Would-Be Adopters Are Praying for the Destruction of Families

On Thursday, in a 7-2 vote, the Supreme Court voted to keep the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) intact, in response to an evangelical Christian family fighting for the right to adopt children from Indigenous families. ICWA was passed in 1978 to protect Indigenous families that were being forcibly removed from their communities and deprived of ties to their native culture.

In 2018, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen argued that, because of the ICWA, they were experiencing reverse racism, because they were told they could not adopt the Indigenous child they were fostering. Although every person attempting to foster Native children is educated on ICWA—and are specifically warned that they will not have first rights to adopt Indigenous children—this Christian family believed they should be the exception.

As an adoption educator, I have worked with thousands of adoptive parents adopting cross-culturally, and seen many white adoptive families unintentionally harming BIPOC children that were adopted into their care.

Read more at The Daily Beast.