With domestic adoption, you get a form, you fill it out, and there are these boxes: African-American, African-American and Hispanic, and you check the boxes that you're comfortable with. Race is completely open in that regard.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I will say, in open adoption, all these choices you make about race, about the amount of mental illness you can deal with, about special needs and physical maladies, you have to lay all this out there before you know anybody's story.
I've thought about adopting, but I'm a bit paranoid that because I'm gay and disabled I'd be put straight off the list. My mother thinks that I would jump the queue because they like minorities adopting. I have great genes, though, and I would like to pass them on.
I think a lot of people have a problem with the fact that I've adopted an African child, a child who has a different color skin than I do.
I say to everybody, 'Adoption is not for the faint of heart.'
The process of open adoption is not discussed in the way it should be. Everyone I know who has adopted domestically has at least one tragic story. It was important to me to be able to describe those situations.
It's a significant question: should black people only adopt black children, and white people white children?
I come from a family of domestics. I think most African-Americans of my age do. They were trusted by their bosses. I have met so many white people that spent more time with their nannies than they have with their own parents.
The adoption process was not an easy one. The paperwork took nine months. It's a full-time thing!
My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.
I don't have children. I don't know how I would feel if my child brought home a different race boyfriend or girlfriend. I don't think I would have any issue with it. But I have no litmus test for that.