Why Adoptee Professionals and Experts Don’t Want You to Forget About Amy Coney Barrett After the Election
As we enter National Adoption Month, we find ourselves facing historic and disconcerting events in society. The global pandemic of COVID-19, the divisive presidential election, and the political fall out and fear position BIPOC as targets and victims of these events. As members of SAPCA, we are clinicians, psychologists, social workers, and researchers, who understand the effects of racist narratives and policies on transracial adoptees.
The newly appointed Supreme Court Justice, Amy Coney Barrett, like many transracial adoptive parents of Black children, acknowledges racism exists. “I think it is an entirely uncontroversial and obvious statement, given, as we just talked about the George Floyd video, that racism persists in our country,” Barrett said in the second day of her nomination hearings. Like many transracial adoptive parents though, Barrett does not seem to fully grasp how her misunderstanding of racism, lack of advocacy, and problematic positioning of her Black children upholds the same racist systems that she worries will one day brutalize them.
Most U.S. Americans will view Barrett’s transracial family as emblematic of multicultural exceptionalism. The cliched narratives from her nomination highlight the continued belief that adoption is a “charitable act” invulnerable to criticism, while erasing the voices and experiences of adoptees themselves. What is the effect of bringing your children into the national spotlight? Perhaps viewers of the Senate hearings saw her adoption of Haitian children as evidence that Barrett is non-racist. Unfortunately, we know both professionally and personally that adoptive parents can enact racism (consciously or unconsciously), while simultaneously loving their children — that is, love and racism are not mutually exclusive. Proximity to people of color is not evidence of non-racism or anti-racism.
As many others have recently noted, Barrett showcased her unconscious racism by referring to her White able-bodied children in terms of their intellectual abilities: Emma has a possible “career in law,” Tess possesses a special “math gene,” and Liam as “smart, strong, and kind.” However, she reduced her Black adopted children to the ways they have “overcome” their trauma. Vivian was described as “weak” and unable to “walk or talk normally” and John Peter is now “happy-go-lucky.” In this contrast, Barrett implicitly advanced narratives that denigrate African Americans as unintelligent, and frame them as needing to be saved.
Adoption supposedly “demonstrated” her “nonracist” beliefs, a common tactic among U.S. Americans, an alternate version of “I have a black friend!” Indeed, Barrett responded to multiple inquiries about her views on white supremacy and racism with the fact that she has raised two Black children adopted from Haiti. But as prolific anti-racist scholar and author Ibram X. Kendi noted on Twitter in response to her nomination, the history of the United States was built on systems that allowed interracial intimacies (e.g. rape, sex, and adoption) while simultaneously supporting the break up of families of color.
We reject the argument that adopting children of color absolves adoptive parents of enacting racist practices and actions. This narrative enables White adoptive parents who have power and privilege to avoid addressing the potential harm caused by their own beliefs, actions, parenting practices, and policy decisions onto BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) adoptees.
As scholars and professionals working in adoption, we know from experience, decades of practice, and countless studies that the narrative about transracial and transnational adoption occurs from the perspective of the adoptive parents, media, and indeed everyone except adult adoptees. The portrayal of Barrett’s family composition by the media and Republicans reflects the common yet problematic imaginations about rescue, saviorism, and gratitude attached to such adoptions. Many American families have adopted children from overseas, reinscribing the savior narrative for themselves and the US, rather than addressing the ways our society has harmed BIPOC children and their families.
Barrett’s own testimony revealed the flaw in believing that adoptive parents of transracially adopted children are nonracist, let alone anti-racist. When questioned about her self-education on racism, she responded, saying “it’s not something that I can say, yes I’ve done research on this and read X, Y and Z.” Similarly, Barrett’s ruling in a 2019 case involving the N-word in the workplace, where she deplored the word but ruled its use does not in and of itself produce a toxic work environment, underscores not only how racism insidiously operates unchecked in society but how it can affect the family environment. Both of these examples are disturbing. As an appellate court judge and as a White parent to Black children, she should have educated herself on systemic racism.
Barrett’s confirmation undoubtedly endangers health care, reproductive justice, and marriage equality. That message is clear for many. But missing from the conversation is how the narrative around her family composition — and so many like hers — and her misunderstanding of racism in the U.S. affect the lives of transracially adopted individuals and the communities to which they were born.
Society of Adoptee Professionals of Color in Adoption (SAPCA)
In alphabetical order: Amanda L. Baden, Ph.D., Susan Branco, Ph.D., Quade French, Ph.D., Holly Grant-Marsney, Ph.D., Tony Hynes, Ph.D. Student, M.A., Hope Kassen, Adam Yoon Jae Kim, Ph.D., JaeRan Kim, Ph.D., MSW, Susan Dusza Guerra Leksander, LMFT, Hollee McGinnis, Ph.D., Kit Myers, Ph.D., Robert O’Connor, MSW, Angela Tucker, Chaitra Wirta-Leiker, Psy.D.
