Ok, here is one of the previously promised recent articles on transracial adoption and my feelings and ramblings.

This article was written by Hannah Pool, a woman who was adopted as a young child by white parents from an Eritrean orphanage, however her story could easily be the same if she was adopted from China, Ethiopian Guatemala, etc.

She has a book titled "My Father's Daughter" which I have not read but plan to. This article was written very recently in response to the stories about Madonna in Malawi.

Give it a read and then check out my next post for my thoughts and feelings.

Hannah Pool
Friday October 6, 2006
The Guardian


What is it with celebrities and African babies? They just can't leave them alone. According to reports, Madonna is the latest celebrity to adopt a child from the developing world. If the story is true, the 48-year-old singer has adopted a one-year-old boy from Malawi after a visit to the country. I'm afraid only two words spring to mind: vanity project. Madge wants a baby, so she goes to Africa and "saves" one - that way she gets her baby and scores points for doing a good deed.

I have no problem with philanthropy, or with western guilt, but I am sick of the idea that adoption by white westerners is the best thing for an African child. Adoption is a complex process at the best of times, but when you throw race into the mix the waters get even muddier. The impression given is that by adopting an African child Madonna is somehow "rescuing" him from a life of misery. The implication being that anything is better than growing up in Africa, even having Madonna as a mother.

I was adopted from an orphanage in Eritrea at six months by a white couple. My adoptive mother was Irish Catholic, from New Jersey, and my dad was English. Thankfully, they were academics rather than celebrities. While my father was teaching at the University of Sudan in Khartoum, my mother visited an orphanage in Asmara, the Eritrean capital. Overwhelmed by a desire to help, she left the orphanage with me.

They were told I had no family. This was a lie, a common one, told to make it more likely I'd be adopted. Ten years later, I discovered my father was still alive, and that I had brothers, a sister and countless aunts and uncles. Two years ago, I went back to Eritrea and met my birth father for the first time.

I am what you would call an adoption success story. I love my adoptive family and I have been successfully reunited with my birth family.

When I traced my birth family I came face to face with everything I had missed out on. Of course, unlike my Eritrean family, I have not experienced war or famine and yet I still wish none of it had ever happened: I wish my mother had not died in childbirth, that I had not been put into an orphanage, and that instead of being told I had no family, my adoptive parents had been told the truth.

I realize my life would have been tough had I stayed in Eritrea. I would have been a soldier in the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Assuming I survived the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia (my sister did not), I would have married and had children very young. In comparison, the life I have lived is one of luxury. But no amount of luxury can make up for having lost my family.

It's arrogant to assume the only way to deal with poverty in the developing world is for westerners to adopt a few "lucky" children. Adoption can be a wonderful thing, but when it comes to inter-country adoption it's easy to confuse what the parents want (a nice shiny, new baby) with what's best for the child. Inter-country adoption might seem well-intentioned but when white people from rich countries adopt black children from poor countries it smacks of missionary-like behaviour.

When I went to Eritrea, I visited the orphanage I was adopted from. These days if a westerner comes wanting to adopt, the nuns try to encourage them to help in other ways - funding a group home, for example.

If Madonna is thinking about adoption, no doubt she thinks she's doing the child a favour - but, really, this is all about her. The money she will have spent on the adoption and will spend on the child could have gone to help many more children in Malawi. But then she wouldn't have a cute black child to show off.

Continued...