I know that this discussion is about adoption, but I’d like to add my two cents worth about bi-racial children. My husband in Caucasian and I am mixed race. We have twin girls one who looks “completely white” and the other who looks mixed race. I am often stopped and asked whether about my baby sitting service, because I am so loving with “my charges”, the assumption being that I couldn’t possible be the mother of a “white” child.

Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I get a bit PO’d, the important thing to remember is that a child should be loved and wanted whether “natural, adopted, or whether or not they look like the parents.

That’s all I wanted to say.

Thanks!

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22189611-661,00.html

Deborra-lee slams new “White Australia” Sunday Herald
Ellen Connolly
August 05, 2007 12:00am

ACTOR Deborra-lee Furness believes the Federal Government is fostering an anti-adoption culture that thwarts thousands of childless couples from adopting overseas babies.

The wife of Hollywood star Hugh Jackman says she and her celebrity husband would be childless had it not been for her US residency.

Furness has told of the trauma of “red tape and bureaucracy” that forced them to return to the US to adopt Oscar, 7, and Ava, 2.

And she revealed they were present at the births of their children.

Furness wants to meet Prime Minister John Howard to discuss overhauling adoption procedures.

She wants a government body established immediately to take sole responsibility for adoptions.

“We’ve experienced it first-hand — we tried to adopt in Australia and couldn’t because we were overwhelmed by the hurdles and obstacles they put in our way,” Furness said.

But the adoption process in the US took less than a year.

Furness — in Australia while Jackman films the Baz Lurhmann epic Australia — is on a crusade to help the couples with “horror stories” of futile attempts to adopt.

“I’m fortunate,” she says. “I have two beautiful children and that’s why people come to me and say, ‘Deb can you help me?’.

“I tell them it will be long, expensive and may not happen.”

Furness says it is “an outrage and an embarrassment” that Australia ranks last in inter-country adoption throughout the world.

“It breaks my heart to think there are thousands of abandoned children overseas waiting for loving families to take them, but the Government is making it so hard.”

A parliamentary inquiry found in 2005 that the “current system is not working” and that adoption was a low priority for state and federal governments.

It recommended the Federal Government plays a bigger role in the process — to make it quicker and less expensive.

While the Government said it “accepted” most of the inquiry’s recommendations, it did nothing to implement them. Instead, it devised more restrictions — announcing last week legislation to stop same-sex Australian couples adopting a child overseas. The child would not be granted a visa.

Furness is worried the Government’s attitude may be a return of a “White Australia policy”.

“This is a humanitarian issue. Australia has a generous spirit, yet this to me reeks of fear and a lack of generosity,” she says. “You see it with the refugee crisis as well.”

SHE said she was prompted to speak out on the issue when she read of the plight of a Sydney woman whose adopted baby was still in China because the Immigration Department would not grant her a visa.

“When I hear these stories, it breaks my heart. I know what happens to these babies; they end up institutionalised or on the streets,” Furness said.

Denise Calligeros, 45, revealed this week she had been trying for 13 years to adopt but has been rejected for a second time because now she is too old.

The adoption crisis has escalated since 1998 when Australia signed the Hague Convention in respect to the protection of children and adoption.

The agreement resulted in the Federal Attorney-General delegating the administration to state governments. But that stopped voluntary organisations from helping facilitate inter-country adoptions.

As a result, queues have grown into thousands and some states have stopped taking registrations.

Furness says the Department of Community Services in NSW is too busy coping with local issues of child abuse to worry about inter-country adoptions.

“You have children who are abandoned and homeless and you have people desperate to have a child, but because of this bureaucracy and lack of resources they can’t,” she says.

Adoption has become such a long and expensive process for Australian couples that many simply give up.

Some states have fees up to $10,000 to lodge the initial application — and it is non-refundable, even if the couple is unsuccessful.

On top of that there are airfares, visas, medical and processing bills. The total outlay can reach $40,000.

Ricky Brisson, whose program to assist couples to adopt was stopped by the Government three years ago, said: “The costs are becoming more prohibitive and a lot of families are giving up.”

She said it now took about seven years to process an adoption, which meant some couples failed because they grew too old.

“We have thousands of kids waiting for families and thousands of people in Australia looking to adopt them, but we have a system which is useless in delivering a proper service,” she said.

In 2004-05, 410 overseas babies from 25 countries were adopted in Australia — compared with 21,000 in the US.

Furness said the process in the US was quick and inexpensive “and not made impossible like it is here”.

“We are the most blessed people in the world, but I have friends here who are coming up against so many brick walls,” she said.

Oscar was born in LA. His birth mother even lived with Hugh and Deb before he was born – they had an “open adoption.” They were at his birth and it was reported that Hugh even cut the cord. Hugh was filming “Scoop” in London when Ava was born and director Woody Allen gave him time off so they could fly to Texas, so it sounds like it may have been a different arrangement with Ava.

Deb is also Australian – she was a big star in Australia before she met Hugh – they met on a TV show where she was the star and he was co-starring and was right out of drama school. I believe Deb did go to drama school in NYC and lived in LA for a bit – Nicole Kidman was her roommate when Nicole first came to the US.

Since both there children were born in the US, the are American citizens. I assume they hold dual citizenship since I would guess Hugh and Deb registered them in Australia. Hugh and Deb split there time between both the US and Australia – they consider both NYC and Australia their home.

I find this conversation interesting, and pertinent. My spouse and I are a mixed couple (he is Hispanic, I am of African origin), and we are in the process of adoption. We hope to adopt a child of mixed race, or a Hispanic child (which we consider ‘mixed race’ as well, ethnically speaking).

Throughout our extensive research, we have found that race is a HUGE issue in adoption. We will be paying half the fee for a child with ANY African-American blood – that is even a drop. These children are considered ‘hard to place’. For us, this means we create our family more readily, but the system is still shocking.

As for trans-racial adoption, we met with an agency in MA, after letting the owner know what type of child we were looking for. Despite this, she constantly tried to get us to consider full African-American children (perhaps to increase her agency’s numbers, which were paltry). If a white couple had come to her and asked for a white child, somehow I know that she would not have been trying to convince them to adopt an AA child, or even a child of mixed race. White is the standard, and most desirable in this society, and it extends to adoption as well.

The first question a Caucasian work colleague, when I told him that we were adopting, asked was: “Will they let you adopt a white child?” The underlying assumptions behind the question were telling.

My opinion is that people should adopt whichever child they feel they can parent. Consider adoption of a child with special needs; some people are born to do such parenting, others cannot imagine it. What matters in the end is the child. Will an unwanted child be loved in that home? I think that many people want children that look like them, both for the child’s sake and for their own. Some people have racist intentions, but each to his own. This is a free country, after all. The child’s wellbeing is the most important thing to consider.

“Why is it always about white people Sophie??…”

Look, I grew up in the Civil Rights era and came of age in the 60s and 70s. Since before the abolitionist and suffragette movements to the disabled and gay/lesbian/transgender rights, those in power have been asking the disenfranchised “Why do you have such a big chip on your shoulder? You’re asking too much too soon – be patient for when the time is right. What do women want, anyway?”

Before being immediately dismissive, it might be good to check you assumptions. Maybe you think they’re all wrong and you’re all right, but the truth is often somewhere in between.

I know over 40 couples (family, friends, co-workers, acquaintances) who’ve adopted same-race, trans-race, in country, internationally. single/multiple, infants/older, siblings, disabled/AIDS/other special needs.

Aside from the birth mother issue, and the long bureacratic maze of paperwork, there’s a definite hierarchy in adoption choices. Far and away the preference is for healthy blond, blue-eyed white baby boys, then just white baby boys. Lagging behind are (blond, blue-eyed) white baby girls, then white toddlers, older white kids. Then infants of color (black being the last choice after Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans), older kids of color, special needs kids, siblings and God help them if they have more than one ‘undesirable’ trait.

It’s sad that there are still places where multi-racial families are shunned. I hope we see more progress sooner rather than later. Bravo to the Jackmans, Jolie-Pitts, Spielbergs and others who see the child, and not the color of her skin first.

Sophie – understood your comments…and agree with them.

I also thought Oscar was from Australia…go figure…

Black folk (and I’m one of them) don’t adopt much outside of the family, so lily your comment is specious.

There, said my piece.

The most likely reason that they adopted from the US is that there are very few children available for adoption in Australia. From memory, there are only a couple of hundred kids who need adopting in every year. Australia has a very low teen pregnancy rate, a stronger welfare state, and less social concerns about single parenthood …. meaning that there are just few kids available. It’s also very hard to adopt kids from overseas if you are Australian.

Why is it always about white people Sophie??…There is such a double standard…I have never came across black people with an adopted white child…so are they racist too??? How dare you compare people who adopt within their own race like Hitler..Who do you think gives you the right to say something like that…you should have more tact than that to say the least.

Sophie – I’m sorry but what you said comparing people that don’t want to adopt children out of their race to Hitler is a completely disgusting and horrible comment. If you don’t understand why someone would want to adopt a child that looks like them you are completely dense. It isn’t saying that a child of a different race has anything wrong with it, I think its pretty normal to want a child that looks like you. I have heard many comments before from people of different races about white people that adopted from another race, very nasty comments. I don’t think it is easy to raise a child of another race because of how others view it. YOUR COMMENTS DISGUST ME!!