I haven't made too much progress on my paper...I have 12 pages now. But, I had a theoretical revelation today that I need to work in. Basically, the opponents of transracial adoption say that it is bad for black children because it doesn't allow them to develop a healthy racial identity. This is one among several critiques. I was thinking about this today and about the trend in race studies to conceptualize race as a social construct, with racial barriers arbitrarily defined. The argument stems from reactions to early theories of race as a biological, genetic, inherent trait. In actuality, this isn't so, and the damage from such theories was so great (eugenics, etc.) that the trend is to move in the other direction. Well, personally, I buy into the whole race as a social construct theory. It just makes sense. It's arbitrary who belongs to certain races. For instance, black skinned Central Americans are "Hispanic" not, black. So, my breakthrough came when I was thinking about the whole racial identity problem. If race is socially and arbitrarily defined, then can't we say the same of racial identity? If we think of racial identity as arbitrary, then there is no reason why a black child can't be raised by a white family and still have a healthy racial identity. Especially when we consider that a "healthy" racial identity doesn't necessarily entail involvement with a whole culture (assuming that there is such a thing as coherent, consistent across time and place, black culture.) Can't a black child find his or her identity just as well in a white family?

Thoughts, anyone?