Discouraging Racial Preferences in Adoptions
Discouraging Racial Preferences in Adoptions Solangel Maldonado* More than 20,000 white Americans go abroad each year to adopt children from other countries, the majority of whom are not white. At the same time, there are more African American children available for adoption than there are African American families seeking to adopt them. While Americans claim there are few healthy infants available for adoption in the United States, hundreds of African American newborns each year are placed with white families in Canada and other countries. Tracing the history of transracial adoption in the United States, this Article argues that one reason why Americans go abroad to adopt is race. The racial hierarchy in the adoption market places white children at the top, African American children at the bottom, and children of other races in between, thereby rendering Asian or Latin American children more desirable to adoptive parents than African American children. Drawing on the rich literature on cognitive bias, this Article debunks the myths about domestic and international adoptions and shows that racial preferences, even if unconscious, play a role in many Americans’ decisions to adopt internationally. This Article proposes that the law discourage adoptions based on racial preferences by requiring that Americans seeking to adopt internationally, while there are available children in the United States who meet their non-race-based criteria, show non-race-based reasons for going abroad. * Associate Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law. J.D. 1996, Columbia Law School. I am grateful to Michelle Adams, Mark Alexander, Ruby Andrew, Carlos Bellido, Carl Coleman, Kevin Kelly, Jason Gardner, Timothy Glynn, Tristin Green, Rachel Godsil, Charlie Sullivan, the participants in the 12th International Society of Family Law Conference in Salt Lake City, the participants in the Second National POC in Washington, D.C., and the participants in the LatCrit X Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for their helpful comments.
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