Thread by @rebel19

My memoir Surviving the White Gaze, which came out earlier this year, is not just my story about the enduring trauma of being adopted into a white family, but an excavation of the chillingly foundational dynamic of transracial adoption in America. 1/1

Amy Coney Barrett's callous suggestion that birthmothers just gestate children and then give them up for adoption is sadly emblematic of that foundational dynamic. That she is an adoptive mother of two Black children all the more so.

If her remarks don't awaken you to the potential repercussions of continuing this dynamic without a rigorous interrogation of how transracial adoption works — please reconsider, and spend some time thinking about it.

If #ColinInBlackAndWhite didn't make you think about the collateral damage of ill-prepared white adoptive parents, the half of which I'm quite sure we didn't even see in this very poignant series — please reconsider, and spend some time thinking about it.

Amy Coney Barrett in her stance here alone has already damaged the psyches of her Black adoptive children — has already made them feel like their origin stories were transactional, that she saved them from heartless Black vessel.

Barrett is the White Gaze incarnate, but she is not the only form of it — my adoptive white parents are well-intentioned, liberal, educated people. They created what they thought was an idyllic world, but it was through THEIR gaze, which meant a race-less existence.

The casual nonchalance of this thinking, the sheer staying power of their obtusity, is what I continue to grapple with — which they can either choose to engage with or not. White adoptive parents can CHOOSE to engage with the borderline racist dynamic of transracial adoption.

I am not anti-adoption. I have always maintained this. Love is love. I get it. But if there was ever a time to reexamine the longterm repercussions of white parents/people making choices on behalf of Black children who will grow up to be Black adults, it's now.

For those who have asked (and those who have not), here's a link to buy my book from @Bookshop_Org —
bookshop.org/books/survivin…