Jacari W. Harris Nicole Cardoza Jacari W. Harris Nicole Cardoza

Support foster care youth.

16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant was killed on April 20th, 2021, outside of her foster home by a police officer called to help (NYTimes). The officer resorted to extreme and fatal force without issuing any clear verbal warnings or commands to the girl who had been in foster care since 2018. Unless you’ve been a child or teen in the foster care system or a foster parent, this situation may be hard to understand. As a product of the foster care system, this case hit home. In light of National Foster Care Month, I’ll be telling my story, one of hundreds of thousands of stories of current and former foster care youth in America.

Happy Monday and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. In honor of National Foster Care Month, Jacari joins us today to share his first-hand perspective of the foster care system and its role in the death of Ma'Khia Bryant.

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Nicole

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By Jacari W. Harris (he/him)

16-year-old Ma'Khia Bryant was killed on April 20th, 2021, outside of her foster home by a police officer called to help (NYTimes). The officer resorted to extreme and fatal force without issuing any clear verbal warnings or commands to the girl who had been in foster care since 2018. Unless you’ve been a child or teen in the foster care system or a foster parent, this situation may be hard to understand. As a product of the foster care system, this case hit home. In light of National Foster Care Month, I’ll be telling my story, one of hundreds of thousands of stories of current and former foster care youth in America.

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My name is Jacari. I’m a Tallahassee, Florida native, a former child of foster care, and an adoptee. I grew up living in low-income, dirty, unkempt conditions with no provisions for care, surrounded by drug dealing, sex, poverty, and high crime rates.
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I first met my biological father on his death bed on my thirteen birthday. My biological mother had a long history of crack and alcohol abuse. Before I could even crawl, she left me with a non-relative, informing the keeper that she would return in an hour. She returned days later, spotted walking the streets, appearing drunk or high on crack. This caused me to be in and out of foster homes for two years before I was eventually adopted. Once the termination of parental rights occurred, and there were no other family relatives who wanted to take me in. I had no choice but to remain with this new family.

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Growing up in this system, I was depressed and angry with anyone I encountered. I spent much of my early grade-school years in detention, suspension, or expulsion. My adoptive mother put me in sports and sent me to counseling to reduce my anger and behavioral issues. I became angrier and would be triggered often to call the police department on my adoptive parents, thinking that they’d kick me out if I continued getting in trouble.
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By high school, I was determined to go in a different direction and worked a full-time job, finished high school a year early, and eventually became the youngest intern at Parks & Crump, the firm that represented Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, in their firm’s history. I later graduated from college and wrote a book called Lost & Found about growing up in foster care and finding my identity as an adoptee. I now work in the racial justice space and advocate for foster care and adopted youth through my non-profit, Families for All.
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My story is just one of the hundreds of thousands of children’s in the foster care system. Over 437,000 children are currently in the U.S. foster care system, and the numbers are only increasing (CCAI). “Over 125,000 of these children are eligible for adoption, and they will wait, on average, four years for an adoptive family” (CCAI). The rates are even more shocking for Black youth, who make up 13.71% of the population, yet 22.75% of children in foster care (NCSL, 2018). According to federal data, Black children “receive fewer services, are more likely to be given psychotropic medications to control their behaviors, and increasing numbers are being funneled through the foster-care-to-prison pipeline” (The Grigio).

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In President Joe Biden’s recent “Proclamation on National Foster Care Month,” he confessed to some of the racial disparities that exist in the foster care system. “Black and Native American children are far more likely than white children to be removed from their homes, even when the circumstances surrounding the removal are similar. Once removed, Black and Native American children stay in care longer and are less likely to either reunite with their birth parents or be adopted. Too many children are removed from loving homes because poverty is often conflated with neglect, and the enduring effects of systemic racism and economic barriers mean that families of color are disproportionately affected by this as well” (“A Proclamation on National Foster Care Month, 2021”).
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For these children, resources are often scarce. The demand for foster parents far exceeds the supply, and children in foster care receive 50% of the investment that the average American child receives (iFoster). During the pandemic, these disparities become increasingly impactful, with only 5% of rural foster youth and 21% of urban foster youth reporting access to a computer at home, limiting these children’s access to education, resources, and jobs (iFoster). Twenty thousand kids age out of the system annually, “leaving them to fend for themselves” in a world where they will have little access to education and be at high risk for unemployment (iFoster).

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The foster care system failed Ma'Khia long before the day she was murdered by a state official. The system’s failure directly led to her death right outside of the home she was sent to keep her safe. She had no reason to trust the officer because adults had let her down, time and time again. Ma'Khia was not protected. We must do more to protect the hundreds of thousands of children in her position.
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This month, as a former child of the foster care system, I ask that you share our stories, amplify our voices, and support organizations dedicated to meeting the needs of children and families touched by the foster care system.

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Jacari W. Harris, a native of Tallahassee, Florida, is an author, life coach, social justice activist, and inspirational speaker. He also serves as the Executive Director of The George Floyd Memorial Foundation.

Key Takeaways

  • 437,000+ children are currently in the U.S. foster care system and the numbers are only increasing. 125,000 of these children are eligible for adoption (CCAI).

  • Black children are overrepresented in foster care, making up 22.75% of the foster care population, but only 13.71% of all children in the U.S. (NCSL, Our foster care system failed Ma’Khia Bryant system. We must do more to protect children like her.

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Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza Andrew Lee Nicole Cardoza

Rethink transracial adoption.

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett publicized her large family, including two Haitian adoptees. In response, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi wrote that historically, white families used adoption to “civilize” “savage” Black children. “And whether this is Barrett or not,” he tweeted, there is “a belief that too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.” Conservatives were outraged at the “attack” on Barrett’s children, arguing that no one who invited children of color into her home could be racist (Newsweek).

Good morning (or afternoon or evening) and welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily. Today we're honored to have Andrew here to share his perspective on transracial adoption. This came up in questions when we wrote about Amy Coney Barrett back in October (see related issues section for context) and I'm glad we have a voice to share more with us today. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.


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Nicole

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By Andrew Lee (he/him)

Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett publicized her large family, including two Haitian adoptees. In response, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi wrote that historically, white families used adoption to “civilize” “savage” Black children. “And whether this is Barrett or not,” he tweeted, there is “a belief that too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.” Conservatives were outraged at the “attack” on Barrett’s children, arguing that no one who invited children of color into her home could be racist (Newsweek). 

But this isn’t just about one judge. While this summer’s protests brought racial injustice into the consciousness of many white people, some of them still believe that transracially adopting (that is, adopting across racial lines) a non-white child is the ultimate act of allyship. 

This issue is personal for me because I’m a Korean person adopted into a largely white family. I think it’s important to question the idea that international, transracial adoption is a pure act of white allyship. This isn’t because I wish I stayed in an orphanage, or because I’m against multiracial families, or because I think that people who can’t or don’t want to have biological children should be prohibited from raising kids. However, like many other transracially, internationally adopted people, I’ve realized that there’s a lot more at stake in these adoptions than we first think.  

About 200,000 Korean children like me have been adopted by families in the United States (NBC News). Scores of adoptees come from countries like Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Thailand (Considering Adoption). The narrative is that our birth families don’t want us, so their adoptive parents do us a service by taking us in. In this story, birth families and countries are irresponsible, while adoptive families and the United States are charitable humanitarians. 


There are a few problems with this. First, international adoption has been loosely regulated. In some countries, parents place their children in an orphanage temporarily when they can’t make ends meet, later returning to reclaim them (CNN, Firstpost). Some have found their child has been adopted to a different country in their absence. In other cases, adoptive parents fail to correctly register their kids for US citizenship (The Intercept). Their children find out years later that they’re actually undocumented immigrants subject to deportation to countries don’t remember (NBC News). The demand for adoptees is so strong that the welfare of actual adoptees can be an afterthought.

The second problem with the humanitarian view of adoption is that countries that send children to the United States are often poor as a result of the American government’s actions.

There’s a reason Americans don’t get adoptees from France or England. While South Korea isn’t a poor country today, adoption from the country started right after the Korean War, when it was one of the poorest (Brookings). During the war, American forces deforested nearly the entire peninsula with napalm (Truthout). Some women survived by having sexual relations with American occupying forces. Their mixed-race children were the first Korean American adoptees (USA Today). 
 

Afterwards, adoption of full-blooded Korean children like me followed, as efforts to economically outcompete the communist North came at the expense of setting up a welfare system for single mothers (The Korea Herald). Adoption from South Korea, wrote adoptee Maija E. Brown, created “a paternal attitude between Korea and the US where white Americans rescued Asian orphans, while concealing the US responsibility in the Korean War” (University of Minnesota). In the words of Ju-Jyun Park, adoption from South Korea is one of the ways in which “the war lives on as a material fact” (The New Inquiry).
 

The Democratic Republic of the Congo, another source of adoptees, has seen autocracy and war since the United States helped overthrow democratically elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s (Guardian). Today, conflict is driven by the reserves of valuable metals like coltan, essential to the production of computers and cellphones (Dissent). Just as in Korea, US policies created the conditions to ensure vulnerable children couldn’t be supported by society, and then swept in as these children’s “savior.” 


Even domestic transracial adoptions have problematic aspects. How else could you describe a system that literally offers Black children at a “discount” rate compared to white children (NPR)? (For more on the complications that can arise with the domestic adoption industry, check out this report and this article.)

This is why a color-blind savior attitude towards adoption just doesn’t cut it. If you transracially adopt a child, recognize that systemic racism doesn’t disappear because you “don’t see race.” That child will need a multiracial community to provide the resources and resiliency to survive in a white supremacist society, skills that no white parents will be able to provide, no matter how good their intentions.

In the words of transracial Korean adoptee Jenn Hardin, racial justice means we have to “explore the dark history of Korean adoption, the parts that don’t fit the ‘save the orphans’ narrative that so many refer to because it’s all they know” (Medium). We should question the transfer of resources and children from poor countries to rich ones. We should rethink a system that deprives poor women of color in poor countries of the social support and reproductive care that would stop their countries’ orphanages from filling up with potential adoptees. 

It’s time to rethink transracial adoption. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • About 200,000 Korean children have been adopted by families in the United States (NBC News). Adoption from the country started right after the Korean War. 

  • The countries that send children to the United States are often poor as a result of US military and government actions. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, US policies created the conditions to ensure vulnerable children couldn’t be supported by society, and then swept in as these children’s “savior.”

  • A color-blind savior attitude towards adoption is not allyship. Systemic racism doesn’t disappear because you “don’t see race.” Transracially adopted children need a multiracial community to provide the resources and resiliency to survive in a white supremacist society, skills that white parents cannot provide, no matter how good their intentions.

RELATED ISSUES

PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT

Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.

Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza

Read More