Wednesday, Aug 20, 2008
Are camps for foreign adoptees just a place for their parents to exorcise white guilt, or do they help the kids develop pride, cope with prejudice and get in touch with their roots?
Aug 12, 2002 | It's a humid Friday at the YMCA of the Rockies, and the afternoon activities at East Indian Heritage Camp are just getting underway. In a windowless conference room, a group of third-graders -- all adopted, all born in India -- are sitting on the floor watching a video called "Families in India" while chewing on pretzels. On the TV screen, a little Indian boy is explaining how his family makes dinner, as his mother sits on her haunches over an open fire and shapes naan bread with her hands. If the kids are aware that this is the modest life they might be living had circumstances been different -- if they hadn't been given up for adoption, if they had stayed in India -- their faces don't show it. They fidget and fiddle, paying very little attention to the domestic drama onscreen. In this group, self-awareness appears -- at least for the moment -- to be limited to immediate needs.
"We want more pretzels!" they cry out to their counselor.
Last year, 19,237 children were adopted from foreign countries and brought to the United States -- nearly triple the number of foreign adoptions just 10 years ago. Babies brought to the States from abroad -- many of them from Southeast Asia, Latin America, Russia and India -- now total nearly 15 percent of all adoptions in this country. Foreign adoption has become enough a part of American life to be the subject of at least one heartwarming advertisement for digital cameras (a couple in an airplane pose with their Asian baby). Tabloids and glossies regularly feature the stories of celebrities who have "imported" infants for adoption.
But as common as they have become, these adoptions are still controversial. The trend still rankles some Americans and raises questions for others, including those who study the growing phenomenon.
Why adopt foreign children when there are so many children awaiting adoption in the United States? Is it a good idea to take a child from her native country? Can an "ethnic" child be raised by white parents without becoming emotionally mired in issues related to their differences? How, for instance, does a white parent help a child of color deal with racism? These questions don't just come from those who observe the trend of foreign adoption with detached interest; they are typical of adopting families who find themselves raising kids from other countries in communities that are not prepared to deal with them -- the parents or the children.
So compelling -- and troubling -- are the issues related to foreign adoption, that an entire cottage industry has emerged to guide families through the process, providing advice during the adoption phase and help -- for parents and, eventually, the children -- thereafter. There are adoption therapists and genetic counselors who will "pre-screen" potential adoptees; there are local support groups for parents and kids; there is a flotilla of self-help books, Web sites and magazines; and there are companies that offer families guided trips back to the countries where their children were born.
Then there are the heritage camps.
Heritage camps are an early, and now pervasive, by-product of the international adoption phenomenon. Every summer, across the country, families with adopted kids converge on dozens of camps like Colorado's East Indian Heritage Camp, for an education in the culture, crafts and ceremonies of their "indigenous" countries. The Colorado Heritage Camp company alone offers camps for kids from Korea, Russia, the Philippines, Latin America, Vietnam, China and East India, as well as, incongruously, an African-American camp. In activity-filled weekend workshops, organizers say their goal is to give adopted kids a way to reclaim a lost, forgotten or maligned ethnic heritage, while providing a community of peers to get in touch with and discuss issues of racism and acceptance.
But the annual East Indian Heritage Camp weekend demonstrates a curious disconnect between the goals of its organizers and the needs of the campers. The pretzel-munching third-graders -- along with all the other kids, age 3 through 17 who arrive here with their parents -- come across as typical American kids whose "issues" have little to do with ethnic identity and more to do with predictable developmental hassles. The point of the camp is to deal with the kids' differences, to address issues of identity and assimilation. Yet, in a lot of cases, the kids seem to have coped with, or not yet encountered, those problems. The young ones want pretzels; the older ones want to go home, be with their friends and hone their coolness.
It is tempting to conclude that the camps, rather than resolving existing concerns, are addressing imaginary dilemmas dreamed up by concerned, culturally conscious adults. For the kids, the cultural education is cursory, at best; most seem to enjoy the weekend -- camp is camp, after all. Some experts argue that simply being around peers will have a positive long-term impact for adopted children, although no one has really proven that. Others warn that by emphasizing differences, the kids can become aware of, and be dogged by, concerns and fears that they didn't have before camp. But for the parents, the benefits are clear. Heritage weekends provide relief and support to parents with adopted kids who feel isolated and vulnerable in communities where their families are different; and worried about the impact of differences between them and their adopted children.
As Samir Tailor, a 34-year-old Indian camp counselor, puts it: "It's almost more about helping the parents than about helping the kids. Being from white America, they don't have to go through these [race] issues, but the tables are turned here. For the parents it's more educational, but for the kids it's more social."
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