Race‐Conscious Adoption Choices, Multiraciality, and Color‐blind Racial Ideology

Abstract

Analysis of interview data illustrates how White adoptive parents rationalize choices regarding adoptee race. Parents who were willing to adopt children of color stressed unwillingness to adopt Black children. The preference for adopting multiracial children goes against the prevalent method of racial classification, hypodescent, by defining multiracial as distinct from Black, assuming that multiracial children would not experience racism. Those who adopted children of color also relied on racial classifications of hypodescent and challenged color‐blind ideology by recognizing the importance of race. They also defined race in terms of perceived race versus birth parent racial identity. Findings have implications for how agencies, social workers, and counselors portray various groups as well as prepare, counsel, and support adoptive and multiracial families.