A few days ago I wrote this post on “My Favorite Christmas Special”, and I talked about the CBS special “A Home for the Holidays”.

The show aired last night, and as in years past, I watched it with my family. The show was wonderful as always…it featured heart-warming stories of children who were languishing in foster care and have now been adopted and are thriving in their new homes and families. The artists sang songs, the kids were beautiful… I cried quite a few times. A plea was made for more parents to consider adoption, and I love the message that they sent, that you don’t have to have a perfect home or family, you just have to be willing to open your heart. There was a lot of good!

BUT, I have to say I was disappointed. I was disappointed because none of the families featured were transracial. The show featured two Hispanic children adopted by a Hispanic couple, a Caucasian girl adopted by a Caucasian family, two African-American sisters adopted by an African American couple and a Caucasian teenager adopted by a Caucasian single mom. (If I am forgetting any, please leave me a comment and remind me!) ;)

Now obviously I am not against same-race adoptions…I hope it goes without saying that placing a black child in a black family is ideal. I think it’s great that these families were featured, and I hope that it inspires more African-American and Hispanic families to adopt, because there is a great need for more minority-race families to adopt.

However, since most of the available children in foster care are non-white, and since most adoptive parents in the U.S. today ARE white, I think that the show was doing a disservice by not having any transracial families featured, and only showing parents adopting children that “matched” them. Ideally, the show would have shown all types of families.

I think that there are a lot of families out there that are considering adoption, and I know that there are a lot of people out there who are trying to decide if a transracial adoption is “right” for them or not. I think that by showing some happy, transracial adoptive families on this special, they could have influenced some families to see that transracial adoption can be very successful.

I hope that nobody that was watching this got the message that foster care only wants parents to adopt children that are their same race. A white couple considering adopting a black child from foster care and being discouraged from doing so, whether intentionally or not, is a sad thing in my opinion.

My kids didn’t seem to notice (they were more disappointed that Miley Cyrus didn’t sing…) but it left me feeling disappointed.

I am glad that adoption was celebrated and I am glad that families were celebrated. I am glad that foster children were advocated for. Next year I hope that CBS will acknowledge and celebrate transracial families as well, as there are many, many happy families created by transracial adoption through foster care.

On a different note, for some positive media attention to transracial families, you can read this article about Utah Governor Huntsman and his wife traveling to India to adopt a baby girl. I found the article on the new LDS Adoption blog, which is being written by my dear friend Tana, who has an awesome transracial adoptive family herself.

There is also another great mom of a large transracial family, Wendy, writing the new Haiti adoption blog and Holly is the mom of another great transracial family and is writing the new Africa adoption blog. Check them out, and if you feel so inspired, drop CBS a note about supporting transracial adoptive families next year.