harmful To Foster & Adopted Children

If you are a person of a certain age, you may remember a time when foster and adopted children were placed in homes of the same ethnic or racial distinction as the child. It was rare to see a family of color providing refuge to a Caucasian child, or vice versa. In 1994, that all changed.

With the passage of the federal Multi-ethnic Placement Act (MEPA), it became illegal for child welfare agencies to prefer racially, and ethnically matched foster care and adoptive placements for children. In 1996, the Interethnic Adoption Provisions (IEP), further clarified the kinds of discriminatory placement activities that are prohibited.

Due to MEPA-IEP, information about the acts may be found at A Guide to The Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994, it is now commonplace to see families of all races and ethnicities, providing stable homes to abused and neglected children of different origins. Although foster and adoptive parents across the U.S. receive special training for addressing the needs of culturally diverse children, problems do occasionally arise for which there is no clear remedy. Specifically, what are foster/adoptive parents to do when their extended family, neighborhood, area schools, or larger community, refuse to accept the child they have chosen to love and care for? How are these parents to react when these children who have already seen too much pain in their short lives, become the target of discrimination?

The primary challenge is helping foster/adoptive parents to notice that discrimination is occurring. Given the invisible and subtle nature of today’s ethnocentric and racist behavior, it might be easier for foster/adoptive parents to ignore such behavior, or write it off to another cause. Is the teacher being too stern with Deshawn because he misbehaves more frequently than the other children, or is it because he is the only child of color in the rural classroom? Is Sally’s lunch money stolen on a daily basis because she walks through a crime ridden neighborhood to get to school, or is it because she is the only Caucasian child on the block? Is Aunt Tillie just being inappropriate when she imitates little Jesus’ accent at the family picnic, or is she attempting to make him feel self-conscious and inferior? Often these insults and assaults go unchecked far too long because the adults in these situations fail to recognize what is happening, or are at a loss as to how to address it. Meanwhile, traumas that may never heal are inflicted on the psyches of these children who now reside in new, “safe” homes.

Once intent is established, it continues to be a dilemma for foster/adoptive parents to decide what to do next. Will confronting the perpetrators of these acts escalate the problem and make life even harder for the child, or will constant vigilance, and persistent confrontation bring these behaviors under control? Truly, it is a gamble.

To be effective in advocating for foster/adoptive children who are raised outside their cultural origins it is essential that their new family understand that much of the racist and ethnocentric insult levied against these children is “blind spot” behavior on the part of the perpetrators. In other words, they have no idea of their own real intentions and the impact of their behavior. Insight must be evoked before change can occur. Instead of hurtling accusations, foster/adoptive parents will facilitate the needed changes more quickly and completely with well-phrased questions than with righteous indignation.

• Can you explain to me why Deshawn’s behavior is more objectionable than that of his classmates?
• I notice that your son didn’t rob any of the other children in the group that were walking together to school. Why do you suppose he exclusively chooses to rob Sally?
• Are you having difficulty understanding Jesus? Why do you imitate his speech but not that of the other children who are learning to speak with clarity as well?

Granted, these questions may not yield accurate answers, but they will cause others to examine the intentionality behind the behavior, and perhaps, they may even think about the impact of their words and deeds before proceeding along the same vein in the future. It isn’t perfect, but it’s a start, and we have to start somewhere when advocating for children that find themselves in the midst of unwelcoming strangers.