Whatever Things Are True: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the World of International Adoption

A Moving Story of International Adoption from Malawi...and Madonna

Here's a story that epitomizes the good and beautiful in international adoption. The handsome boy in the picture above is named Vasco. Three years ago, he was an orphan surviving alone on the streets Blantyre, Malawi, and suffering with a heart condition that left him gasping for breath. Then, a chance meeting with journalist Cathleen Falsani and her husband led to medical care, a home and a loving family in the US.

Read Falsani's "Open Letter to Madonna" and prepare to be moved. If you're a crier like me, have your hankie ready.

Must Zahara Be the Poster Child?

Well, Newsweek's Allison Samuels is at it again!! Her recent blog critiquing Zahara Jolie-Pitt's hair generated such a firestorm that she is back again this week defending her position. Samuels says:

For the many African-Americans who wrote in chastising me for speaking ill of Zahara's hair (particularly in a white publication) I challenge you to send in pictures of the little girls in your family with hair that isn't brushed, combed, or put in some sort of style on a regular basis. I must admit NEWSWEEK's photo that ran with my story(a version of which is reprinted above) didn't do much to prove my point. It was one of her better hair days. But pick up any issue of Us or Life and Style magazines, and you'll regularly see photos of this cute little girl, with ruffles on her dress, bracelets on her arm and hair that clearly hasn't been attended to. Unacceptable! For good measure let me say explain once more what I consider unacceptable for a 4-year-old baby: uncombed, unconditioned, and unbrushed. If Zahara were the child of a single mother, frazzled by bills, parenthood, and life, I'd be more understanding. But this is a woman with nannies galore and access to any expert or professional in the business. I maintain if you make the commitment to adopt a child from a different culture and transport them into yet a different culture, there are considerations and provisions that need to be made.

Samuels has a point: white adoptive parents have a responsibility to learn proper black hair care. However, a lot of folks in the blogosphere feel that Samuels is really taking a stance against a natural look . Latoya at Jezebel writes:

No doubt, Zahara Jolie-Pitt is black. But in the global sense of the word, not in the American way Samuels applies in her piece. As many commenters pointed out in our original post about this, Z is not African-American. She was adopted from Ethiopia, and if Ms. Samuels is ever in DC, I would be more than happy to take her down to the U Street Corridor so she can see how many women from Ethiopia wear their hair. (If she wants to look right now, here's some traditional styles - she'll notice that braids, cornrows, curly fros, loose hair, and the Quntcho (represented stateside and elsewhere as a fro-hawk) are all represented. For more contemporary styles, the contestants in the Ethiopian Millennium Pageant also rock a variety of looks.)

Ms. Samuels is applying a uniquely African American framework to a child who does not have that experience.

Now, that doesn't mean Zahara Jolie-Pitt will have a life free of hair struggles. Curly haired readers from across the globe have pointed out their issues with beauty standards and black hair. Which brings me to my next point.

The Black-on-Black Crime That is Hair Policing Has to End

One of things that drives me insane about these conversations is that they are all hair policing. As Samuels writes in her latest piece:

But the actress should know that the next time Zahara asks about hair, it won't be why her hair isn't similar to others in her house. It will be why her hair doesn't look like other brown girls' does.

On a cultural note, I'd like Angelina to also know how much bonding goes on when mothers sit down to comb their daughter's hair; something that happens in almost every culture, but particularly in the African-American community. My fondest memories are of me sitting on the floor as my mother brushed and oiled my hair.

Okay, that's great. Let me ask her this: what happened after those fond memories? The styles of childhood do not continue into our preteen years, the age when black girls normally get their first relaxers. Does she have fond memories of her mother basing her scalp before she applied the chemicals that would straighten her hair? Or is that a ritual that is just understood as a part of growing up? Are her memories scarred with the taunts of other children? My cousins came home crying after being teased about their "beady-beads" and their "kitchens." And who did the taunting? Many times, it was other black students. We need to stop encouraging conformity and hair hatred, because there is a logical end to the path we are walking down. Instead of fighting each other when someone's hair doesn't conform to our specific ideals, wouldn't it make more sense to fight against a racist system that penalizes and politicizes certain hair styles?

I understand where Allison Samuels is coming from -- and I appreciate Latoya's perspective. Meanwhile, little Zahara, who has been cast in the role of celebrity without her consent, is getting turned into a symbol, a poster child. Good parenting, good hair care, standards of beauty, racism -- all things we need to talk about as a society. But again I have to ask, do we have to make one innocent child who already lacks so much privacy the focus of the debate?

In Defense of Madonna...Sort Of

Madonna is usually exhibit B when it comes to the alleged celebrity adoption trend. (Can you guess exhibit A?) So much pop culture baggage is already attached to her public persona; when you factor in the baggage that goes with international adoption, she doesn't stand a chance.

Her Madgesty has been all over the news this week with her trip to Malawi to break ground on the Raising Malawi Girls Academy, a girls' boarding school modeled on Oprah Winfrey's South African school initiative. The star brought along her four children: 12-year-old daughter Lourdes, sons Rocco, 8, and David Banda, 4; and youngest daughter, Mercy James, 3. As the world knows, David and Mercy were adopted from Malawi, despite objections and unsuccessful court challenges from various activist groups. The south African nation does permit adoption by foreigners who live there, but in Madonna's case, residency requirements were waived.

According the the AP, Madonna and her children visited the Home of Hope orphanage where David once lived on Tuesday. The Sun reports that Madonna has recently arranged tutoring in the  Chichewa language for David and Mercy, but this odd story claims that Home of Hope Director Lucy Chipeta said that David "remembers a few words" while  "Mercy is a real white girl"  who can no longer speak her native language. (Most international adoptees lose their first language within four to six months if they don't have ongoing contact with a caregiver who is a native speaker of that language, so Mercy's loss is hardly unique.)

Over 500,000 Malawian children have lost at least one parent, placing them in the "social orphan" category. Both David and Mercy's first mothers are deceased, but both have fathers who are still living.  Madonna has been criticized for  adopting children who were not "true" orphans, though the children were living in institutions when she applied to adopt them. Critics believe she should have provided financial support to the fathers so that they could raise their children themselves. However, in Mercy's case, it appears that her father had no history of contact with her. According to US Magazine, Madonna will meet with the girl's father, James Kambewa, during this visit to "assure Mr. Kambewa that Mercy will not be delinked from her roots." Madonna and little David met with David's father, Yohanne Banda, on a previous visit.

I have a hard time working up any outrage about Madonna's choices, even though I can understand why others do. Would it have been better for her to adopt from a country with an established inter-country adoption program and to follow all of that country's regulations to the letter? Yes, I think so, but that doesn't mean she chose the path she did simply out of celebrity ego. Other Westerners have done the same when circumstances pointed them in that direction.

For example, journalist Neely Tucker and his wife adopted an infant girl from an orphanage in Zimbabwe while he was on assignment there. Their struggle to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles involved in a country that has no international adoption  program whatsoever is chronicled in Neely's memoir, LOVE IN THE DRIEST SEASON.  Tucker is white, so some would be tempted to attach labels like "neocolonialism" to the adoption, but in fact Tucker's wife Vita is African American. She was volunteering in the orphanage when an abandoned baby girl was brought in, weak and covered with hundreds of ant bites. The girl, Chipo, eventually became their adopted daughter. Were the Tuckers wrong to challenge Zimbabwe's laws and cultural norms? I suspect the folks who can't stand Madonna would say yes.

Madonna's image has always had a hard, brittle aspect, even back in her more corn-fed  Boy Toy days; a lot people can't imagine her as caring or tender-hearted (especially if they've seen Truth or Dare). However, when I try to understand Madonna's unlikely path to adoptive motherhood, I always remember that she was once a little girl whose own mother died. She knows what it feels like to lose a parent, to be a motherless child, and I suspect that experience has driven most of her choices around adoption. Nobody but Madonna and her children can know the real story of their lives together, but I'm willing to cut her a little slack. She's maintaining David and Mercy's ties to Malawi. She is maintaining contact with their first families. She didn't change their names. She's promoting education and other development initiatives in Malawi. She's not letting preteen Lola party in NYC nightclubs like so many celebrity parents. She never badmouths her children's fathers in the press. I'll direct my outrage someplace else.

Malawian Theatre Troop Skewers Madonna at the Fringe Festival

There's a lot to say about Madonna and adoption, but for now just take a look at this news item. Madonna's recent adoption of four-year-old Mercy James from Malawi has been turned into a musical with an all-African cast at Scotland's Fringe Festival. The actor who dons a blonde wig to play Her Madgesty claims Madonna heckled him when he performed in another show for her in Malawi. He claims she said, "money is the answer to everything."

BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Edinburgh, East and Fife | Madonna adoption saga on Fringe.