Remember when adoption was seen as a selfless gesture of love and acceptance?
Well, it still is. Unless you’re a psycho.
A psycho like, say, writer and “Surviving the White Gaze” author Rebecca Carroll, who years after being welcomed into a white family’s home as one of their own, is still dealing with the “enduring trauma” that goes with it:
My memoir Surviving the White Gaze, which came out earlier this year, is not just my story about the enduring trauma of being adopted into a white family, but an excavation of the chillingly foundational dynamic of transracial adoption in America. 1/1
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
Carroll’s examination of the cruelty inherent in white families adopting black children appears to have been triggered even further by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the conservative justices poised to overturn Roe v. Wade when the Supreme Court hands down a decision on Dobbs v. Jackson in the spring. Barrett and her husband, recall, adopted two black Haitian children and are raising them as their own.
Amy Coney Barrett's callous suggestion that birthmothers just gestate children and then give them up for adoption is sadly emblematic of that foundational dynamic. That she is an adoptive mother of two Black children all the more so.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
If her remarks don't awaken you to the potential repercussions of continuing this dynamic without a rigorous interrogation of how transracial adoption works — please reconsider, and spend some time thinking about it.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
If #ColinInBlackAndWhite didn't make you think about the collateral damage of ill-prepared white adoptive parents, the half of which I'm quite sure we didn't even see in this very poignant series — please reconsider, and spend some time thinking about it.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
Amy Coney Barrett in her stance here alone has already damaged the psyches of her Black adoptive children — has already made them feel like their origin stories were transactional, that she saved them from heartless Black vessel.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
Well, Barrett and her family have given those children a life that their birth parents knew they could not provide … which is bad, for some reason?
Barrett is the White Gaze incarnate, but she is not the only form of it — my adoptive white parents are well-intentioned, liberal, educated people. They created what they thought was an idyllic world, but it was through THEIR gaze, which meant a race-less existence.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
The casual nonchalance of this thinking, the sheer staying power of their obtusity, is what I continue to grapple with — which they can either choose to engage with or not. White adoptive parents can CHOOSE to engage with the borderline racist dynamic of transracial adoption.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
If these tweets are anything to go by, Becky’s book must be a hell of a read.
I am not anti-adoption. I have always maintained this. Love is love. I get it. But if there was ever a time to reexamine the longterm repercussions of white parents/people making choices on behalf of Black children who will grow up to be Black adults, it's now.
— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) December 1, 2021
It sounds like Rebecca Carroll is pretty anti-transracial-adoption. The longterm repercussions of white parents adopting black children don’t seem nearly as bad as the longterm repercussions of black children growing up without families to love and care for them. But what do we know?
The last thing we want is orphaned/abandoned black children having parents who love them unconditionally! Quelle horreur! https://t.co/lMpJOLggZE
— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) December 2, 2021
Imagine believing adoption should be segregated and thinking you’re in the right. https://t.co/VSVpBgn9hF
— Liv. (@Olivia_Thiessen) December 3, 2021
Translation: “Love is love” except when it crosses racial lines. Then it becomes “impure”. Just one drop of White love defiles and corrupts a bucket of Black love. https://t.co/wv9jQ2nqxq
— Mike Kilo (@Mike___Kilo) December 5, 2021
https://twitter.com/MamaWuCrew/status/1467597476781867012
You and the Klan should get together and put together a blue ribbon committee to advocate for racially segregated adoption policies. https://t.co/LWdMNUnjRe
— Sarcastic Cupcake (@SarcasticCupcak) December 5, 2021
If you’re obsessed with maintaining the purity of your race and its skin color based based culture, you just might be racist. https://t.co/wv9jQ2F1W0
— Mike Kilo (@Mike___Kilo) December 5, 2021
Psssst … Rebecca. You just might be a racist.
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