Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption.(Book review)

WEAVING A FAMILY: UNTANGLING RACE AND ADOPTION

By Barbara Katz Rothman

Beacon Press, 2005

There is no way to have a conversation about race without skin color. However objective we may claim to be, an inevitable subjectivity claims us. Well-regarded sociologist Barbara Katz Rothman makes this amply clear in her highly readable book, which considers the historical, sociological and personal dimensions of transracial adoption. But first, consider the cover: a pair of white hands braiding a Black girl's hair. I had a visceral reaction to this provocative image, and then wondered why. As a Black woman, I think it has something to do with racial privacies and permissible intimacies in a race-segregated society; something to do with the sordid history of white hands on Black bodies. As Katz Rothman was warned that her quasi-autoethnography was perilously close to "'me-search' rather than research," I came to this book hopelessly located--and so will you.

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Katz Rothman suggests that adoption in general, not just transracial adoption, indicates a failure of public policy. In an ideal world, there would be no under-duress adoptions; but also in an ideal world, according to the author, race would cease to exist as a devastatingly meaningful social category.

A proponent of moderate race matching, a policy of preferring same-race prospective adopters if available, Katz Rothman and her husband nonetheless end up becoming the parents of a Black baby. Katz Rothman makes clear that being able to adopt Victoria when "the Black community stands with open arms, absorbing as many babies and children as it can" is a privilege in a world where "racism, combined with, multiplied by, poverty creates a stream of children needing homes." But in the "global economy of adoption," she asserts, Black babies are not hot commodities. According to research, some white mothers adopt Black babies because it is the least expensive option.