Overseas adoptions rise -- for black American children

[suranyi]

@Maastricht

Most Dutch speaking blacks in the Netherlands are assumed to be Surinams, and those are fully integrated third-generation immigrants from a Dutch speaking, Dutch cultured colony. So yes, integrated.

There are a couple of groups of more recent black immigrants that have more integration problems, but theit numbers are small enough not to make a blip on most racist-leaning people.

Currently, our Dutch racists are so hung up on Muslims and Arabs, that, for the time being, they totally forgot about being racist and hostile to blacks. (It helps that half our star soccer players are black).
Quite often, they even say: " I’m not racist, I’ve got nothing against blacks. But those towel heads…"

And there is a considerable part of the Dutch who think black children, especially mixed ones and especially pretty ones, are stunningly beautiful. If you look at kids models advertisements aimed at kids and parents (for toys, clothing, etc) a large percentage (larger then in the population in general) is black/mixed. Well integrated kids of mixed race are considered cool here.

Well, I do think that Ranomi Kromowidjojo, the Olympic gold medal swimmer, is very pretty. She is of Dutch-Javanese-Surinamese descent.

[FeAudrey]

@Blackberry

Susan has no idea what she’s talking about, which is probably not unusual coming from crack-addicted prostitute felons.

For example, she seems not to have noticed that we just re-elected a biracial man as President …

[lavenderviolet]

@monstro

I hope she’s got her life turned around. For her daughter’s sake, at least.

For the record, the article makes it sound like she did finally get her life together in the years since her son was adopted:

In Florida, Susan has been out of prison and sober for four years. She works several jobs, has an apartment and is raising her three-year-old daughter with her fiancée, the girl’s father.
She and her American family stay in touch with her son, now 7, and his adoptive family in the Netherlands. They send DVDs and photo albums, and traveled to the U.S. in 2011 and again this February. Susan’s daughter, the one who rejected her son before his birth, has even had a change of heart. “She doesn’t care about the race anymore,” Susan said. “She loves her brother.”

It’s not always easy for Susan to see photos of the son she gave up. “There’s always something missing. There’s always something gone but I am glad I get to see him growing up. Yes, I am.”
And she loves the boy’s adoptive parents, especially his mother. "I love her to death. She is just… she’s his mom, and that’s amazing to watch.
“I don’t want girls to be scared,” Susan said of other birth mothers considering giving their children up for adoption. "This isn’t an ending. It’s a beginning. For me, I thought it was the end of the world, and it wasn’t.
“I never thought it would be like this.”

[lavenderviolet]

@Maastricht

And there is a considerable part of the Dutch who think black children, especially mixed ones and especially pretty ones, are stunningly beautiful. If you look at kids models advertisements aimed at kids and parents (for toys, clothing, etc) a large percentage (larger then in the population in general) is black/mixed. Well integrated kids of mixed race are considered cool here.

I think that’s really refreshing. It does sound like the attitudes there are more positive than most of the US, to me personally.

[Blackberry]

@lavenderviolet

I think that’s really refreshing. It does sound like the attitudes there are more positive than most of the US, to me personally.

You can’t be serious. There are multiracial kid models all over the place in the U.S. too. I can’t even begin to count how many people suggested I get my multiracial daughter into modeling, and yes she was an adorable baby, but so are like a billion other babies.

[tesseract]

@Blackberry

You can’t be serious. There are multiracial kid models all over the place in the U.S. too. I can’t even begin to count how many people suggested I get my multiracial daughter into modeling, and yes she was an adorable baby, but so are like a billion other babies.

Same here, with my son. Although personally I think he actually was the cutest of those billion.

[Maastricht]

@Blackberry

You can’t be serious. There are multiracial kid models all over the place in the U.S. too.

Oh? That surprises me. And are those “token colored models” or “everybody wants to have a golden tan, white teeth and cool shiny dark ringlet curls, even white people”-models? Are they, relative to the percentage of blacks in the US (10 % IIRC) over or underrepresented?

Because if so, then indeed those kid models doesn’t necessarily mean anything about racism.

Or, my personal pet theory: whites actually think a colored skin is beautiful, and some tend to patronize colored people. So, if a colored person fits that role (being a kid or a young docile female or a clownish or magic negro) our attitude fits and we can find them attractive. However, when such a black person is in any way intimidating, the perceived difference becomes “other ness” and the “otherness” becomes “scary”, mixed in with feeling uneasy, maybe guilty, about being scared, and that is where discrimination sets in.

If that is true, it indeed doesn’t mean anything wrt racism if a country has a lot of multiracial models.

[Blackberry]

@tesseract

Same here, with my son. Although personally I think he actually was the cutest of those billion.

My baby was obviously objectively the cutest baby in the world But yeah, everyone says “mixed babies are the cutest!”. They aren’t. Most babies are cute.

[lavenderviolet]

Oh yeah, a lot of Americans do like light-skinned biracial kids. I guess I was more thinking of how dark skinned African Americans are viewed here. It sounded like there is not as much prejudice about seeing the beauty of dark skinned people of African descent over there.