I wish we were beyond this exasperating stupidity. Via TOIlet (no need to visit and catch a VTD, the entire article is quoted below:
Three-month-old Livya was rejected thrice by prospective Indian parents, who found her too dark. A year later, however, an American couple chose to adopt her and flew her to the US. She now lives with her parents and has two siblings — one from Korea and another from Vietnam.
Livya was lucky, but the story is not the same for other adoptable children. Many who are legally free for adoption continue to face discrimination as wannabe Indian parents look for a “fair and lovely” baby, though the law prevents one from picking and choosing babies for adoption.
Perhaps those overlooked children are better off without such complexion-obsessed parents. After all, there is always the Angelina effect (aside: once again, Madonna is associated with the word “wanna-be”):
But most foreign couples prefer children who are dark-skinned, older or with medical concerns, HIV positive and with special needs.
And here, the reason for my title (and the explanation for the painful noise my jaw made when it fell on my desk):
Secretary for the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), O P Sirohe, says in-country adoptions have been encouraging and there is a long list of parents waiting. But still, they ask for fair-skinned, healthy and, preferably, Punjabi child as it is usually chubby. A child is no market commodity and adoptions become meaningful only when there is a change in people”s attitude, he says.
Preferably a Punjabi child. Wow. I love chubby babies, too (my Godson’s nickname wasn’t “The Pudgesicle†for nothing)…but this just makes my stomach twist. What are you adopting? A baby or an accessory? What does this even mean? That it’s too much work to feed your new kid butter-laced everything, so you can chub them up sufficiently yourself? “Honey, let’s go shopping for a baby on Saturday—I heard they have new Punjabi models in stock!” And to my Punjabi peeps…um…how do you feel about being objectified due to such a dubious distinction?
Foreign couples are more open to adopting any child, irrespective of its age, religion, skin colour or looks. Children who are older, with special needs and medical conditions are finding homes overseas, he says.
“NRIs and couples from Italy, Germany, US, Spain and Sweden take home kids with special needs. We place such children in Indian homes too, but they are an exception,” says Dr Aloma Lobo, chairperson, Adoption Coordinating Agency, Karnataka.
And thanggawd for it.
The following concern isn’t exclusive to India; American “waiting†children don’t have much luck when they are in their teens, either. Everyone wants a baby. And sometimes, a chubby one.
Another hurdle in the adoption of children is their age. For instance, Lakshmi, who is 13 years old, has still not found a home as her age is a major deterrent.
The law allows adoptions only up to the age of 12 (inter-country) and stipulates that the older parents age should not exceed 45. This is a setback as older children are not preferred by young couples and the older couples cannot adopt due to age limit.
It is quite a paradox as older couples have better financial status and parenting experience and can spend more time with the child, adoption agencies say.
When does this self-loathing end? I know people who have struggled with infertility; they just appreciate having a little kid to love. I can’t help but imagine the couples who rejected this infant. How does that thought process work? “Well, we can’t have a child of our own…but damn it if we settle for a dark one. We deserve more than that!â€
So do babies like Livya. I hope her parents don’t tell her anything about this aspect of her past; I’m glad she was adopted by two people who looked at her and saw a toddler vs. a dark, undesirable object.
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Thanks for leaving this on the News Tab, duax0001.
Light skinned people have it so hard, can’t catch a break from society. Of course, I know how that feels.
Haha! That was a gem.
Light skinned people have it so hard, can’t catch a break from society.
But there are some advantages that balance things out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Melbourne desi:
Would cream of the crop include cream of wheat-ish?
I forget add my indo-scythian background. Hell yeah I rule.
48 · Rahul said
Oh please, rahul…talk to me when you can’t find large enough shoes. The things I have to go thru…
2 · V.V. Ganeshananthan said
guidelines for in-country adoption:
1.1.7 Criteria for Prospective Adoptive Parents:
All the criteria mentioned above for adoptive parents will also apply to single parents with the additional requirements given below:-
guidlines for inter-country adoption:
I suppose so. Depends on how you define wheatish, I suppose. If one looks like Nandita Das, wheatish is immaterial is it not.
club, meet dead horse.
Honestly people, I’m getting sick trying to sift through this crap for a worthwhile comment.
I’m sure someone has already mentioned this but I think it’s much too easy to demonize India in this situation. Theres plenty of adorable and lovable American babies who are not being adopted because the demand is for White babies and these babies are African American. I read an article a long time ago about a trend where many German couples were coming to America and adopting African American babies to raise. The article was pretty straightforward but the sarcasm level was pretty high, emphasizing how when American couples search for a baby to rescue from poverty they conveniently ignore their local adoption centers. They would rather have an ‘exotic’ baby than one that conjures images of crack-addicted mothers. 🙁 Poor babies, I’ll take you!
58 · ptr_vivek said
This is one of those staple topics on SM that has to be covered at least once every few months. Others: M.I.A; model minorities; the plight of the turbaned sikh in the west. Not judging the relevance/importance (esp not with MIA!), it.just.is.
19 · A N N A said
fetishized. That’s the word I was looking for. thanks
Totally agree that it’s infuriating to see the skin colour bias put up there so blatantly. I agree with whoever said that it extends to much more than babies and brides, I’ve long observed that the upper management in the various MNCs my father and his crowd worked for were invariably light skinned and clean-shaven while the lower management had moustaches and didn’t look quite so, well, Western. And I think cute babies are found everywhere.
When it comes to adoption, though, there are several factors at play and not just racism, though that’s a part of it. If you believe that adoption is about selflessly taking on whatever child you feel you can help, then it’s right to be outraged. However, the “most deserving” cases might then be twelve year olds with health problems. How many of us are truly selfless enough to adopt such a child? Anyone? Many of the most good-hearted and liberal people I know still won’t adopt, period, because they want a child that “looks like them.” When Americans adopt, they sometimes also worry about a child who will look very different from them or develop racially based resentment at the difference later on in life. With all the studies about the importance of early childhood bonding and nutrition and so on for the child’s emotional and intellectual development, people do want babies as young as they can get them. And I’m as guilty as the next person of cooing over a cute baby, and if I went to the adoption agency and saw a cute little one and a less cute little one, who would I be drawn to? (There’s also the factor of feeling more drawn to children who look more like us, I believe that’s evolved – perhaps Razib can clarify).
All this to say that much as I’ve always believed in adoption as an ethical option and not a vanity one to get a designer kid, it’s quite hard to battle the human desire for a child who will do the parents proud, or one they can feel a bond with, or what have you, and that’s what people are often driven by. (I should note that I don’t necessarily feel this way but various people I’ve been close to who are sceptical of my desire to adopt raise these points and I think they should be considered).
P.S. Another factor with desis is that they often try to hide the fact that they’ve adopted, or adopt from within the family – so a child who looks like them is considered safer because it can “pass.”
I forget whether or not this was covered on SM, but a few months ago the Oprah show went to Anand, Gujarat and tracked a courageous (cough cough) couple who couldn’t conceive and instead rented an outsourced uterus. Make no mistake, this isn’t an industry that cropped up for the phoren – it’s been going on domestically for a long time, but the way it was presented uncritically on the show was a bit much:
uhh… who’s renting out her womb and hiding from her family again? Oh that’s right, not you!
SP,
I know you mean well but it will be great if you can follow up your comments based on your anecdotal experience, generalizing something to a billion plus desis is definitely not accurate and there will be multiple posts that may follow debating the accuracy of such generalizations.
On my last trip to India, among the small circle of people I met, two of the families had adoptive children. The first were a very light-skinned Kashmiri couple who had adopted a very dark Tamil boy. The second were a couple who had adopted a dark and also a very unattractive girl child. Neither of the couples distinguished between their better looking natural children and the adopted one. I’d say both couples could be considered progressive, the adoption being one data point among many others.
In general I’d say that as much as Indians (both in India and abroad)fetishize lighter skin, they don’t have as much of an issue with dark skin as white people do. Rahul’s post and story (#43) is an example of something I myself have observed many many times in the kinds of comments white people make.
Umber_desi, want to maintain people’s privacy, but my anecdotal experience is based roughly on a)two neighbour couples who adopted, one desi and one not (darker skinned children, adorable, have fit well into their respective families but quite close in skintone to them); b) an aunt who was adopted and it was kept secret for decades (light skinned, “looked like the family” but still got grief, apparently); c) a desi family friend living overseas who adopted a little girl (about a shade or two darker than her – not a problem as it might have been in desh); d) my ex and my current intended who have both been resistant to my desire to adopt and to hell with what the child looks like; e) a family member who was unable to conceive and had her sister actually have a child for her to adopt rather than looking to outside adoption.
FWIW, the original article trades in anecdotes too, so I’m not about to get into sociologically representative datasets 😉 What I’m trying to offer is the reasoning of some of those people who seem rather heartless.
Sorry for scattiness – I’m also thinking of a very good American friend who’s off-the-charts progressive but won’t adopt because she wants a mini-me, or as she puts it, “a little girl who’s like the little girl I was.”
SP:
The desire to “pass” is not specific to either desis or the deshes – there was a case in the UK some years back with in-vitro fertilization (not adoption), where a clinic mixed up the eggs and sperm, with the result that a white couple gave birth to black twins. It led to a bit of a sticky situation where the white mother wanted to keep the babies (it being no different genetically from an adoption), but a black couple (apparently the babies’ biological parents) wanted custody, except that in that case the white mother would have been classified as a surrogate mother, which wasn’t allowed under the law because she was never asked nor did she agree to be a surrogate. Much legal fun was had.
My point is that, as the article states, IVF mixups between the same race are rarely detected or reported – the conclusion being that as long as the children can “pass”, it doesn’t seem to matter so much, irrespective of the race or ethnicity involved.
SP,
I was not taking issue with your comment but the comments that follow honest observations, sorry if it came any other way.
Upthread Shalu wrote:
That is also a problem. Adopting dark skinned baby should not be seen as superior to any act of adoption.
So,I am not the only one who has noticed this difference. Glad to have company.
That has reasons other than the skin color.
while the lower management had moustaches
What kind of moustaches did they have?
At the encouragement of Taz — whose final words to me at the LA meetup were, “Post more often” — this long-time lurker (2004) is giving it a go. Be gentle, okay?
I’m interested to know about the uniquely Indian aspect of this sad phenomenon. Societal color prejudice on one hand and white orientalism on the other — there’s many examples, in many countries. But I wonder if there’s something more going on here…
Is it possible that Indian parents really want just their own little baby Krishna?
Many times when I hear Westerners point at Indian color prejudice, I point out that Indians (er, specifically Hindus here, I guess) are one of the few peoples to have a depiction of God that is dark — BLACK. I mean, Krishna=”Black” — right?
And yet, of course, color prejudice has been at work in transforming that image of Krishna over the millenia. Just as Western Europeans century by century have transformed Jesus from a (likely) short, dark/olive-skinned Jew into a tall, blue-eyed, blond; so also, today, Krishna is very often depicted as off-white or pale blue.
I guess the crux of my question to you all, is instead of call this specific act of prejudice a case of color=success (as it would be in many parts of the world), wouldn’t it be closer to the truth to understand this as a uniquely Indian parent’s idea of what a perfect baby should look like — ie baby Krishna (light-skinned & chubby, and ideally with some buttermilk around the mouth)?
And then, I guess it follows, that if it’s the latter, then wouldn’t one of the best, non-violent ways to change this behavior over time (maybe generations) be to make a special effort to accurately depict baby Krishna in media and entertainment?
Regards to all,
Zack
(PS Please don’t spam me with hate mail)
Thanks for posting Zack. We love our delurkers. 🙂
re: your comment…I’ve wondered about that aspect of this issue b/c I was taught that Shiva and Krishna were very dark; I’ve even heard people point to this as “proof” that they personally harbor no bias against dark skin, I mean, how could they discriminate against the divine?
Years ago, when I first talked to my dad about this, I asked him if S + K were blue because it would be dishonest to show them as “fair”, but no one would want to depict a God with dark skin, since it is something considered ugly…if “blue” was almost a creative compromise. He told me to go clean my room.
God bless!
Ha!! That’s $2.5 per family per day. I.e. if it’s a 3 person family, that could be as low as less than a dollar per person per day. That sucks even by PPP standards. This is the profile of a family that gives a child for adoption, not one that adopts a baby. Stupid GoI.
I guess that can keep the GLBT activists busy for some more time once same sex marriage are no longer a political issue.
re: post #56 on India’s domestic adoption rules:
Isn’t the 90 years ‘age-max’ for the prospective parents redundant given the 45-year old per parent ‘max’? Or are they getting at something I’m missing?
Why this two person-normative view of the family, rob?
Haha! Good one! Though to be annoyingly textual, the “neither parent” seems to imply that the statute takes that view as well. 😉
As the article points out, this is income, and the adoption criteria factors in other support systems and assets. I bet that if the income requirement had been higher, there would have been people railing against discrimination and asking if poor people couldn’t provide loving homes.
I knew the lawyer would point that out 🙂
Shiva isn’t blue, right? In fact, isn’t one of his names Neelakanta (blue neck) specifically because his neck turned blue when he drank the poison generated in the churning contest (yes, that’s what the kids called it those days) between the gods and the demons, in order to save the world?
Where the hell was this trend when I was a chubby, (half) Punjabi kid? On a side note, if anyone is still interested in adopting me, I’ll forward my biodata (with picture, as soon as this ‘tan’ fades).
sigh
As sad as it sounds I don’t think color issues are unique to Indians. Asians, Africans all have color heirarchies. I find it amazing that so many Americans are heading to India or China to adopt kids while there are literally 1000s of Black children in the Foster system that are desperate to be adopted. I don’t get it. Or wait is it that even white Americans have their own heirarchy??
razib @ 8:
Stop speaking out of your ass, razib. Why the fuck do we have to put up with your/your parents ‘all south indian languages sound the same’ bullshit? And, why do you automatically assume that Telugus don’t want to be called Madarasis becuase they think they are better than the Tamils. It’s because we don’t want to be all clubbed together under one convenient label by dumbasses like you.
You may pretend to know a lot about a lot, but you don’t know shit about this topic, so shut eff up.
This is really interesting to me (thanks ptr_vivek and Ghuriya) — like Ghuriya I wonder how true this is. There are plenty of children with special needs, particularly from low-income or stressed pregnancies — in the U.S. who go unadopted, and they’re predominantly African American. Steven Levitt commented on this (i.e., why his family decided to adopt from China as opposed to adopting a black child from the U.S.), but I find it pretty astounding (although not surprising) that there is such a strong desire to physically distance yourself from those issues in the construction of your family.
The colorism argument is valid but a whole other story. I’m a little surprised that people want Punjabi kids — isn’t the stereotype that we’re dumb jocks?
As melbourne desi pointed out, several of us have reveled in our darker complexions 🙂 [including me, a wheatish — or should I say buckwheatish? — ladki of Punju-descent]
We actually blogged on this a while ago at The Langar Hall 🙂
I thought Shiva was blue because he drank poison and survived? Isn’t Kali Ma, well.. kali? [I apologize if these questions are hugely offensive — I know literally NOTHING about the classic Hindu scriptures and mean no offense in my ignorance]
I think “color=success” has a lot to do with it. That said, I guess every culture has its ideals of beauty. The desi one just happens to go for the fair and lovely right now. But just the other day me and my friend had this long bitchfest about our respective sisters and she goes “well she’s always been jealous of me. I got the waspy looks you know and she got the dark eyes and hair.” So I wouldn’t say such feelings are confined to any particular culture.
By the way, I know of one Indian couple who adopted a kid from India. They asked for a 4 year old girl and took the first one they were offered. She was all covered with sores and pock marks when they got her and now 4 years later she’s dynamite.
JOAT,
Generalizing here. We’re in the process of adopting from the NJ foster-adopt system, and acc. to our case worker, it’s because a disproportional number of children of color have (or are perceived to have) behavioral/medical problems due to in-utero drug/partner abuse. It is their disabilities that preclude them from being adopted rather than skin color (alone?).
Also, because of cultural issues–specifically the angry testimony of black children brought up whitewashed in white families–agencies try to match children up on the basis of ethnicity.
It’s an extremely flawed system and in the meantime children get shunted from one foster home to another until they forget to hope.
And a quick elucidation: Shiva is supposedly extremely fair-skinned–it is his consort Parvati who is dark (kinda like my grandparents 🙂
If I recall correctly, this was one of Levitt’s reasons for not adopting domestic Af-am babies. I am sympathetic to parents who find it difficult to adopt these kids – most parents wouldn’t want to go through the emotional difficulty of dealing with their natural child having assorted illness (for example, many parents choose to have their embryos tested for Down’s), and it is natural that they elect to avoid this situation when they indeed have the opportunity. Sure, it would be nice if unconditional altruism without accounting for the potential emotional pain was the norm, but I don’t think the motive is reprehensible, in and of itself. Sure, there might be some adopters who choose not to adopt black babies because of racism, but there are perfectly non-racial reasons for the choice. And judgments based on maximum-good calculations seem especially problematic when many of these parents adopt Chinese girls, who are disproportionately abandoned thanks to male preference in a one-child-per-family society.
I am still confused as to why White Americans will not adopt fellow Americans. Is it not easier and less expensive. Is it that they dont want a ‘stolen generation’ on their doorstep. Most White Australians will not adopt an Indigenous Australian child who lives in third world squalor. I think it is fantastic that Americans who adopt provide an escape route to the less fortunate children.
I think Levitt alludes to this reason too, as a factor in choosing not to adopt a black kid. He basically said that black teenagers will often have to make a choice about growing up “black” or “white”, and either choice has problematic implications for the family – something Asian kids do not have to go through.
And also,
A) this poster is super dark-skinned
B) was unaware color prejudice growing up. My theory is that in South India, color=success isn’t always true. Even our temple idols are black granite :). As far as i know, beauty is judged by features (lakshanam, kala/i) rather than color. Of course, with increasing sanskritization and more permeable north-south interactions, this may have changed…
If Obama gets elected, more black kids can choose to grow up ‘white’. This was the most depressing part of my American experience. How smart black kids choose to take the 50 cent route rather than the Obama route.
I am confused as to why national loyalty should play a role in adoption.
There actually have been numerous lawsuits by white prospective parents (in the US) against adoption agencies who would steer them away from/hamper their ability to adopt black children. I think it’s gotten easier for such adoptions to happen now, but that probably explains a part of the interest in international adoptions even though there are so many un-adopted US children. Of course, that’s only one factor.
88 · maya said
Is Shiva fair-skinned? I though he was fair-skinned because he rubs ashes from the cremation grounds all over himself.
Here’s one story about that issue, which includes the following eye-brow raiser:
“Rhetoric around the issue has softened considerably since the National Association of Black Social Workers, in 1972, likened whites adopting black children to ‘cultural genocide.’ The group removed the genocide reference from its policy statement in 1994, but it still recommends same-race placements.”
Well, if adopted kids do better than non-adopted/foster/orphanage kids, then it would be in the national interest (though admittedly not global interest) to prefer/subsidize/incentivize intra-national adoption, as opposed to international adoption, in the interests of minimizing the number of non-adopted kids in the nation.
Yes, I think the highlighted phrase is exactly why I find the preference morally wrong, even if governments try to push such an agenda. Maybe governments should focus on social development and policies that lead to fewer children being abandoned in the first place.
Well, this topic of global justice is very interesting and complex, but without punting completely, let’s just say that it’s not terribly surprising if you find most countries preferring “we get +2, world gets 0” to “we get 0, world gets +4” in many situations! That’s why countries sit back and watch Burma, Darfur, etc., etc., etc. I’m not trying to hide the ball on it, though!!