Abstract

This dissertation uses the case study of U.S. domestic transraciaI adoption to critically examine ideas of race and racial identity as reflected in both personal and political conceptions of self. Methodological tools from political theory, the sociology of race, philosophical race theory, and constitutional law are used to develop a proposal for an adoption policy of true race-neutrality, whereby prospective adopters are prevented from exercising race-based preferences in the selection of adoptive children. This policy of "racial randomization" is intended to expand moral inquiry into adoption beyond adult interests. The legal and social acceptance of race-based adopter choice blinds us to the right of children in need of adoption not to discriminated against on the basis of their racial classification in the process of adoptive placement. States have a legitimate interest in preventing the determination of adoptive placements by the expressed racial preferences of prospective adopters. This government interest flows from two sources: the principle of antidiscrimination, understood as a broad-based moral concept, and the principle of antibiologism, which states that adoptive families are rightly distinguished from biological ones. It follows that race should not be a barrier in the legal and social construction of adoptive families. Race-neutral adoption is nonetheless based in a race-conscious notion of self-identification that I call racial navigation. Racial navigation illuminates transracial adoption as a life-long dialogic process. Transracial adoptees are individuals whose responses to the associations of racial classification and interracial adoptive family life will vary from person to person, as well as within the same person. While placement is important, analyses of adoption must be able to imagine children in need of adoption as potential adults whose life-courses will be complicated by transracial adoption, but not necessarily overwhelmed or diminished as a consequence