Birthmarks

Can White parents teach their Black children African American culture and history? Can they impart to them the survival skills necessary to survive in the racially stratified United States? Concerns over racial identity have been at the center of controversies over transracial adoption since the 1970s, as questions continually arise about whether White parents are capable of instilling a positive sense of African American identity in their Black children.
"[An] empathetic study of meanings of cross-racial adoption to adoptees"
—Law and Politics Book Review, Vol. 11, No. 11, Nov. 2001
Through in-depth interviews with adult transracial adoptees, as well as with social workers in adoption agencies, Sandra Patton, herself an adoptee, explores the social construction of race, identity, gender, and family and the ways in which these interact with public policy about adoption. Patton offers a compelling overview of the issues at stake in transracial adoption. She discusses recent changes in adoption and social welfare policy which prohibit consideration of race in the placement of children, as well as public policy definitions of "bad mothers" which can foster coerced aspects of adoption, to show how the lives of transracial adoptees have been shaped by the policies of the U.S. child welfare system.
Neither an argument for nor against the practice of transracial adoption, BirthMarks seeks to counter the dominant public view of this practice as a panacea to the so-called "epidemic" of illegitimacy and the misfortune of infertility among the middle class with a more nuanced view that gives voice to those directly involved, shedding light on the ways in which Black and multiracial adoptees articulate their own identity experiences.

Sandra Patton-Imani is an Associate Professor of American Studies at Drake University, where she teaches Anthropology, Sociology, and Women’s Studies. She is a former postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from University of Maryland, College Park in American Studies with a graduate certificate in Women’s Studies. She earned a B.A. in Radio/TV/ Film and American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. She is the author of BirthMarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America, New York University Press 2000, as well as numerous scholarly articles on adoption, race, gender, and family. She and her spouse Melanie Patton-Imani, created the documentary, Sophie Has Five Mothers, based on this research conducted for this book.

Maxine Baca Zinn,Michigan State University:
A compelling mixture of voices and social analysis . . . required reading for anyone seriously interested in adoption and families in a multiracial world.

Howard Winant,Temple University:
BirthMarks clarifies the complexities of transracial adoption, but it does much more than this. Sandra Patton's detailed and sensitive research helps us understand the depths of racial identity itself. The lesson here is that racial identity is not something given, but something achieved. This resonates not just for the adoptees Patton studies, but for us all. It suggests immense possibilities for resisting racism. Transcending the simplistic ‘pro vs. con' debate about transracial adoption, Patton strives to present racial formation as a highly nuanced process of becoming oneself.

[An] empathetic study of meanings of cross-racial adoption to adoptees.