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For weeks now we've been talking about whether Madonna should be allowed to adopt a Malawian child — and discreetly ignoring the adoption scandal here, right in front of us.
In Britain, thousands of black children are being left unloved in our atrocious care system when there are parents outside who desperately want them. The parents have one “flaw” — they are white.
We have a system of racial segregation in our adoption system that would be illegal in any other area of British life. Adoption agencies have ruled that ethnic minority children must be placed with parents who “understand their culture”, and if no such parents are available, it's better to keep them in care. As a result, while 93 per cent of white kids are adopted within three years, only 73 per cent of black children are. The kids left behind are scarred: children in care are far more likely to go to prison than to university.
A child's skin pigmentation does not mark them out as belonging to a different “culture”. This is BNP logic — applied by people in the adoption agencies who believe they are being liberal and caring. In reality we are all part of one complex culture and our rainbow of skin colours should make no difference.
Yet the adoption agencies claim that black children raised by loving white parents will be “confused”. Barack Obama was raised primarily by his white grandparents. Is he confused? Brian Belo, the sweet, gentle winner of Big Brother in 2007, was raised by loving white adoptive parents. Is he confused?
Back in 1996, Bill Clinton banned the delaying of adoptions in order to racially profile parents. It should not be beyond the British adoption agencies to do the same. I believe this logic applies internationally, too. I have been thinking about adopting a child for a long time, especially after I stumbled across an orphanage in the Congo when reporting on the war there.
Hundreds of tiny, scarred children with distended bellies waddled around alone and traumatised. The lone woman who ran the orphanage told me she was delighted to have been able to construct a new building. I congratulated her — until she told me it was their morgue.
Does anybody think those children are better off left there to die than with loving parents — in Britain or anywhere else — who happen to have a different skin colour? Of course adoption needs to be tightly regulated but carving up the world's children according to “race” and nationality and saying they have to stick to their own kind isn't progress: it's a nasty form of regression.
In Britain we have come a long way in opening up the adoption system in the past few years. Gay parents are now accepted as offering loving, accepting homes, as we should be. Yet we still allow a set of adoption guidelines that could have been drafted by Hendrik Verwoerd, the founder of apartheid. It is time our adoption agencies discovered their Nelson Mandela.
Maureen's tiny triumph
I have a dilemma. Every time one of the gorgeous, perfect little musicals from the tiny Menier Chocolate Factory transfers to the West End, I wonder — should I see it again? The startling thing about the Chocolate Factory is that you can see every flicker of emotion on the performers' faces: you are virtually sitting on their laps. It means they can make musicals more subtle, more still, less showy — perfect for the complex works of Stephen Sondheim like A Little Night Music. But can it transfer to a big stage? At the Menier, seeing Maureen Lipman perform a three-minute song while sitting perfectly still in a wheelchair is magical; from three miles back in the gods I'm worried it will it simply look static and blank.
On the buses, Jade's still with us
I must stop eavesdropping on other Londoners' conversations on the bus. On Tuesday, I heard two women confidently jabbering that Jade Goody's illness was “just a publicity stunt” and “all for the money”. I leaned over and said, as politely
as I could, “You do realise she's dead and buried?” One woman tutted; the other said, “That's what they want us to think.” Perhaps they think she will rise like Lazarus next week to claim a £500,000 back-from-the-dead Hello! magazine splash. Don't eavesdrop on buses; it'll addle your brain.
Reader views (6)
Interesting article, here i sit as an aproved black adopter being told there are no black / dual heritiage children to be placed with me in the entirity of the west midlands, in which i am on a national database, contacting various agencies with no luck todate...... waiting waiting waiting.......
- Jane, West Midlands, 20/06/2009 17:28
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'Yet the adoption agencies claim that black children raised by loving white parents will be “confused”. Barack Obama was raised primarily by his white grandparents. Is he confused?'
If you'd read either volume of Obama's autobiography you would know that he was indeed very confused. He failed to win an election in Chicago because he was not 'black enough'.
- Richard, London, England, 13/04/2009 17:58
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Good story but same old politically correct title, poor black people blah blah blah. This story highlights that children from ALL ethnic backgrounds could be prevented from being adopted, not just the black kids. What about Indian, Chinese, Polish etc, they indeed fall into the same problem, even white children if the adoptive prospects are not white. Good story but title only highlights one aspect of the problem, not the whole problem.
- Brandon Thomas, SW7, London UK, 12/04/2009 16:00
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Very interesting. But a note of warning to all white future adopting parents. That child will need to be shown its true identity, it cannot remain hidden and if positive images are not shown then this child will have no confidence and no self esteem, for the child will not know themselves. Let the highest of high bless all those who offer shelter warmth and care to a child in need, but let those who give assistance to the mother to take care of her own child be regarded in the highest light. For the perfect harmonious balance is captured only in the bond between mother and child.
- Angel & Get Real! & Bwde, London, Lewisham, Southwark, Lambeth, 10/04/2009 13:31
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Johann is spot on. The adoption apartheid is a cruel hang-over from the narrow minded politically correct era of the 1980s. It is high time the government stepped in to liberate these poor black and brown kids from the Child-Catcher social services and give them decent homes with parents of any colour.
- Thomas, London, 09/04/2009 21:04
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I worked for Wandsworth Borough's adoption and fostering unit back between 1989 and 1993, and the same same-race criteria was in place then. I seem to remember that most of those calling who were thinking of adopting were white and were looking for white children, actually, white babies. Wandsworth did not even process such applications, as there were so few white babies needing homes, that these applications went to a national adoption centre.
- Terence Baker, Brooklyn, USA, 09/04/2009 17:29
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