Interesting Radio Interview

Early on when we decided to adopt internationally, we went through the tedious process of choosing a country. Many factors came in to play in our final decision, but one factor was harder to grapple with than the others. Could we be a successful trans-racial family? In our politically correct world, sometimes I felt guilty for even asking this question of myself. But the truth is race will be an issue for our family. From a parent's point of view the choice was easy, I could love any baby put in my arms. Much the same as Bobby's eighty-something Grandma so eloquently put it...I wouldn't care if she was purple with black and green polka dots, I'd love her anyhow (I heard this story second hand and loved the comment). My larger concern is how would it be for a minority child growing up in our white middle class family? There are many grieving issues that adopted children deal with, was it fair to add to that the race issue?

In the end, we obviously decided that we can do as good a job messing up...uh, I mean raising a Chinese baby as we could any other so we're going for it.

In all seriousness, I do think about these issues a lot and try to figure out how we will be able to instill in her a sense of her Asian identity as well as raise her to be proud to be an American. Living in the South, I'm not so naive to believe that there's no such thing as racism. However, I do feel lucky to live in a city that has racial diversity and opportunities for us to share in these. Another thing that encouraged us in our decision is the large international adoption community that is already established here. We hope to be active in the local FCC chapter once we get Kayla. I think it will be important to her to have friends that share a similar history.

I found a link to this interview Adopted Chinese Children radio talk from the MSN adoption group I lurk on. Take the time to listen to it. It's a very balanced report of the China/America adoption phenomena, the latest on the baby trafficking scandal, as well as how the first adoptees, now in their early teens are doing.