On adoption, race does matter |
The Guardian
2012-12-21
Like Michael Gove, I used to believe a loving family was all. But I’ve heard from too many black adoptees who are struggling with their identity
“My social worker is racist,” said a softly-spoken 10-year-old white boy. “She says I shouldn’t stay with my foster carer because my carer is black.” This child was one of 20 in the care system who told the Lords select committee on adoption legislation about their experiences, during a review of proposed changes to the Adoption and Children Act 2002.
The government, spurred on by the education secretary, Michael Gove (himself adopted as a baby), is determined to ensure “race doesn’t matter” when it comes to finding families for children in care. While Gove’s motives are understandable, the Lords committee, on which I sit, decided this week that his main proposal – the end to the obligation on social workers to give “due consideration” to race, religion and ethnicity when assessing adoptions – should be scrapped.
We would all agree with Gove in principle that race shouldn’t matter – and certainly in the specific case of the young boy in foster care it should not. But for many black and mixed-race children, ethnicity shapes their experience. To imagine it doesn’t is to imagine the earth is flat. I’ve lived that experience and I know it’s real…
…The fact that we were – on the surface – separated by race, nagged me as a child. It fed into other vague feelings around being different and “not belonging”. I was the only mixed race child in my class, both in primary and secondary school, although in those days I was often called, at best, half-caste, at worst, mongrel. But it still wasn’t such a terrible thing. After all, I had a loving, capable parent. And that’s what I want for all Britain’s kids languishing in our care system…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: adoption, Oona King, The Guardian