Children Without Parent

In this day and age humans are very diverse creatures, Every bloodline in this world is mixed with at least one other race but we still characterize ourselves into categories such as caucasian, african american, native american, etc with the basing of those categories being how each human appears. Transracial adoption refers to a term to describe a couple or person adopting a child that is not from the same race as said person. For example a caucasian family could adopt an african american child and that would be transracial adoption. Many people believe that transracial adoption is wrong. This is because those people believe that a child of one race should stay in that race to exclude cultural differences. I aim to prove that all people, no matter the color, are still the same. All humans have the same chromosomes and we all came from the same cell during evolution the only thing that would make us different as a species is mutation to help adapt to our environments.

History:

The main reason international adoption came about in the United States was because after World War 2 there were many children without parent so many of the first adoptive children from different place came from Europe or Japan. After that additional adoptive children came from the civil war in Greece in 1946- 1949, then the Korean war in 1950- 1953, and the war in Vietnam in 1954- 1975. In saying all this there was a non existing number of transracial adoptions before the 1920’s and few between the 1920’s and the 1940’s. But the ones that were between the 1920’s and the 1940’s were aimed to “americanize’ the children involved, which is what gives transracial adoptions a bad name in today's society. Today war is not the only factor of being adopted abroad, other reasons include poverty and disruptions in the home such as domestic violence and/ or child abuse. There is a act called “The Multi-Ethnic Placement Act” this act says that the foster care/ adoption agencies much try to recruit adoptive parents of the same race as the child that is being adopted. The reason for The Multi-Ethnic Placement Act is so that the families respect their culture heritage.

What makes people the same? What makes people different?

Every single human in existence has cells with twenty three the chromosomes, which means that humans have forty six chromosomes. The twenty third chromosome, which is the sex chromosome, is what determines if you will be a male or a female. “Estimating our ancestral composition down to 0.1% seem to suggest that there are exact, categorical divisions between human populations.” says Vivian Chou, a student at harvard University. So if the human species, by Ancestral composition any way, is only different by 0.1% then what makes us so distinguishable from on another? That would be alleles, every person has the same coding genes that make hair but the allele is what makes the hair on each person's hair either curly, straight or wavy. Your traits really depend on with allele is dominant or not dominant but you will have the same genes as everyone else in the human species, this hence why our ancestral composition is down to 0.1%. There are two words that scientist use to describe what makes us different, the two words are Genotype and Phenotype. Your genotype is your genes for a given trait while phenotype is what the genes actually turn up to be. In other words your genotype will control your phenotype. The way that the genes can change is by something called switches. Switches determine whether or not that gene is ‘Turn on or off’.

Are there side effects for transracial adoption?

A women named Sunny J Reed is an adoptee or transracial adoption. Sunny says that there are “significant challenges” of being a transracial adoptee child. The first challenge she describes is having to face a identity crises as a child. Sunny says that growing up in a primarily white team she would forget about her asian side until someone would “slant their eyes at her” or when she would “pass a mirror”. A man that Sunny interviewed that is black with a white family described himself as “a Black man in a white middle-class world, reared in it and by it, yet not truly a part of it”. Another potential side effect of transracial adoption would be mistaken identity. Mistaken identity might consist of comments such as “is that really your daughter/ son?” or one that sunny got a lot was “is that the help?”. Sunny said that these comments could be degrading and could contribute to insecurities. Some common benefits of transracial adoption is shorter wait, culture diversity and an embrace diversity according to the Angle adoption blog. The average wait for a transracial adoptee is twelve to eighteen months, while the average wait for child the same race as yourself is about two to seven years. Normally the child is exposed to a way more diverse culture or it will have a chance of being bilingual which would expand the child's options in life. In saying all this there are many pros and cons but when it comes down to it we are all humans, we all come from the same species so does it really matter which ancestors we had a few generations ago? The reason so many people are against it is because they see each race as a different branch on the tree that is the human existence. https://medium.com/all-beige/five-potential-side-effects-of-transracial-adoption-f0beeb4b6fb8

 

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