Dr. King's Impact on Generation X, Race and Adoption

By Thomas Brooks

            The work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has benefited mixed-race individuals and other minorities in the United States that are, like me, part of Generation X (born between 1963 and 1978).  Now, most members of Generation X are in the "prime" of their lives (ages ranging from 29-44) in terms of their intellectual, economic and political influence.  They are also raising families that have been started by conception, adoption or both.

            Many Generation Xers have delayed parenthood past their twenties.  Their career outlook tends to be flexible compared to previous generations and they are often well-connected globally.  Yet they have, by and large, come to expect that roughly half of their most critical connections, marriages, will end in divorce.

            The Civil Rights Movement led by Dr. King not only helped African-Americans in the south, but helped all Americans with respect to voting rights, fair housing and economic empowerment.  The Movement also set the stage for the 1967 Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court decision.  This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of this landmark case in which the nation's highest court declared anti-miscegenation laws to be unconstitutional.  This unaminous decision ended, in theory at least, restrictions on interracial dating and marriage.  However, some states kept unenforced laws on the books against mixed-race marriages for decades more before their eventual removal.

            As a Gen Xer who grew up as the only child of a struggling African-American single mother in the inner-city, I know about disparity. Though I never faced dogs, fire hoses and bombings like Dr. King and his contemporaries, I did battle racial stereotypes as I was bussed to integrated schools. Then I was told at age eleven that I had been adopted as an infant. I did not know it at the time, but I had actually been born to a white biological mother who had descended from Lithuanian Jews and a black man who was a foreign student from Kenya (miscegenation!).  This was shocking news not only because I looked like my adoptive mother, but because all of my socialization was "Black" in my adoptive extended family and the neighborhoods in which I lived.

            But, inspired by Dr. King's teachings, I believed that people could cross socioeconomic, racial, cultural, and national barriers.  Leveraging hard work, I became a high school valedictorian, escaped the ghetto, and eventually got a bachelors and masters degree.   I then traveled across continents to search for my heritage. I found my biological mother in London with my previously unknown British siblings. I then located my biological father and extended family in Nairobi. Though not all adoption-related reunions have a happy ending, I was blessed with two of them.

            For many societal reasons adoption is a fact of life.  The Census Bureau's first profile of adopted children, released in 2003, showed that 1.6 million adopted youth under the age of 18 were living in U.S. households.  If you include adult adoptees like me, it is estimated that there are actually over 6 million American adoptees.  If you add the birth parents and adoptive families to this figure, the amount of people whose lives are directly affected by adoption probably triples.  Children caught in the state child welfare systems in our country have a lot more problems getting placed with permanent families if they are minorities/multiracial, and/or older than 2 years of age.  This challenge increases significantly if the children are part of a sibling group, and/or dealing with special needs such as Down syndrome or autism.  Simply put, there are many minority families who are adopting minority children, but the demand for minority adoptive parents is outpacing the supply.  We have to come up with prescriptions for improving the placement race for minority and multiracial children in foster care.  After all, Angelina Jolie can only adopt so many kids.  We need more awareness, beyond National Adoption Awareness Month in November.  We need to donate our time and money to organizations like the North American Council on Adoptable Children, which helps its share of the tens of thousands of children who cannot remain with their birth families. These children—once labeled unadoptable or hard to place—are mostly school-aged. Some are siblings who must be placed together. Most have physical, mental, or emotional difficulties. Many are children of color.  All need loving families.

            The Census Bureau report also tells us that one in six adopted children (17%) is of a different race than the head of their household, as is the case with most of the recent celebrity adoptions.  Some feel that transracial adoptions hurt children by leaving them disconnected from their "true" heritage.  Given that America is not yet (hey, I'm optimistic) color blind, there are some real issues here.  However, there are "issues" with almost all adopted children.  These concerns can be overcome through proactive parents, the aid of loving extended families, helpful adoption agencies and counseling.  It is better to have a good home with those of a different race or culture than no home at all.  It is all about putting the child first.  This is why it is crucial that there is training during the adoption process so that any adoptive parents, regardless of background, can ultimately give children a positive cultural, racial, and ethnic identity.

            The most important factor regarding adoption, especially multicultural adoptions, is love.  It was Dr. King who told us of his dream where children of all backgrounds would play together without allowing differences of race or culture to interfere. His attempts to facilitate equality for all have opened the eyes and hearts of many, and people can now open their homes to children who may not look exactly like them.

            So, while we have a way to go regarding race relations, we have made some great strides.  A child is a child, regardless of skin color.  One thing is for sure; the sound of happy laughter coming from a child that is loved and content is universal.