Multiethnic Placemen Cultural Influence

The experience of many African American Transracial Adoptees with America’s racial complexities parallels the narrative above, an internal struggle to understand racial discrimination, solely due to the skin they inhabit. Transracial adoption, the placement of children in families of differing racial and cultural, began in the 1950s to provide shelter to Asian orphans displaced after World War II; it later expanded to include African Americans and Native Americans (Barn 1273). However, adoption of blacks into Caucasian families encountered sharp criticism in the black community. In 1970, The National Association of Black Social Workers argued that the adoption of African Americans by Caucasians promotes “cultural genocide”, seeking to protect black’s racial and cultural identity (Bradley and Hawkins-Leon 434). Despite thereof, Multiethnic

Leading transracial adoption researcher Dr. Elizabeth M. Vonk, along with Ruth Angaran, developed a cultural competence model during a pilot study, defining 3 aspects of cultural competence: racial awareness, multicultural planning, and survival skills. Racial awareness includes understanding the effect of race and ethnicity in society. This is built upon to include, multicultural planning, which mediates socialization of one’s racial identity. The last component is survival skills references the skills necessary to manage racial discrimination in society (Vonk, Massatti 207). While including these aspects, Vonk continues, simplifying its definition as the “transformation of a set of attitudes, knowledge, and skills to the ability to meet a child’s unique racial and cultural needs” (Vonk, Angaran 8); Vonk did not limit her model to transracial adoption, however, she defines cultural competence as necessary for racial socialization, or identity within a specific racial group; this is an important process for biological and adoptive families