Transracial Adoption

History

Transracial adoption has a long and complex history. Poverty, war, oppression, cultural practices, and social taboos have frequently been core explanations for the rise of both domestic and international adoptions. Although world history may have a sparse sprinkling of stories of transracial placements, transracial adoption was not formally practiced on a large scale until after World War II, and those transracial adoptions were primarily international in nature. Despite the common adoption strategy of matching (e.g., religion, race, appearance) used in adoption practice at that time, domestic transracial adoption began to serve as an option for couples looking to adopt during the 1960s.

Domestic Transracial Adoption

The earliest recorded transracial adoption took place in 1948 in Minnesota. Transracial adoptions on a larger scale took place later; some of the earliest cases of domestic transracial adoption placed American Indian children into White families as a result of the Indian Adoption Project that took place between 1958 and 1967. This project was intended to place these children with families from the dominant culture and away from Indian reservations, and it led to 395 American Indian children being placed in what were both domestic and international transracial placements. Criticisms of this practice ensued, resulting in the 1978 passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, which made adoption by non-native Americans very difficult.

To begin to move the large numbers of orphaned African American children out of institutional settings (i.e., orphanages), domestic transracial adoption was instituted, challenging a widespread belief that race-matching was vital to the formation of family bonds. However, the extreme difficulty in placing African American children in adoptive homes prior to transracial adoption led to the designation of African American children available for adoption as meeting the criteria for “special needs” at that time. The Open Door Society, “Operation Brown Baby” in Oregon, Minnesota's Parents to Adopt Minority Children, and the Council on Adoptable Children advocated for transracial placements, and more than 2,500 domestic transracial placements of African American children with Caucasian families took place in 1970. Within a few years, however, criticisms of transracial adoption were levied by prominent adoption advocates. In 1972, the National Association of Black Social Workers predicted poor psychological adjustment and problematic racial identity for transracially adopted children as results of this practice that opponents referred to as “cultural genocide.” In response to their criticisms, the Child Welfare League of America reversed the changes it had made to the adoption standards and supported the perspective that same-race placements were preferable for orphaned children.

...