The Ethics of Transracial Adoption

Rating:
Summary: A Refreshing Take
Review: An excellent read! Fogg-Davis brings refreshing analytic rigor, sensitivity, and penetrating philosophical insights to the controversial topic of transracial adoption. By mining political theory, the author brings a new lens to bear on an issue that has been mired in predicatable policy debates and an increasingly unimaginative therapeutic literature. Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the book is the author's ability to imagine and accord senstivity to the positions of children, parents, and the various groups that have a stake in this issue. Her deep philosophical reflections furnish more insights on race, social identity, and the predicaments of transracial adoptive families than most interview-based studies. Anyone who cares about the issue of transracial adoption and the dilemma of race in the United States should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Interesting and Insightful
Review: This is a wonderful book! As someone with personal experience with transracial adoption, I found the book very insightful in trying to sort through some of the difficult issues at stake in what is usually an emotionally charged debate over whether whites have what it takes to raise black children. The author is an academic-a political theorist-and she is clear and upfront about the parameters of her project: she describes her use of transracial adoption as a "case study" for examining the racial assumptions we all bring to social life in America, including the way we build our families and interact with each other. Most people want simple answers to America's race problem. This book is brave enough to discuss the complexity of navigating and negotiating racial categories, taking an extremely intellectually challenging route. This is not a book of personal stories, but rather a serious philosophical meditation on the "ethics" of the racial decisions we make in our private and public lives.

If you want a serious and well-balanced discussion of race and adoption definitely buy this book. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: This was an incredibly disappointing book. It isn't even about transracial adoption--it's all about theorizing about race. The author talks about her theory of "racial navigation" as if she invented the idea! And you can't get a handle on what she's really talking about because it is totally removed from the reality of transracial adoptees' lives. If she had ever talked to someone who lived the situation she might realize that regardless of what she calls it, people are always doing it. I mean, if you are black and you have white parents and you've grown up around white people then you have no choice but to figure out how to "navigate" that. It isn't some great revelation that she bestows on us. It's a lot of pontificating supposedly about ethical choices adoptive parents make, but all she really talks about in that sense is whether or not it is racist for white parents to choose to adopt white kids. This is not a useful discussion. Don't waste money on this book.