Mixed Race Studies

Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe

Harvard University Press
April 2014
288 pages
5-1/2 x 8-1/4 inches
30 halftones
Hardcover ISBN: 9780674047556

Matthew Pratt Guterl, Professor of Africana studies and American studies
Brown University

Creating a sensation with her risqué nightclub act and strolls down the Champs Elysées, pet cheetah in tow, Josephine Baker lives on in popular memory as the banana-skirted siren of Jazz Age Paris. In Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe, Matthew Pratt Guterl brings out a little known side of the celebrated personality, showing how her ambitions of later years were even more daring and subversive than the youthful exploits that made her the first African American superstar.

Her performing days numbered, Baker settled down in a sixteenth-century chateau she named Les Milandes, in the south of France. Then, in 1953, she did something completely unexpected and, in the context of racially sensitive times, outrageous. Adopting twelve children from around the globe, she transformed her estate into a theme park, complete with rides, hotels, a collective farm, and singing and dancing. The main attraction was her Rainbow Tribe, the family of the future, which showcased children of all skin colors, nations, and religions living together in harmony. Les Milandes attracted an adoring public eager to spend money on a utopian vision, and to worship at the feet of Josephine, mother of the world.

Alerting readers to some of the contradictions at the heart of the Rainbow Tribe project—its undertow of child exploitation and megalomania in particular—Guterl concludes that Baker was a serious and determined activist who believed she could make a positive difference by creating a family out of the troublesome material of race.

Table of Contents

• Prologue
• 1. Too Busy to Die
• 2. No More Bananas
• 3. Citizen of the World
• 4. Southern Muse
• 5. Ambitious Assemblages
• 6. French Disney
• 7. Mother of a Wounded World
• 8. Unraveling Plots
• 9. Rainbow’s End
• Epilogue
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index

Multicultural families: Deracializing Transracial Adoption

Critical Social Policy
Volume 34, Number 1 (February 2014)
pages 66-89
DOI: 10.1177/0261018313493160

Suki Ali, Senior Lecturer of Sociology
London School of Economics and Political Science

In 2010, the Coalition government announced its plans for adoption reform which included ‘removing barriers’ to transracial adoption. The government has blamed social workers’ looking for ‘perfect ethnic matches’ for denying black and minority ethnic children placements with ‘loving and stable families’. The paper draws upon qualitative research with professionals and parents, which shows that the government has failed to take into account the complex ways in which race and ethnicity matter within adoption. Their wish to deracialize transracial adoption fits with wider concerns about race mixing, families and national belonging in multicultural Britain. While they attempt to minimize the importance of race and ethnicity, they continue to place race at the heart of these debates.

Read or purchase the article here.

Purple Boots, Silver Stars … and White Parents

The New York Times
2013-10-13

Frank Ligtvoet, Founder
Adoptive Families With Children of African Heritage and Their Friends, New York, New York

“WHEN I wear my cap backwards, don’t copy me,” our 8-year-old son says to his 7-year-old sister. “O.K.,” she answers, “I will put it on sideways.”

Recently our African-American daughter, Rosa, had gone with an older black friend to Fulton Mall, a crowded commercial area in our Brooklyn neighborhood, where the shoppers are mostly black. Fulton Mall is not only about shopping, it’s also a place to flirt, talk, laugh and argue, and to listen in passing to gospel, soul, hip-hop and R & B.

Rosa had seen some purple canvas boots with silver stars and lost herself in an all-consuming desire to have them. Immediately. I bought them, a bit later. A day later. And to be “fair,” I bought our son, Joshua, who is also African-American, a pair of black and yellow basketball shorts. Pretty cool as well.

The next day they want to show off their new stuff and, somewhat to my surprise, they decide to do so at Fulton Mall. I am their white adoptive dad, and by now, at their age, they see the racial difference between us clearly and are not always comfortable with it in public. But they know they are too young to go alone to the mall. Before we leave, Rosa, who had always seemed indifferent to fashion, changes into tight jeans and a black short-sleeve T-shirt. Joshua twists his head to see how he looks from behind. He pushes his new shorts a bit lower over his hips, but doesn’t dare to go all the way saggy. And then — after they have their cap conversation — we go.

They walk ahead. I am kept at a distance, a distance that grows as we get closer to the mall. I respect that; I grin and play stranger.

Joshua walks with the wide, tentative yet supple steps he sees black teenage boys make, steps he has practiced at home in the mirror. I realize that this is the first time in their lives they are asserting their blackness in a black environment, maybe not in opposition to but in conscious separation from the whiteness of my male partner and me. And we are a bit proud of their budding racial independence, since it comes after years of their having expressed feelings that ranged from “I don’t want to be black” to “I hate white people.” Being black with us was safe now. Being black at Fulton Mall was sort of a test of how safe it was out there in the world. I take a picture with my phone to catch this moment, which they hate. Of course…

…In the case of transracial adoption, there is the force of horizontal identity, where the child looks for others with the same experience of being adopted, but the vertical identity is complicated as well. When we wake them up in the morning, our kids don’t see parents who look like them. For many young transracial adoptees, every time they look in the mirror it’s a shock to see that they are black or Asian and not white like their parents. (In most transracial families, the parents are white.) The children have to grow out of their internalized whiteness into their own racial identity. Some fail and suffer tremendously…

Read the entire opinion piece here.

Owning white privilege and then what?

Transracial Parenting: A Race Together
2013-04-09

Rachel Dangermond

My own brand of narrow vision at work here: I’m not a big coffee shop person; I go rarely and usually when I have a deadline that I have put off until I can’t bear it anymore and I need a change of venue to focus. I’ve always thought this pastime was a European and Middle Eastern activity. So the other day when I was in CC’s on Esplanade working through a deadline, I was surprised I was the only white person in the whole place. Who knew?

I sat down at a window table and a woman I know came in, but I couldn’t recall her name, so I just smiled in greeting. She sat behind me and soon two older gentlemen joined her and they began talking about their organization that is helping to economically empower black owned businesses. I know this because I am a consummate eavesdropper. I actually was going to approach the woman and ask what they are doing to see if it in any way aligned with my efforts, but I never found my in and my friend had come to meet me.

It’s an odd phenomenon that once you become aware of something, you start seeing the signposts of that awareness everywhere and certainly that is the hope of anyone who is working in this country to end racism…

…But this morning, I had a truly wonderful Skype session with a similarly like-minded woman, Jennifer Chandler. She is a PhD candidate at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwauke and her thesis is to study white mothers of biracial daughters or sons and cull descriptions of their interactions with the teachers and principals at the children’s school. She is pursuing her Doctorate degree in Leadership for the Advancement of Learning and Service…

Read the entire article here.

Overseas adoptions rise — for black American children

Cable News Network (CNN)
2013-09-17

Sophie Brown

Editor’s note: In this series, CNN investigates international adoption, hearing from families, children and key experts on its decline, and whether the trend could — or should — be reversed.

(CNN) — Elisa van Meurs grew up with a Polish au pair, speaks fluent Dutch and English and loves horseback riding — her favorite horse is called Kiki but she also rides Pippi Longstocking, James Bond, and Robin Hood.

She plays tennis and ice hockey, and in the summer likes visiting her grandmother in the Swiss Alps.

“It’s really nice to go there because you can walk in the mountains and you can mountain bike … you can see Edelweiss sometimes,” said the 13-year-old, referring to the famous mountain flower that blooms above the tree line.

It’s a privileged life unlike that of her birth mother, a woman of African American descent from Indianapolis who had her first child at age 15. Her American family is “really nice but they don’t have a lot of money to do stuff,” said Elisa, who met her birth mother, and two siblings in 2011. “They were not so rich.”…

…Escape from racism

When Susan, a Florida resident, chose to place her son for adoption in 2006, the social worker gave her three binders with information about three prospective families. But she only needed to see the first binder of a couple from the Netherlands to make her decision. “If my mother had lived, she’d look just like (the prospective Dutch mother),” recalled the 37 year old, who asked that her last name not be used. Her own mother died when she was two months old.

Susan also wanted her son to grow up far away from the life she knew. She was a 30-year-old prostitute addicted to crack beginning a prison sentence when she learned she was pregnant. She did not know whether the child’s father was a man who raped her “for hours” or a drug dealer whom she “had done something with” one time, she said. But both men were African American, and she believed the child would face discrimination growing up in the United States.

“There’s too much prejudice over here. The white people are going to hate him because he’s half black, and the majority of black people are going to hate on him because he’s half white,” said Susan, who is Caucasian. “And then he’ll have to do extra things to prove what kind of a Negro he is, and extra things to prove what kind of a honky he is and I don’t want that. I did not want that for my kid.”

Even her own daughter, then aged 11, said “she would never accept that n***** child.”

Susan is not alone, says Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute and author of “Adoption Nation.” Many birth mothers have a perception that their black or mixed-race children will not face the same race issues in the Netherlands as in the United States.

“In the United States, as much as Americans want to believe it’s not true, we are still a country where there is a least some degree of racial prejudice. The birth mothers’ perception of Holland, in particular, was that the same was not true in Holland. There’s that feeling that maybe we can escape those issues if (the child is) somewhere else.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘Doing the right thing’: transracial adoption in the USA

Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 36, Issue 8 (August 2013)
Special Issue: Mothering Across Racialised Boundaries
pages 1273-1291
DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.776698

Ravinder Barn, Professor of Social Policy and Social Work
Royal Holloway, University of London

Racial/cultural identity and parental cultural competence in transracial adoption (TRA) are subjects of fierce debate and discussion in contemporary western societies. The ongoing practice of TRA has led to a polarization that either supports or berates the suitability of the environment provided in such homes. The external scrutiny invariably creates doubt among white adoptive parents as to whether they are ‘doing the right thing’. By drawing upon extant literature and original qualitative research carried out in New York, this paper explores adoptive mothers’ conceptualization and understanding of racial/ethnic socialisation (RES). The paper puts forward three discursive approaches. It is argued that the ways in which white adoptive mothers understand and experience diversity influences their approach to RES, which in turn is mediated through family and community networks and societal discourses on race, power and hierarchy.

Read or purchase the article here.

Why We Need to Talk About Race in Adoption

Bitch Magazine
2013-05-29

Nicole Callahan

Two years ago, on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains, I saw a white couple at a restaurant with their Asian daughter. Though her father told her to quit staring, I felt the girl’s eyes on me all through the meal. I smiled at her, feeling a strong sense of kinship, a pang of sympathy.  As a child, whenever I saw another Asian person—which I hardly ever did—I used to stare, too, hungry for the sight of someone, anyone, who looked like me.

Adoption has changed in the 32 years since a social worker told my parents “not to worry” about my ethnicity. Thanks to many transracial adoptees who have shared their experiences, there is a greater emphasis on the importance of racial and cultural identity. Numerous books have been written on the subject, and excellent blog posts abound. Transnational adoption has inspired documentary films such as First Person Plural, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Wo Ai Ni Mommy, and Somewhere Between.  

While “colorblindness” in adoption has been widely challenged, however, not everyone is convinced—like the adoptive mother who recently told me, “I don’t see my son’s color. Race is just not an issue for us.”

Some people maintain that any cultural loss is unimportant compared to what children gain through adoption. But in both mainstream media and personal conversations about adoption, cultural and racial identity need not be pitted against a child’s right to love, safety, and security…

…We cannot have an honest discussion about transracial adoption if we aren’t willing to discuss race, prejudice, and privilege. Adoptees need to feel safe when we talk about the instances of racism we encounter. This may not sound easy—because it isn’t easy for white parents to raise children of color. But as the mother of two multiracial children, I can say that it’s not easy for parents of color, either…

Read the entire article here.

The Joys and Challenges of Becoming a Transracial Family Through Adoption

Your Adoption Coach with Kelly Ellison
2013-04-20

Kelly Ellison, Host

If you are considering adopting a child of a different culture or race than your family, or you are already a transracial family formed through adoption, don’t miss this show. Our host this week is Amanda Grant, President of USAdopt, and an adoptive mother in a transracial family, who is joined by guest Tiffany Rae Reid, expert in a racial identity development and host of Mixed Race Radio. Contemplating the adoption of any child takes courage and honesty. The adoption of a child of a different cultural or racial heritage adds another layer of both complexity and celebrations. Learn the realities of transracial adoption, how to prepare your family for the change in its composition, what to do to support the healthy development of your child’s identity and what resources are available to support your child and your family in every aspect of living as a transracial family.

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

Brown Babies Germany’s Forgotten Children – Henriette Cain

Research at the National Archives & Beyond
BlogTalk Radio
2013-01-17

Bernice Bennett, Host

Are you searching for your family?  Are you German, Brown and want to learn more about your American or German heritage?

Join Henriette Cain Genealogist, Search Consultant and Secretary of the Black German Cultural Society (BGCS), Inc.  Mrs. Cain – a brown baby adoptee successfully found all members of her birth family. She is now helping others with their searches through her company S.U.N. Public Records Research. She offers family history research and strives to reunite families and friends. She is prominently featured in the documentary – “Brown Babies: Deutschlands verlorene Kinder“.

Mrs. Cain is also a Founding Member, co-founder and former Vice President of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical  Society of the Northen Illinois Southern Wisconsin Chapter; a member of the Noxubee County (MS) Historical Society, and a former volunteer Librarian for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Family History Library.

Play in your default player here.

Adopting the wisdom of Pearl S. Buck

gbtimes: The Third Angle Chinese news and video reports on China today
2013-03-26

Asa Butcher

When listing an author’s life achievements, it is rare for their Nobel Prize for Literature and Pulitzer Prize to be overshadowed. However, Pearl S. Buck’s humanitarian work with children leaves those awards in the dark.

A pioneer in mixed race adoption, Pearl S. Buck was ahead of her time in many issues considered unpopular in 1950’s America, all of which contributed to her being counted as one of the 20th century’s greatest women.

In the second part of our interview with Mrs. Janet Mintzer, CEO and President of Pearl S. Buck International, we talk to her about the adoption legacy and how it all began.

Part one of the interview is available here.

Match a child

The Welcome House Child Adoption Program, created by Pearl S. Buck in 1949, currently have adoption programs in China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Kazakhstan, Korea, and the Philippines. They have found families for more than 7,000 children that, six decades ago, were ‘considered unadoptable’.

“If you were bi-racial in the United States in the late-‘40s you were considered unadoptable – that was the mentality of the time period. Adoption was secretive and they would match parents that had blond hair with blond-haired kids or blue eyes with blue-eyed kids because that’s just the way it was done back then,” begins Mrs. Mintzer.

She explains that there were no mixed race parents able to adopt, so officials were unable to ‘match’ a child, so they were left to languish in the orphanage. Pearl S. Buck was well-known in adoption circles, having written about the issue and also having adopted several orphans, including two bi-racial children…

Read the entire article here.