America Soured on My Multiracial Family

There are three fundamental, complicating truths about adoption. First, every single adoption begins with profound loss. Through death, abandonment, or even loving surrender, a child suffers the loss of his or her mother and father. Second, the demographics of those in need of loving homes do not precisely match the demographics of those seeking a new child. Adoptive parents are disproportionately white. Adopted children are not. Thus, multiracial families are a natural and inevitable consequence of the adoption process. Third, American culture has long been obsessed with questions of race and identity.

Combine these three truths and you will not only begin to understand the challenge of adoption, you’ll also gain insight into a darkness in American culture, a darkness that scorns even the bond between parent and child. I know this firsthand. Amid the stories of adoption in America is the story of my family—the story of my youngest daughter.

I’m an evangelical Christian, and ever since I was a young man, two Bible verses have tugged at my soul. comes from the Book of James, and defines “pure” religious practice in part as looking after “widows and orphans in their distress.” , from the Book of Galatians, declares