“You get funny questions and rude comments right in front of the kids. ... You still have some old-fashioned, closed-minded people. Some believe whites should stay with whites and blacks with blacks. We’re all brothers and sisters in God’s eyes. What’s the big deal?”
- LaDonna Puttere
Here's a happy story published yesterday in Florida's Lake City Reporter about (transracial) family. Stephen and LaDonna Puttere are Caucasian and adopted two African-American boys five years ago. LaDonna Puttere, pictured above with her sons and her niece, wrote a book called My Black and White Family on the joys and challenges of transracial adoption. Do you know the history of interracial, or transracial adoption? This blogger gives a summary, including the following:
According to The Adoption History Project, the first recorded adoption of an African-American child by a white family occurred in Minnesota in 1948. (A Washington state couple later adopted an African-American daughter who had been placed with them as a foster child in 1944.) Americans in the late 1940s and early 1950s also adopted German war orphans and children of U.S. servicemen, some of whom were the children of German mothers and black American soldiers.
Transracial adoption is often a given in international adoption. The growth of African programs, including ones that place orphans from countries such as Ethiopia, increases the number of interracial families in the U.S.
Some people continue to speak out against interracial adoption, citing fears about children losing a vital link to their heritage. But can't parents, regardless of their race or that of their children, teach kids to appreciate their unique ethnicity? Is it better for children to languish in foster care or live as orphans and in poverty than to be welcomed into a loving family?
LaDonna Puttere said, "“I’m proud of our family,” she said. “Automatically, people see mixed families and think they’re unhappy. Our children are happy. We’re happy. I wouldn’t change anything in the world for my family. And who wouldn’t want to look at these two handsome boys?”
Well, you know my opinion about transracial adoption. What's yours?
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