Transracial Adoption Summary

Humans of all races share about 99% of the same genetic material, but the classification of race is highly subjective. Most anthropologists can agree, however, that four major race classifications exist in the world which then are divided into subgroups, resulting in thousands of diverse ethnic groups. Birthmarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America, elaborates on what aspects make up race and expresses some issues that transracial adoption has had on society after World War II. Sandra Patton, the author and an adoptee herself, interviewed twenty-two adopted individuals, including some from same race families, to not only disclose their life histories but to also define what constructs racial identity and how popular media plays a

Regardless of race, one particular adoption issue that steadily occurred in the past was the need to almost conceal the fact that the parents adopted the child, as if adoption was something to look at negatively but contrastingly, corresponding with social standards of the time, “childlessness was considered deviant” (Patton 34). Perhaps the underlying reason for wanting the child to look like the parent is so that a nonstandard act like adoption appears natural. An example of this occurred during the baby boom after World War II until the late 1960s. Unwed white women and infertile couples that sought to have kids could easily match with a white baby with similar physical characteristics and ethnicity. In this way, it served as a beneficial arrangement for both the parents and the child, making the adopted children seem “as if they had been born into their families” and to mask the “sexual deviance of White unwed mothers and infertile White couples” (Patton 20). Unfortunately, kids of color and even children with health problems and disabilities at the time were “labeled [as] unadoptable” (Patton 40) and less favored among the white middle class, even though they actually cost less to adopt. The interview with Sam Bennett illustrates this dilemma as she reveals that it took longer for her family to

In her ethnography, Patton aims to discuss identity construction and convey ways in which racial identity is socially and culturally fabricated. Though some of the multiracial adoptees questioned can cope with the stereotypes and debatable racial identities they hold, the process by which they have obtained their identities remains unclear and too complex for Patton to plainly lay out, especially because each person has a different personal history and diverse ways of managing racism and racial uncertainty. However, the ethnography did effectively demonstrate many instances of how race can impact adoption and shape character negatively, especially in multiracial families, as she came to the conclusion that a sense of racial identity is problematic for African Americans and other non-whites raised by white families. Patton interviewed twenty-two multiracial adoptees to strengthen her case on the struggles of growing as a person and did emphasize numerous times that race is not inherited but that “identities and families are constructed and maintained through the complex interplay of the role of the state, racism, structural inequality, cultural meaning systems, and personal agency” (170). She also subtly wants readers to consider their own opinions on race, on whether we see non-whites as anything other than respectable