0 comment Thursday, July 24, 2014 | admin
It seems the liberals have belatedly discovered that race does matter.
On a recent thread here, the subject of interracial adoptions came up, and coincidentally, foreign, interracial adoptions are in the spotlight. And as usual, whitey is the guilty party in any problems associated with this practice:
Halted foreign adoptions leave would-be parents in limbo
...Guatemala announced this month that it would conduct a case-by-case review of every pending foreign adoption case. That put on hold the adoption plans of about 2,000 American families.
The crackdown comes amid reports that some in Guatemala coerce mothers to relinquish their children for adoption -- or steal the children outright and present them as orphans.
Similar accusations have arisen in Vietnam.
After the United States accused adoption agencies there of corruption and baby-selling, Vietnam said in April that it would no longer allow adoptions to the United States.
"My husband and I were absolutely devastated," Teresinski said. "Adoptive parents have put a lot of emotional energy and a lot of financial resources in the process."
Vietnam's decision affects several hundred families.
Families in the United States adopted 4,728 children from Guatemala and 828 from Vietnam last year.
The halt in adoptions from those two nations unfolds against the backdrop of a dramatic rise in international adoptions in the United States.
The number of foreign-born children adopted by U.S. families more than tripled from 1990 to 2004, when it reached a high of 22,884, though the figure has declined slightly each year since.
In 2007, the U.S. granted visas to 19,613 children so they could join an adoptive family in the United States, according to U.S. State Department figures. About 70 percent of those children came from four countries: China, Guatemala, Russia and Ethiopia.''
I live in a (to date) non-diverse small town. Foreign adoptions, mostly from the countries mentioned above, seem to be quite the trend among the conspicuously altruistic. Adopting a child from a Third World country is the thing to do in certain sets, and the more exotic, the better.
It seems there is little consideration given to the question of how the children will adapt, or fit in, and how they will identify among a group of people unlike themselves.
And then there's the matter of how the demographics of a small town will be affected by growing numbers of people of different races. Will there be conflicts as they reach adulthood, or will the kumbaya spirit prevail? Given our trend these days toward ethnic splintering, the presence of many adoptees of various races will only contribute to the confusion and the division.
This news story has to do with the question: Do whites need training before parenting black children?
NEW YORK (AP) -- Several leading child welfare groups Tuesday urged an overhaul of federal laws dealing with transracial adoption, arguing that black children in foster care are ill-served by a "colorblind" approach meant to encourage their adoption by white families.
[...]
Of the black children adopted out of foster care, about 20 percent are adopted by white families. The Donaldson report said current federal law, by stressing color blindness, deters child welfare agencies from assessing families' readiness to adopt transracially or preparing them for the distinctive challenges they might face.
"There is a higher rate of problems in minority foster children adopted transracially than in-race," said the report. "All children deserve to be raised in families that respect their cultural heritage."
For once, I actually agree with the 'experts' in the article, although I suspect my reasons are different. It is not that inept, clueless Whitey is too innately racist and insensitive to properly 'respect the cultural heritage' of any black or other non-white children they adopt or foster. It's simply that people are not interchangeable, and babies and children probably fare best with people like themselves, ideally.
Children in cross-racial adoptions tend to have identity issues, and those who are biracial have further problems, as witness this adoptee's account.
Because I felt that I did not belong to any group, my confidence eroded. I was ashamed and embarrassed when people discussed race or when they wanted to know about my family. I was confused because I did not understand my biracial background and did not have the support of my natural parents to help me understand my heritage. Instead of believing in myself, my abilities and my intelligence, as I had in high school, I became withdrawn. I did not readily participate in class or take part in extra-curricular activities because of my insecurity and confusion about my racial identity. Although I learned that we simply do not live in a "color blind" world, I felt that I had no one to turn to in order to help me understand what it meant to be an African-American man in our society.''
This webpage gives a history of transracial adoptions in America. Interestingly, blacks have been opposed in many cases to whites adopting blacks:
The debate about transracial adoption changed course in 1972, when the National Association of Black Social Workers issued a statement that took "a vehement stand against the placements of black children in white homes for any reason," calling transracial adoption "unnatural," "artificial," "unnecessary," and proof that African-Americans continued to be assigned to "chattel status." The organization was so committed to the position that black children�s healthy development depended on having black parents that its President, Cenie J. Williams, argued that temporary foster and even institutional placements were preferable to adoption by white families. This opposition slowed black-white adoptions to a trickle. In 1973, the Child Welfare League of America adoption standards, which had been revised in 1968 to make them slightly friendlier to transracial adoption, were rewritten to clarify that same-race placements were always better. The child welfare establishment never supported transracial adoptions.
A number of new agencies, staffed almost entirely by African Americans, such as Homes for Black Children in Detroit and Harlem-Dowling Children�s Service in New York, renewed the effort that had started in the late 1940s and 1950s to find black homes for black children. In spite of successful efforts to boost the numbers of black adoptive families, objections to whites adopting African-American children were never translated into law. Minority group rights to children were legally enforceable only in the case of Native American children, and only after the 1978 passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Since 1972, the numbers of black-white adoptions have declined, but this may have as much to do with stubborn private preferences and prejudices among white adopters as with organized opposition or public policies that created new barriers to transracial placements.''
This piece depicts the popular celebrity trend of adopting Third World children as just another manifestation of -- as usual, racism. And colonialism.
The white Madonna's burden
In the May issue of Vanity Fair, there was a telling exchange between its cover star Madonna �- resplendent in leotard and black knee�length boots �- and her interviewer, Rich Cohen.
They were talking about David Banda, the child adopted by Madonna in Malawi in 2006. Understandably, Madonna is gushing about her adopted son and everything that he "represents". And what is that, exactly? Cohen explains: baby David is a "living totem of life as it was lived before machines".
In other words, he�s a simple, wide�eyed, primitive being who helps to remind Madonna about what is really important in life as she jets from one photo�shoot and session recording to another. Cohen compares David to Pocahontas, "the beautiful Indian girl found in wild America", and says that for "bringing this boy into her house and giving him everything", Madonna has got "something in return": a child who symbolises a wilder, more earthy, gritty way of life, who comes from a time "before machines".
[...]
Madonna does not only want her own little black baby to remind her of the simplicity of life -� she also seems keen to save the whole of Africa. As one British commentator put it, she is treating the entire continent as "a little orphan that needs adopting".
[...]
There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna�s attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man�s Burden -� now we have the White Madonna�s Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug -� or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering.
[...]
There is something Kiplingesque in this celebrity swarming of Africa. Kipling branded colonial subjects on the dark continent as "half�devil and half�child" �- and today that old poisonous prejudice finds expression in the celebrity view of Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that must be punished (Sudan). Africans once resisted the armies of colonialism; now they should consider resisting the armies of celebrities, camera crews, make-up artists and hairstylists who are seeking to turn Africa into a stage for celebrity expressions of cheap moral bombast.''
It's incredible but predictable that the liberals and leftists cannot or will not see the condescension and paternalism in their racial do-gooding, their conspicuous trans-racial altruism.
Madonna is in all respects a quintessential liberal, as are the other 'diversity'-obsessed celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Bono, Bob Geldof, and all the rest. In no way are they connected to Kipling or colonialism or 'racism', unless you are honest enough to call the liberal racial meddling pro-minority racism of a sort, which it could be seen to be.
Implicit in their constant bleating about poor Darfur or the downtrodden wretched of the earth, who are forever in need of our help, is the idea that these people are indeed perpetual children, who have not reached an adult stage of development. Adulthood is characterized by independence and self-sufficiency.
Kipling's terminology which the writer sanctimoniously calls 'that old poisonous prejudice' simply expressed, with no sentimentality and cloying condescension, what most liberals actually, deep down, think about the Third World peoples.
Clearly, liberal westerners, whites, believe that the other races are incapable of taking care of themselves, hence they are in need of constant infusions of money and other aid from us in order to survive. And if we decline to intervene and make things all right for these benighted people, we are guilty of racism, genocide, or whatever term of opprobrium they deem useful to instill guilt.
If liberals, for a moment, believed the Third Worlders to be our equals, they would surely be content to leave them to their own devices -- wouldn't they? Obviously they view non-whites as children in need of a handout, not a hand up, in need of our supervision and assistance in everything.
Instead of admitting this upfront, they ascribe this attitude to the realists, who will say openly that the races are not equal in capacity for self-sufficiency. We all agree on that; it's just that those of us who say it frankly are condemned as 'racists' or 'bigots' or 'colonialists.' Well, if we must be permanently involved in the affairs of the Third World, why not just re-institute colonial rule?
And as for the attitudes of Madonna and her celebrity friends being 'Kiplingesque', that's an undeserved compliment, not an insult, as the writer intends it to be. If only Madonna and the other Hollywood do-gooding dilettantes were Kiplingesque. If only our leaders were Kiplingesque. Kipling was a man with good sense about people and their differences, a quality we seem to have lost beyond recovery in our day.
...This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf --
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
On a recent thread here, the subject of interracial adoptions came up, and coincidentally, foreign, interracial adoptions are in the spotlight. And as usual, whitey is the guilty party in any problems associated with this practice:
Halted foreign adoptions leave would-be parents in limbo
...Guatemala announced this month that it would conduct a case-by-case review of every pending foreign adoption case. That put on hold the adoption plans of about 2,000 American families.
The crackdown comes amid reports that some in Guatemala coerce mothers to relinquish their children for adoption -- or steal the children outright and present them as orphans.
Similar accusations have arisen in Vietnam.
After the United States accused adoption agencies there of corruption and baby-selling, Vietnam said in April that it would no longer allow adoptions to the United States.
"My husband and I were absolutely devastated," Teresinski said. "Adoptive parents have put a lot of emotional energy and a lot of financial resources in the process."
Vietnam's decision affects several hundred families.
Families in the United States adopted 4,728 children from Guatemala and 828 from Vietnam last year.
The halt in adoptions from those two nations unfolds against the backdrop of a dramatic rise in international adoptions in the United States.
The number of foreign-born children adopted by U.S. families more than tripled from 1990 to 2004, when it reached a high of 22,884, though the figure has declined slightly each year since.
In 2007, the U.S. granted visas to 19,613 children so they could join an adoptive family in the United States, according to U.S. State Department figures. About 70 percent of those children came from four countries: China, Guatemala, Russia and Ethiopia.''
I live in a (to date) non-diverse small town. Foreign adoptions, mostly from the countries mentioned above, seem to be quite the trend among the conspicuously altruistic. Adopting a child from a Third World country is the thing to do in certain sets, and the more exotic, the better.
It seems there is little consideration given to the question of how the children will adapt, or fit in, and how they will identify among a group of people unlike themselves.
And then there's the matter of how the demographics of a small town will be affected by growing numbers of people of different races. Will there be conflicts as they reach adulthood, or will the kumbaya spirit prevail? Given our trend these days toward ethnic splintering, the presence of many adoptees of various races will only contribute to the confusion and the division.
This news story has to do with the question: Do whites need training before parenting black children?
NEW YORK (AP) -- Several leading child welfare groups Tuesday urged an overhaul of federal laws dealing with transracial adoption, arguing that black children in foster care are ill-served by a "colorblind" approach meant to encourage their adoption by white families.
[...]
Of the black children adopted out of foster care, about 20 percent are adopted by white families. The Donaldson report said current federal law, by stressing color blindness, deters child welfare agencies from assessing families' readiness to adopt transracially or preparing them for the distinctive challenges they might face.
"There is a higher rate of problems in minority foster children adopted transracially than in-race," said the report. "All children deserve to be raised in families that respect their cultural heritage."
For once, I actually agree with the 'experts' in the article, although I suspect my reasons are different. It is not that inept, clueless Whitey is too innately racist and insensitive to properly 'respect the cultural heritage' of any black or other non-white children they adopt or foster. It's simply that people are not interchangeable, and babies and children probably fare best with people like themselves, ideally.
Children in cross-racial adoptions tend to have identity issues, and those who are biracial have further problems, as witness this adoptee's account.
Because I felt that I did not belong to any group, my confidence eroded. I was ashamed and embarrassed when people discussed race or when they wanted to know about my family. I was confused because I did not understand my biracial background and did not have the support of my natural parents to help me understand my heritage. Instead of believing in myself, my abilities and my intelligence, as I had in high school, I became withdrawn. I did not readily participate in class or take part in extra-curricular activities because of my insecurity and confusion about my racial identity. Although I learned that we simply do not live in a "color blind" world, I felt that I had no one to turn to in order to help me understand what it meant to be an African-American man in our society.''
This webpage gives a history of transracial adoptions in America. Interestingly, blacks have been opposed in many cases to whites adopting blacks:
The debate about transracial adoption changed course in 1972, when the National Association of Black Social Workers issued a statement that took "a vehement stand against the placements of black children in white homes for any reason," calling transracial adoption "unnatural," "artificial," "unnecessary," and proof that African-Americans continued to be assigned to "chattel status." The organization was so committed to the position that black children�s healthy development depended on having black parents that its President, Cenie J. Williams, argued that temporary foster and even institutional placements were preferable to adoption by white families. This opposition slowed black-white adoptions to a trickle. In 1973, the Child Welfare League of America adoption standards, which had been revised in 1968 to make them slightly friendlier to transracial adoption, were rewritten to clarify that same-race placements were always better. The child welfare establishment never supported transracial adoptions.
A number of new agencies, staffed almost entirely by African Americans, such as Homes for Black Children in Detroit and Harlem-Dowling Children�s Service in New York, renewed the effort that had started in the late 1940s and 1950s to find black homes for black children. In spite of successful efforts to boost the numbers of black adoptive families, objections to whites adopting African-American children were never translated into law. Minority group rights to children were legally enforceable only in the case of Native American children, and only after the 1978 passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act.
Since 1972, the numbers of black-white adoptions have declined, but this may have as much to do with stubborn private preferences and prejudices among white adopters as with organized opposition or public policies that created new barriers to transracial placements.''
This piece depicts the popular celebrity trend of adopting Third World children as just another manifestation of -- as usual, racism. And colonialism.
The white Madonna's burden
In the May issue of Vanity Fair, there was a telling exchange between its cover star Madonna �- resplendent in leotard and black knee�length boots �- and her interviewer, Rich Cohen.
They were talking about David Banda, the child adopted by Madonna in Malawi in 2006. Understandably, Madonna is gushing about her adopted son and everything that he "represents". And what is that, exactly? Cohen explains: baby David is a "living totem of life as it was lived before machines".
In other words, he�s a simple, wide�eyed, primitive being who helps to remind Madonna about what is really important in life as she jets from one photo�shoot and session recording to another. Cohen compares David to Pocahontas, "the beautiful Indian girl found in wild America", and says that for "bringing this boy into her house and giving him everything", Madonna has got "something in return": a child who symbolises a wilder, more earthy, gritty way of life, who comes from a time "before machines".
[...]
Madonna does not only want her own little black baby to remind her of the simplicity of life -� she also seems keen to save the whole of Africa. As one British commentator put it, she is treating the entire continent as "a little orphan that needs adopting".
[...]
There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna�s attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man�s Burden -� now we have the White Madonna�s Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug -� or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering.
[...]
There is something Kiplingesque in this celebrity swarming of Africa. Kipling branded colonial subjects on the dark continent as "half�devil and half�child" �- and today that old poisonous prejudice finds expression in the celebrity view of Africa as a child that must be adopted (Malawi) or as a devil that must be punished (Sudan). Africans once resisted the armies of colonialism; now they should consider resisting the armies of celebrities, camera crews, make-up artists and hairstylists who are seeking to turn Africa into a stage for celebrity expressions of cheap moral bombast.''
It's incredible but predictable that the liberals and leftists cannot or will not see the condescension and paternalism in their racial do-gooding, their conspicuous trans-racial altruism.
Madonna is in all respects a quintessential liberal, as are the other 'diversity'-obsessed celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Bono, Bob Geldof, and all the rest. In no way are they connected to Kipling or colonialism or 'racism', unless you are honest enough to call the liberal racial meddling pro-minority racism of a sort, which it could be seen to be.
Implicit in their constant bleating about poor Darfur or the downtrodden wretched of the earth, who are forever in need of our help, is the idea that these people are indeed perpetual children, who have not reached an adult stage of development. Adulthood is characterized by independence and self-sufficiency.
Kipling's terminology which the writer sanctimoniously calls 'that old poisonous prejudice' simply expressed, with no sentimentality and cloying condescension, what most liberals actually, deep down, think about the Third World peoples.
Clearly, liberal westerners, whites, believe that the other races are incapable of taking care of themselves, hence they are in need of constant infusions of money and other aid from us in order to survive. And if we decline to intervene and make things all right for these benighted people, we are guilty of racism, genocide, or whatever term of opprobrium they deem useful to instill guilt.
If liberals, for a moment, believed the Third Worlders to be our equals, they would surely be content to leave them to their own devices -- wouldn't they? Obviously they view non-whites as children in need of a handout, not a hand up, in need of our supervision and assistance in everything.
Instead of admitting this upfront, they ascribe this attitude to the realists, who will say openly that the races are not equal in capacity for self-sufficiency. We all agree on that; it's just that those of us who say it frankly are condemned as 'racists' or 'bigots' or 'colonialists.' Well, if we must be permanently involved in the affairs of the Third World, why not just re-institute colonial rule?
And as for the attitudes of Madonna and her celebrity friends being 'Kiplingesque', that's an undeserved compliment, not an insult, as the writer intends it to be. If only Madonna and the other Hollywood do-gooding dilettantes were Kiplingesque. If only our leaders were Kiplingesque. Kipling was a man with good sense about people and their differences, a quality we seem to have lost beyond recovery in our day.
...This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf --
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Labels: Ethnic Identity, Liberalism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Racial Guilt, Third World