The recent rejection of Madonna’s bid to adopt an African child raises, among other things, the issue of cross racial adoption. This was a heated issue in the sixties when the Civil Rights Movement was at its height. With the public recognition of the plight of poor African American children, a number were adopted by well intentioned white families. This brought a furious reaction from some in the African American community who saw such adoption as taking children away from their history and culture. There were many court cases about returning these children to their birth parents. But it was not only African American children. My best friend worked for the Indian Bureau and he and his wife adopted a Navaho child whose mother was an alcoholic and whose father was seldom around and abusive when he was. Two years after the baby’s adoption, a hot headed medicine man convinced the mother to go to court to get her child back. She won the case. It was a tragedy for both my friend and his wife and for the child who was removed from the only parents she knew.

Fortunately, a lot of the heat about cross racial adoption has died down. And the general consensus is that children from bi-racial homes are quite able to construct a healthy sense of personal identity which includes parents who look different than themselves. The issue then becomes the motive for cross racial adoption particularly for children who come from other countries. I could easily understand the adoption of Vietnamese and Korean children after those wars. After all, we were responsible, in part at least, for some of those orphans. And in this country cross racial adoption is a sign of genuine humanity inasmuch as these children are usually the least likely to be chosen.

What is difficult for me to understand is why someone like Madonna would want to adopt an African child. With her money, if she really wanted to help, she could fund a school, (as Oprah did) or a health clinic, either of which would contribute to the health, education and welfare of a number of African children not just one. As it is, her attempt to adopt an African child looks like a publicity stunt, rather than a serious effort to help African children.

And why go to Africa? There are so many African American children in the United States in need of adoptive parents, why not choose from these? I have a dear friend who is Catholic and who is strongly opposed to abortion. But she believes that her anti-abortion stance carries with it a moral obligation. And that obligation is to adopt unwanted children, or orphaned children. In line with that obligation she has adopted four children. This adoptive mother has no use for those whose righteous reaction to abortion ends with marches and recrimination. For her, adoption is the necessary consequence of her opposition to abortion. No one wants abortion, but the anti abortion-movement is one of the reasons, among many others, why we have all too many abandoned and unwanted children in this country. If Madonna wants to adopt a child from another race she might well remember the wise old adage that says, “charity begins at home.”