Torrefaction

The wait time for China has gotten completely ridiculous, as anyone else waiting knows.  If you're reading this because you're applying for a China adoption right now, PLEASE go read ChinaAdoptTalk for a while before moving forward.  Agencies are telling people the wait is 18-24 months or so; what they mean is people who are in China getting their babies right now have waited for 24 months.  People applying now are going to wait longer than that.

Hub and I have been waiting for 12 months, and we expect to wait another 2 to 4 YEARS from now before we travel.  Fortunately, China has explicitly said that if you adopt another child during the wait interval, it will not jeopardize your China adoption.  So instead of China baby being our first child...we think she should be our second.

So.  I've always wanted to adopt an african-american baby.  I like the idea of being an interracial family (hence China), and this is something I've thought about since long before I got married or started trying to conceive.  But over the years, I started to be unsure whether that's a good idea.  Some years back, the National Association of Black Social Workers famously characterized placement of black children in white families as "cultural genocide" and opposed it in every case.   And the difficulties of being black in america are so far beyond those of being asian, (both of which are so different from the white privelege I've always experienced) I've never been sure I would be able to teach a child to adequately navigate that.

But over the past two years, an interesting thing has happened. Every time I tell one of my white friends I'm adopting a Chinese baby, they praise me for my goodness (which, of course, has nothing to do with it - I just want a baby, damnit, and orphan adoption is my first choice...more on that down below).  When I tell one of my black friends, their reactions range from a polite "oh, really? interesting. Why not a black baby?" to a fairly angry "HUH? why not black?" 

So as we've been considering our options, I've been asking my black friends directly what they would think if we adopted a black baby.  ALL of them have been way beyond encouraging.  Not just "yes, do it," but "I'll help you, they'll have me as a resource, I know you're going to teach them to know their culture, it'll be great."  And "do it right away."  Total strangers at a party last night...WAY beyond encouraging.  There was a black social worker at the party and he said that he places children in interracial situations because children need love, they need to be taught, they need to be raised so they can accomplish things, and racial identity is secondary. 

Over the year I've been waiting for China I've done more research, and it seems like the "cultural genocide" idea is pretty hotly disputed; the NAACP came down on the opposide side of the debate, saying you can't deny a child a family based on his race.  And I've read that a lot of black american children are being adoped by white people in europe and canada, because they don't have enough parents here.  So they're losing their culture and their nation.

So we went and got fresh fingerprints, and I'm filling out paperwork to update our home study, and it's looking like we're going to do this.  By the time we go to China to get our "first" child, we could have a 2-year-old "second" child in tow.

The kicker is that this will be an open adoption, which is scary, scary, scary, but also the only right way to do a non-orphan adoption, in my opinion.  I have a family member who is a birth mother in a closed adoption, and I never, NEVER want to put anyone through anything like that.  I don't want to put anyone through being a birth/first mom in an open adoption, either, because from what I can tell, relinquishment is hell, pure and simple.  But some people don't have a choice, and hopefully we can craft something that will work without screwing anybody over.

More updates as we get our paperwork going and get 100% settled on our choice.