LilMtnCbn
02-06-2005, 09:04 AM
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-20/110768867960510.xml
Interracial adoption becomes more prevalent due to shortage of black families
Sunday, February 06, 2005
By Ted Roelofs
The Grand Rapids Press
The two cultures intersected in a small meeting room in Ottawa County.
Ken and Sheila Johnson, the white Grandville parents, met the single black
mother from Port Huron. The 29-year-old woman cried inconsolably as she
prepared to give up her infant daughter for adoption.
"I had no idea what to expect," recalled Sheila Johnson, 36.
Johnson wondered what place this baby girl, Cecelia, would take in their home.
Would she feel the same way toward her as their three biological children?
Would color matter?
Her heart gave her the answer soon enough.
"It's the weirdest thing, but she's just my child," Johnson said of Cecelia,
now 2. "I worried that I would have different feelings about her, that it would
be different than the other children. But it's so much the same. There's no
difference."
That may be. But for all her love for Cecelia, she encounters frequent
reminders that race still counts. It dawned on her as she tried to find a
special decoration for their Christmas tree.
"Do you how hard it is to find a black angel ornament?"
It's just one challenge faced by growing numbers of families in West Michigan,
as homes from Grandville to Holland provoke new questions about race and
identity and family.
At Adoption Associates, a Jenison-based private adoption agency, adoptions of
black and mixed race infants by white families jumped by 44 percent from 2001
to 2004, from 32 to 46. That was nearly triple the total of 16 in 1997.
They expect the trend to continue, as the need for homes for black infants
exceeds the supply of black families they can find to take them. The same could
be said for the foster care system. While black children represent less than
one fifth of the 2.6 million children in Michigan, they are five times more
likely than other children to be in foster care, leading to a chronic shortage
of qualified black families to take these children.
Trying to find families
Sara Stahl, a social worker for Adoption Associates, said the agency works hard
to keep black infants within black adoptive families.
"It is our priority to find a same-race family. We have advertised in black
publications. We've tried recruitment, but it just has not worked," she said.
And so they turn to white families, who may be surprised there is little or no
wait to adopt a black infant. They might wait a year for a white infant and
more than a year for an international adoption.
It also costs less. Stahl said they cap the cost of black adoption at $11,600.
The average cost of all domestic adoptions is $15,600 and international
adoptions range from $18,000 to $25,000.
But one advocate of same-race placement questions whether adoption agencies do
all they can to find black families for these infants.
"Agencies have to take a hard look at what they do and what their values are,"
said Toni Oliver, president and CEO of the Georgia-based Roots Adoption Agency,
which focuses on placement of black children in foster care.
Oliver noted that the National Association of Black Social Workers still
advocates placement of black children in black homes.
"What are the agencies doing to recruit black families? What are some of the
barriers that may turn off or screen out potential families?"
Oliver said white families who adopt black children need to ensure those
children get broad exposure to black culture. But she said they also need to
prepare them for racist encounters they will almost certainly face.
Those who don't, she said, "are in for a rude awakening."
For support
To support these families, Adoption Associates is sponsoring an adoption fair
Feb. 12 at Cornerstone University for white foster and adoptive families with
black children.
Stahl said the fair will give adoptive black children and their families a
chance to meet others like them. It also will offer education booths, ethnic
food and multicultural entertainment.
"Our goal is to educate," she said.
The schooling continues for Steve and Carol Sorenson of Park Township, who
turned to adoption more than three years ago after spending $6,000 on fertility
treatments that failed.
They began to check out options at Adoption Associates, where someone spoke out
at a meeting: "We have such a need for people to adopt black children."
Carol, 35, was certain it was the direction they needed to go. Steve, 44,
needed to think about it. They talked it over for several months before making
up their mind.
Not long after, they adopted Noah Jabari, now 3, abandoned by his birth mother
at a Detroit hospital. Then they adopted Samuel Jelani, now 2, when he was 2
weeks old. His Detroit-area mother was 16, and her extended family felt they
couldn't take care of him.
"I think it was just our calling," Carol Sorenson said.
Always an issue
But with that, she admitted she has been reminded many times the issue of race
is never far away.
She and Steve spent weeks trying to find a preschool for Noah with a diverse
mix of children. They finally found one, but then discovered its library had no
books with pictures of children of different races.
"We went out and bought the books ourselves," she said.
They put up artwork celebrating black culture in their home. They also are
trying to cultivate a set of black friends they met through their church to
broaden the contacts their children would have.
"But that's not easy," Steve said. "You can't just go to people and say, 'I
want to be your friend because you are black.'"
Jakki Jones, a 36-year-old black social worker at Spectrum Health Blodgett in
East Grand Rapids, grew up in a place and time where the lines between black
and white were more stark.
"It was a culture shock," is how she describes growing up in the Sparta area of
northern Kent County in the 1970s. As the adopted daughter of Les and Diane
Denhof, she was one of a handful of black children in the entire community. Her
education included stares, taunts and occasional racial epithets.
Reaching out
"It wasn't easy. But I always had a safe place to go where race wasn't an
issue. My mom and dad always told me. 'You are beautiful.' There was never a
negative thing about being black in our home."
But her adoptive parents knew there were some things they couldn't give her.
When she about 5, Jones recalled, they bumped into a black beautician while out
shopping. The woman noticed that Jakki's hair was a frazzled mess, the result
of daily shampoos that might be advisable for white children. Her parents
didn't know the practice can severely damage the hair of black people.
The woman suggested she could use help with her hair -- and the Denhofs soon
made arrangements to take Jones to her Grand Rapids shop for regular
appointments.
It blossomed into a friendship that brought the two families together. It also
introduced Jones to language, food and customs that were a world away from
Sparta.
Decades later, Jones discovered where she came from. Her mother, she learned,
delivered her when she 15. She later died of a drug overdose.
Despite its awkward moments, she wouldn't change a thing about her upbringing.
As for criticism of adoptions like hers, "It makes me mad, because none of them
have lived it.
"I do not see a problem. I think it's a problem if the family does not expose
the child
to any African-American culture."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
Interracial adoption becomes more prevalent due to shortage of black families
Sunday, February 06, 2005
By Ted Roelofs
The Grand Rapids Press
The two cultures intersected in a small meeting room in Ottawa County.
Ken and Sheila Johnson, the white Grandville parents, met the single black
mother from Port Huron. The 29-year-old woman cried inconsolably as she
prepared to give up her infant daughter for adoption.
"I had no idea what to expect," recalled Sheila Johnson, 36.
Johnson wondered what place this baby girl, Cecelia, would take in their home.
Would she feel the same way toward her as their three biological children?
Would color matter?
Her heart gave her the answer soon enough.
"It's the weirdest thing, but she's just my child," Johnson said of Cecelia,
now 2. "I worried that I would have different feelings about her, that it would
be different than the other children. But it's so much the same. There's no
difference."
That may be. But for all her love for Cecelia, she encounters frequent
reminders that race still counts. It dawned on her as she tried to find a
special decoration for their Christmas tree.
"Do you how hard it is to find a black angel ornament?"
It's just one challenge faced by growing numbers of families in West Michigan,
as homes from Grandville to Holland provoke new questions about race and
identity and family.
At Adoption Associates, a Jenison-based private adoption agency, adoptions of
black and mixed race infants by white families jumped by 44 percent from 2001
to 2004, from 32 to 46. That was nearly triple the total of 16 in 1997.
They expect the trend to continue, as the need for homes for black infants
exceeds the supply of black families they can find to take them. The same could
be said for the foster care system. While black children represent less than
one fifth of the 2.6 million children in Michigan, they are five times more
likely than other children to be in foster care, leading to a chronic shortage
of qualified black families to take these children.
Trying to find families
Sara Stahl, a social worker for Adoption Associates, said the agency works hard
to keep black infants within black adoptive families.
"It is our priority to find a same-race family. We have advertised in black
publications. We've tried recruitment, but it just has not worked," she said.
And so they turn to white families, who may be surprised there is little or no
wait to adopt a black infant. They might wait a year for a white infant and
more than a year for an international adoption.
It also costs less. Stahl said they cap the cost of black adoption at $11,600.
The average cost of all domestic adoptions is $15,600 and international
adoptions range from $18,000 to $25,000.
But one advocate of same-race placement questions whether adoption agencies do
all they can to find black families for these infants.
"Agencies have to take a hard look at what they do and what their values are,"
said Toni Oliver, president and CEO of the Georgia-based Roots Adoption Agency,
which focuses on placement of black children in foster care.
Oliver noted that the National Association of Black Social Workers still
advocates placement of black children in black homes.
"What are the agencies doing to recruit black families? What are some of the
barriers that may turn off or screen out potential families?"
Oliver said white families who adopt black children need to ensure those
children get broad exposure to black culture. But she said they also need to
prepare them for racist encounters they will almost certainly face.
Those who don't, she said, "are in for a rude awakening."
For support
To support these families, Adoption Associates is sponsoring an adoption fair
Feb. 12 at Cornerstone University for white foster and adoptive families with
black children.
Stahl said the fair will give adoptive black children and their families a
chance to meet others like them. It also will offer education booths, ethnic
food and multicultural entertainment.
"Our goal is to educate," she said.
The schooling continues for Steve and Carol Sorenson of Park Township, who
turned to adoption more than three years ago after spending $6,000 on fertility
treatments that failed.
They began to check out options at Adoption Associates, where someone spoke out
at a meeting: "We have such a need for people to adopt black children."
Carol, 35, was certain it was the direction they needed to go. Steve, 44,
needed to think about it. They talked it over for several months before making
up their mind.
Not long after, they adopted Noah Jabari, now 3, abandoned by his birth mother
at a Detroit hospital. Then they adopted Samuel Jelani, now 2, when he was 2
weeks old. His Detroit-area mother was 16, and her extended family felt they
couldn't take care of him.
"I think it was just our calling," Carol Sorenson said.
Always an issue
But with that, she admitted she has been reminded many times the issue of race
is never far away.
She and Steve spent weeks trying to find a preschool for Noah with a diverse
mix of children. They finally found one, but then discovered its library had no
books with pictures of children of different races.
"We went out and bought the books ourselves," she said.
They put up artwork celebrating black culture in their home. They also are
trying to cultivate a set of black friends they met through their church to
broaden the contacts their children would have.
"But that's not easy," Steve said. "You can't just go to people and say, 'I
want to be your friend because you are black.'"
Jakki Jones, a 36-year-old black social worker at Spectrum Health Blodgett in
East Grand Rapids, grew up in a place and time where the lines between black
and white were more stark.
"It was a culture shock," is how she describes growing up in the Sparta area of
northern Kent County in the 1970s. As the adopted daughter of Les and Diane
Denhof, she was one of a handful of black children in the entire community. Her
education included stares, taunts and occasional racial epithets.
Reaching out
"It wasn't easy. But I always had a safe place to go where race wasn't an
issue. My mom and dad always told me. 'You are beautiful.' There was never a
negative thing about being black in our home."
But her adoptive parents knew there were some things they couldn't give her.
When she about 5, Jones recalled, they bumped into a black beautician while out
shopping. The woman noticed that Jakki's hair was a frazzled mess, the result
of daily shampoos that might be advisable for white children. Her parents
didn't know the practice can severely damage the hair of black people.
The woman suggested she could use help with her hair -- and the Denhofs soon
made arrangements to take Jones to her Grand Rapids shop for regular
appointments.
It blossomed into a friendship that brought the two families together. It also
introduced Jones to language, food and customs that were a world away from
Sparta.
Decades later, Jones discovered where she came from. Her mother, she learned,
delivered her when she 15. She later died of a drug overdose.
Despite its awkward moments, she wouldn't change a thing about her upbringing.
As for criticism of adoptions like hers, "It makes me mad, because none of them
have lived it.
"I do not see a problem. I think it's a problem if the family does not expose
the child
to any African-American culture."
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
