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- Title
"When I Go to Heaven, I'll Be White": The Ethics of Transracial Adoption Within the Context of Childhood Trauma and Racial Identity Development.
- Authors
Lewis, Marva L.; Norwood, Rhonda G.
- Abstract
This article explores the identity development of young children of color growing up in transracial adoptive homes. The authors present the story of a 6-year-old child with a history of severe trauma and how this trauma shaped her understanding of race and identity. After her eighth foster placement, the child's play and talk became increasingly self-deprecating of her black skin color, leading to concerns that the child had begun to equate her movement from her previous foster homes with the fact that she was Black. The article concludes with a discussion of the need for a relationship-focused, strengths-based, ecological systems approach to evaluate ethical issues of racial identity formation within a sequelae of childhood trauma and placement into a multicultural family.
- Subjects
ATTITUDE (Psychology); BLACK people; CHILD development; FAMILIES; GROUP identity; INTERRACIAL adoption; CULTURAL pluralism; RACE; WOUNDS &; injuries
- Publication
Zero to Three, 2019, Vol 40, Issue 1, p12
- ISSN
0736-8038
- Publication type
Article