SugarHouse Mama

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Black Babies: Hollywood's Hottest Accessory?

ABC has a great story on transracial adoption today. It's a spinoff of Anderson Cooper's interview last night with various adoption folk about Madonna's recent Malawi adoption.

For me, I don't really care that many Hollywood stars choose to adopt transracially. It wasn't something that influenced our decision at all. Well, I suppose I did hope that with the recent buzz about Hollywood adoption, it would sort-of make it more mainstream.

Mostly, it's funny that it's getting all this attention that is tied to Angelina Jolie and Madonna. There are TONS of Hollywood folk who have adopted throughout the years.

Anyway, ABC doesn't offer a easy share with blogger, so you'll have to click on over if you want to read the whole article. They bring up some great issues regarding transracial adoption. There are some points that might surprise you - like in looking at the adoption trends, it doesn't appear that Hollywood really impacted the overall adoption trends. African American children still lag far behind white children in American foster-care adoption.

I thought that was interesting.

1 comment:

FullPlateMom said...

I read it. I thought the article was actually fairly balanced. On average, black children do languish in the foster care system longer than white children. I think people are more afraid of the "damaged" older children than they are of the color. At least, that's what I hear when people question me on why we're not adopting another infant.

I just have to say though, it's a little offensive to call a child an "accessory", no matter what color they are. I don't really care, because that kind of thing doesn't really bother me. A few years back, Urban Outfitters put out a t-shirt that said "Adoption is the New Black", meaning it was trendy. People wrote letters, started picketing. It was little over the top, but they were super offended. I can see the "accessory" comment leading to the same outrage.

--Becky