Sandra Bullock, Transracial Adoption, and the Worship of White Motherhood

Last week, one Hollywood story proved to be big enough to bump Julia Roberts' smiling face off of the cover of People magazine after she was named one of the year's most beautiful people. Sandra Bullock, the 45-year-old Academy Award-winner, had adopted a son in the midst of her messy divorce from a possibly racist cheater.

Little Louis is adorable with his big, dark eyes, curly hair and brown skin. He's African-American and he'll be raised by a white mother. And in a perfect world, this wouldn't be fodder for a clueless mainstream press. But Change.org exists because we don't live in a perfect world. We are constantly confronted with racist, sexist, classist stereotypes, like the one of the perfect White Mother.

Fellow Women's Rights blogger Brandann Hill-Mann recently wrote a great piece titled "The Right Kind of Mother: Intersections of Race and Class and Choice," which spoke of the stereotypical representations of motherhood as viewed through the lens of race and class. The White Mother, if media representations are to be believed, is perfect. She is smart, caring, and classy. She can take a black child who's been ignored by his negligent, crack whore of a black mother and bring out hidden talents. See Bullock's Oscar-winning performance in The Blind Side and Jessica Lange's performance in Losing Isaiah for proof. In fact, this year's crop of Oscar favorites were pretty hard on black motherhood, with top honors going to The Blind Side and Precious, both of which perpetuated favorite stereotypes of black women: the crack whore and the Welfare Queen, sometimes both at the same time.

If this were all relegated to film, it wouldn't be so bad, but the way that we as a society perceive a black woman's ability to rear her children creeps into the real world. The reason why a baby like Louis would even arrive in the arms of Bullock is a perfect example.

Low-income black people often live in bullpen-like neighborhoods of circling police patrol, and thus face much higher arrest and conviction rates than other communities, not because they commit more crimes, but because they are part of a system that sees them as criminals practically from birth. Low-income women come into contact with the court and social workers if they choose to receive social benefits. And even if they are not on social assistance, social workers can intervene at the behest of another adult. Social workers overwhelmingly frown on black mothers and are more likely to snatch kids from their care, as documented in a Center for the Study of Social Policy study. I'm sure that we can all, by now, recite the figure that's been going around: 30% of foster kids are black while only about 15% of Americans are black.

Also, as Lisa Marie Rollins, head of the Adopted & Fostered Adults of the African Diaspora, told CNN, babies like Louis are wanted by black families or even members of his own extended family, but because of inherent racism in the child welfare systems of America, women like Bullock get first dibs.

So Bullock's a hero. While black women are belittled for being single mothers, even if the numbers say that they aren't that much more likely to raise kids alone than other ethnicities, women like Bullock are praised. I call it the altar worship of white motherhood.

For further proof, see how this transracial adoption works when it's reversed. I've never read anything about African-American Lionel Richie and his African-American wife "saving" white-Latino Nicole Richie when they adopted her. And where's the praise for Seal, an African man who is raising a European man's child (Heidi Klum's eldest Leni)? Those adopters are merely parents while Bullock, and other white women who have adopted black children like Madonna, Angelina Jolie, and Jolie Fisher, are saints, worthy of our praise.

Photo credit: Seattle Municipal Archives