As a consequence, they applied and were approved to adopt in the US. The case has raised many questions about whether the Berkshire adoption agency’s decision was discriminatory, and about the appropriateness of placing children with adopters who do not reflect their ethnic, cultural or religious heritage. Finding an answer to that question is complex.
From the 1970s onwards, projects were established to explore how best children from black and minority backgrounds could be placed for adoption. A significant number of children were placed with ‘white’ adopters in trans-racial adoptions. One of the responses to this was that these projects indicated a racist approach by denying the child’s ‘black’ heritage and making them for all intents and purposes ‘white’, which can have a significant impact on a child’s feelings of self-identity and self-esteem. This led to an expectation that the child’s heritage would be directly reflected by the adopters.
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