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Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 3378
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - 06:01 pm: | 
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African Adoptions Raise Big Question
By CELEAN JACOBSON
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 11, 2006; 5:12 PM
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Reports that Madonna may have adopted a Malawian child have focused attention on foreign adoptions in Africa _ and raised questions about whether it's in an African child's best interest to be spirited away to the wealthy West.
"Are celebrities doing it for the right reasons and not to make a statement?" asked Pam Wilson of the Johannesburg Child Welfare Society. Comments on talk radio across the region have been even more pointed, with callers accusing the pop-music star of going on a "shopping expedition."
At this time, current legislation in Malawi does not even allow for inter-country adoptions. This would make it illegal for Madonna to take home a child from Malawi, although there are rumors that restrictions were to be waived for her.
The adoption of children from poorer nations _ Cambodia, Ethiopia, Romania _ by rich foreigners has been happening for decades. Angelina Jolie adopted her son, Maddox, from Cambodia and her daughter Zahara from Ethiopia. Mia Farrow, now the mother of 14, began adopting children from poor countries in 1973 with an orphan from the Vietnam War.
Wilson said there would always be a "demand" for children from developing countries.
"There is a shortage of healthy babies in the First World, particularly now when there is no longer such a stigma to being a single parent and there are few babies in the system," she said.
Adoptions of orphans from abroad have been increasing steadily in the United States _ to more than 22,000 in 2004. Russia, China and Guatemala have been the main sources of these children; only a few hundred per year have come from Africa.
By 2010, the U.N. estimates, 18 million African children will have lost a parent to AIDS. Already there are more than 43 million orphans on the world's poorest continent.
In Africa, orphans usually are absorbed into extended families, but AIDS has affected many of the people who might have traditionally provided support. So, many of those millions who have lost parents to AIDS or other causes are cared for by orphanages _ or find themselves living on the streets.
While some may see a great need being left unfilled, international adoptions are not "an easy option," said Jackie Schoeman, executive director of Cotlands, a South African organization that cares for children affected by HIV.
"For us, first prize is to place the kids locally or even regionally. If the only other option is for them to be in a long-term institutional then we would consider international adoption."
Schoeman said there were advantages to international adoptions. Recently one of the children for whom her organization cares was adopted by parents in the U.S. and now can receive medical care unavailable in South Africa.
However, Schoeman and others are concerned about the long-term effects of such a big move on a child, particularly in the development of cultural and individual identities.
"We don't really know enough about what a black child growing up in Finland is going to feel. I don't think it would be an alien culture because they would have grown up exposed to it. But will they have felt better staying at home?" she asked.
At the heart of the matter is the motivation of people wanting to adopt orphans from troubled countries, especially HIV-positive children.
"Sometimes the response is emotional. They just want to help without understanding the long-term implications," Schoeman said.
Some advocacy groups in the United States say Americans seeking to adopt should turn first to children in the U.S. foster care system, but Adam Pertman _ executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute _ says both domestic and overseas adoptions are growing, and should be encouraged.
As for celebrities adopting poor children from Africa, Pertman said there was no reason to be critical or cynical.
"They're doing what more Americas all over the country are doing _ adopting children," he said. "More Americans are adopting from abroad, more are adopting from Africa... They (the celebrities) just happen to be getting the attention."
"Is there a self-serving aspect to it? I don't have any idea," Pertman said. "They didn't do anything fundamentally different from other families. They did a really good thing for a couple of kids."
There is increasing desire among communities to keep vulnerable or orphaned children within them, said Bill Philbrick, manager of the Hope for the Atlanta, Ga.-based African Children Initiative (HACI), a pan-African effort established in 2000 as a partnership between organizations such as CARE, Save the Children UK and World Vision.
To make it easier to care for such children within their own community, said Philbrick, grandparents, extended families or caregivers need help to access AIDS treatments and other medical and health care as well as education and food security.
"International adoptions are not a solution. The answer is supporting the community," he said.
Which is what Eye of the Child, a child rights group in Malawi, has called on Madonna to do. In an open letter to "Madam Madonna" the organization urges her to help fund existing programs in Malawi to help vulnerable children. The group also applauded efforts by her charity, Raising Malawi, which aims to set up an orphan care center.
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National Writer David Crary in New York contributed to this article.
___
On the Net:
Information from a coaltion of groups working for children, http://www.bettercarenetwork
© 2006 The Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/11/AR2006101101326. html |
Renata
Veteran Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1467
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - 06:57 pm: |
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I have mixed thoughts on this....on the one hand, I'm glad that the kids are getting adopted if they have no better care, on the other hand, there's the 'taking them away from their people and raising them white' issue. |
Fortified
Regular Poster
Username: Fortified
Post Number: 353
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - 09:16 pm: |
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Well the way some of these African girls are growing up (rape, abuse, abandonment, wars, famine, disease), they are better off in the West. |
Renata
Veteran Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1469
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, October 11, 2006 - 09:44 pm: |
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SOME....the MAJORITY of African countries don't have all that stuff. |
Fortified
Regular Poster
Username: Fortified
Post Number: 355
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 07:33 am: |
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That's why I wrote "some". |
Renata
Veteran Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 1493
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 01:06 pm: |
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Oh, sorry about that. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6632
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 03:05 pm: |
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Unless there's a distinct possibility the adopting parents will intentionally, willfully harm the child, how at all can you possibly justify denying an ophan parents? |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 955
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, October 12, 2006 - 11:10 pm: |
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Good question..... |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6647
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 - 12:58 pm: |
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Ntfs,
Hey. I'll probably roll with A LOT of the pro-Black spiel. But, Jesus, the kid does not have a frickin' FATHER and MOTHER. To me, the enormity of THAT greatly DWARFS that of racial and cultural differences. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 964
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, October 13, 2006 - 10:03 pm: |
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".....the kid does not have a frickin' FATHER and MOTHER. To me, the enormity of THAT greatly DWARFS that of racial and cultural differences."
I agree. I think the possibility of a child having a mother and father, being placed in a caring and safe environment, overrides the shrill rhetoric of the those who would rather see the child warehoused for the sake of "cultural and racial continuity".
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Yvettep
Veteran Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1352
Registered: 01-2005
Rating:
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 14, 2006 - 12:00 pm: |
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the kid does not have a frickin' FATHER and MOTHER
From what I have read, this is not correct. The child does have a living father.
Besides that, the "point" is not so much "cultural continuity." The point is: Are we to continue to accept private "solutions" for poverty, homelessness, disease, etc that save only a few? Or, (perhaps simultaneously) are we to get serious about tackling the root causes that produce those ills in the first place in rder to save millions?
The point is the same whether we are talking about the African continent or the south side of Chicago. |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6678
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 14, 2006 - 02:01 pm: |
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Yvettep,
I was speaking more generally about multiracial adoption. Not about any one particular case of such.
Still. If a father WILLINGLY gives up his child because he HONESTLY believes that doing so will greatly IMPROVE his child's chances in life, I STILL can't go the Black Power route.
I agree with you that addressing the root problems within our families and communities might lessen the necessity and frequency of cross-cultural adoptions.
But, as I've said before, whether we Black foks as a WHOLE will ever SERIOUSLY attempt to effect such is ANOTHER matter, entirely. |
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 3757
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 14, 2006 - 02:32 pm: |
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ABM, this is why I have said...that our only hope as a "people"....rest on the one of our member that is NOT ALLOWED in our midst---the "blue black" female.
Because she is invisible, at the bottom and DESPISED ON SIGHT by the most of us----the "revolution that will not be televised"----is HER.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
That a NEW, "separate" black KIND are going to rise up out of her sorrow and isolation. And that is our only hope now.
Our REAL mother.
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 6686
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 14, 2006 - 02:39 pm: |
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Kola,
I hope I live long enuff to see her be born...and give birth. |
Kola_boof
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Kola_boof
Post Number: 3761
Registered: 02-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, October 14, 2006 - 03:04 pm: |
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ABM,
When the day comes that you are dust...and your grandchildren realize that you were worthy and that SHOULD exist....
...that is when they will allow her to be born.
This is the great tragedy I keep telling you about Mulattoes as a group. They become so numerous and so white----and then they wish for their "wholeness"---and become monsters longing to regain it.
My Arab father, educated in the South of France and with a bevy of white blonds eager to be his wife---deliberately went to darkest Africa in search of a female with "charcoal" skin.
He told me "chocolate" and "ebony" weren't good enough--it had to be charcoal and it had to be a daughter of Punt (the birthplace of Nubia, Cush and Egypt).
The "love" in their marriage was HIS LOVE for "black" people.
When he chose her---he was choosing that Black people should exist.
As the Ghanians say: "The woman you're with is the woman in you."
And from it came me.
I know what I am saying to you, because my Arab father said it to me---that our only salvation is through the "motherseed". By nature, by design.
100 people is a nation.
And a nation cannot rise above its woman.
If we are Black people, then our Mother is
the black woman. And the blacker the better.
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