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Syndicate
Aye, but would it really be that different to take a white child out of a slum in eastern Europe and transplant them into the pseudo-reality that super-rich celebrities live in?
I'll certainly agree that it needs to be dealt with more carefully. But I won't assume that every couple that is considering international adoption is doing it out of some twisted sense of white supremacy.
hey, you ain't gonna see me adopting a child, period, any time soon. I know what I'm capable of doing and not capable of doing and in the "not capable" is taking on the task of raising a child and doing right by that child, and doubly so if that child is from another country.
So your extrapolation from my post is a tad unwarranted, IMO, and misunderstands the point that transnational adoptions face a hurdle that I'm not sure all people going into such adoptions have fully taken into account.
and received this response:
To which the blogger responds:
My Son is a foreigner post on Resist Racism blog
I fail to see how this relates to the adoption/abduction of minors.
I also don't think this is the place for RACIST talk about purity of race. FYI we all belong to one race the human race. We are all decendants of Africans. Our African ancestors have taught us for ages that we are all one big family. Western-whitesupremacy has stipped that out of the culture/religion etc. Modern science is beginning to rediscover those links through our genes.
Lets get back to the topic at hand!! Feel free to start another thread if you want to discuss issues of trans-racial/cultural relationships.
The whitesupremacist pattern of adducting children has a long history, and our native brothers adn sister can atest to the fact that its still going on.
Well meaning privilledged few, who destroy our cultures, and steal our children are still doing their harm regardless of if they mean well.
I think its important for there to be more thought about the well being of the children and the communities as a whole. Instead of just going out to "save" us from ourselves. Not to mention the fact that the amount of money/resouces spent on one child, could benefit an entire community.
More resources can be spent to change and challenge the forces that created the poverty in the first place.
"You stick a 10inch blade in me, pull it out 5inchs .. and want me to aknowledge your progress!! how about you take the knife out and stop stabing us? " .. i forget who said that.
Go in peace and may the truth set you free .. We know the lies are keeping us in bondage!!!
This is the quote:
“If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.”
By Malcolm X
Here is an excellent resource site for those who are concerned about the racist underpinnings of transracial adoptions. An excerpt that gives you a sense of where they stand:
Transracial Abductees
My eldest daughter plans to adopt a child, probably from China or India, in the future and she ticks none of the above boxes. For a start, she is not white. She has grown up in a mixed-race family and lives in a multi-cultural community, and is well aware of the need to understand the cultural background of a transnational adoptee and the importance of making the child aware of his/her origins in a positive manner. She and her husband are not rich and will have to save, probably for several years, to afford the very large fees involved. Far from "buying" a child from a poor family, the fees go mainly to pay for the assessment of potential adopters and also for legal fees and a donation to the Chinese orphanage. My daughter would obviously prefer the entire amount to go to the orphanage but that is not the way the system works.
The system is also very slow, so anyone wanting to adopt a tiny baby will be disappointed. Even if the child is a baby when the process begins, they will be at least two years old, and probably much older, by the time they join their new family. In my daughter's case, the process may be slightly quicker as she intends to adopt a child with special needs, i.e. a physical or mental disability, but the child will probably be at least three years old by the time they adopt him/her. Not everyone insists on a "perfect" baby - many "third world" children with special needs have been adopted by foreigners.
Some of the above posts compare transnational adoption to the practice of removing indigenous people from their families to be raised in white communities. However, this comparison overlooks the fact that transnational adoptees are not being taken from their families. They have been abandoned, often due to poverty but almost always due to gender and/or disability, and are leaving behind not a loving family but an orphanage where their chances of survival are slim, their chances of healthy physical and psychological development even less.
I should point out that my daughter and her husband are not considering a transnational adoption as a "second best" alternative to having children of their own. They have three biological children and are motivated by the wish to offer the chance of a better life to an abandoned child whose future would otherwise be extremely bleak. It is all very well to moralise from the comforts of one's own privileged existence but the fact remains that unwanted children are suffering and dying at this moment from poverty, sickness and, in some countries, a deliberate policy of neglect which often has fatal results. In many countries, including China, the mortality rate amongst abandoned children is horrifying - but even if they survive, what sort of life will they have? For millions of children, life means a childhood in an institution (where there is neither the money, the staff nor the will to care for them) followed by an adult life on the streets, as beggars or prostitues. India, for instance, is imploring people to adopt some of its 11 million unwanted children (90% of them girls) to save them from this fate, or the even worse one of infanticide.
The prospects for a child with special needs are even grimmer. If some children can be given a way out of this, is that to be condemned?
Of course, it isn't the answer for all the children in the developing world. In the long-term, there must be political, social and economic changes to allow the children of developing nations a better existence. In the short-term, there is a need for help such as financial support and practical assistance - in fact, you will find that several of the charities working in, for instance, the Chinese orphanages have been started by adoptive families who, having travelled to an orphanage to meet their adoptive child, become involved with the lives of all the children there. These people are fund-raising and working to improve the conditions in these institutions. As well as saving to pay the fees for a future adoption, my daughter and son-in-law sponsor two children and my daughter is saving enough money to pay for herself to go to China and work as a volunteer (for a short period of time whilst her husband looks after their own children) in a Chinese orphanage.
If an unwanted, abandoned child facing a short, impoverished life in an institution can be offered not only material comforts and an education but love, attention and a welcoming family - a mother and father but also brothers, sisters, grandparents and all the rest - is that such a bad thing?
I suppose that some of you will say "Yes" - but, if I was in that child's situation, I know which option I would take.
I can tell that this issue is one close to your heart, and it sounds like your daughter is a very compassionate person. But, you should note that this thread is specifically about White transracial adoption of babies of colour--there are no assumptions. Obviously, POC adopt as well, but these incidents are not as fraught as when whites adopt transracially.
At the heart of the issue is Western assumptions that we know "what's best" for Chinese orphans. In my opinion, this colonialism represents the similarity to Aboriginal residential schooling: plucking FN children from their cultural context to give them the psychological and physical development white Canadians feel would be better for them.
You say that if the choice was up to you, you would pick adoption as a child. But, this is the critical issue. The choice is emphatically not up to you, and there is no way for you to make the decision from the child's perspective. Why do you think that someone cannot experience love, psychological development and happiness in the third world? Why do you think you are the person to deliver it? Why is adoption a better option for concerned Westerners than improving health and orphanage facilities in these countries?
I cannot judge your daughter's case, but the cultural and mental baggage that comes with transracial adoption is highly problematic, and the inevitable difficulty most adoptees will experience as they develop a coherent identity as they mature--having no cultural context to deal with their difference--will prove a significant barrier to the growth, development and support adopters plan to give their new child.
Clearly, many babblers are staunchly against transracial adoption for these reasons, and others listed above, particularly by white, affluent Westerners (readL Madonna, Angelina Jolie, etc.) but the purpose of this thread is not to judge compassionate people like your daughter, but to explore why transracial adoption poses such a problem, and to offer alternative solutions in improving the potential life and happiness of impoverished third-world orphans.
This combined with poverty issues play a huge role in the legalized abduction of children. Even in situations where people are acquiring children of the same race as their own, poverty and lack of options on the part of the mother is a major factor in obtaining "consent". Given that people of colour generally and overwhelmingly have less economic clout than those who are white, the whole undertaking of adoption becomes about the poor (often people of colour) meeting the demand for children for the wealthy of the world.
Of course the babies in question are not able to make a choice - children never are, which is why so many of them throughout the world end up living in situations not of their own choice. In the case of children in orphanages, it is generally accepted that children need to grow up in families, not institutions. If they can be adopted by people in their own country, fine - but, looking at the situation realistically, how often does this happen? In China, for instance, the vast numbers of unwanted children are due to the combined influence of a traditional preference for sons, plus the effects of the "one child policy". Who, in China, is going to adopt these rejected little girls? In India, the government is worried about the infanticide rate for newborn girls - either drowned, buried alive or choked to death on raw rice - and is encouraging mothers to abandon their unwanted daughters at institutions. Who, in India, is going to adopt these millions of unwanted little girls?
Transnational adoption can't solve the problem, it can only make a tiny dent in it. As I said in my previous post, there must be economic, political and social changes. Poverty is the root cause of the abandonment of babies but social customs play a part too. China, for instance, probably can't afford to abandon its one-child policy and must therefore encourage parents to value daughters as highly as sons. India needs a pension system which means that people are not reliant on sons in their old age, and needs to put more effort into stamping out the demands for dowry, which is one reason why the birth of a girl is dreaded.
However, this is no consolation to a baby in an orphanage today. Of course a child can experience love and happiness in a third world country and I'm sure that millions of them do - within their families. These children, however, are not in loving families. Their families have abandoned them and they are living - and dying, in large numbers - in institutions. At best, they will have a deprived life with no loving parent. At worst, they will be left to die of malign neglect. If a few of them can be offered loving homes, I think it's a good thing and not to be condemned.
I'm well aware of the tragedies that have come from the widespread adoption of FN children from outside their communities.
My mild concern has been with the terminology of "trans-racial adoption" so I'm glad Taramati has added another perspective.
If a person in the FN community adopts a child of FN parents, then even if the adopter is only half FN ancestry, that's not a problem, I'm sure.
However, if a close friend of ours, who is one-eighth FN ancestry but has no ties to any FN community, had thought of adopting a FN child, she would have been concerned about the implications for the child.
In between, I know a young woman who decided, after a long story, to move back to her FN territory. They had been urging her to, although she looks quite "white" to my ignorant eyes (I don't know if she is one-quarter FN ancestry, or what.) If she adopted a FN child and then moved away again, I hope she would keep the child in touch with his or her origins, but given her history, maybe not. Would that be abduction?
And then there's a Toronto woman I know who is one-half FN ancestry and one-half Trinidadian (and I can't tell you the proportions of racial ancestry in that half). She identifies herself as a Trini. If she adopted a FN child and raised him or her in Toronto with no contact with the community of birth origin -- which I doubt she would -- would that be abduction?
As the saying goes, all generalizations are dangerous, including this one.
But I have the impression -- which Makwa might elaborate on -- that the massive adoptions of FN children by white couples reflected Canada's failure to pay for decent living conditions and services, including social services, in FN communities, so that they were unable to find home within the community for such children. Blaming those communities for that failure, and blaming the adopting parents for filling that gap, would be wrong, wouldn't it?
Actually Taramati, there is a fairly well evolved model for understanding racism which holds just that; that racism is inherently based on and stems from societal power imbalance, and that white society is at the pinnacle of the power pyramid. This puts much blame for the worlds ills, and I can see the point, on what may loosely be termed as post colonialist messes. Further, as colonialism goes, it's not always post, but in the present. This may be further exacerbated by well intentioned yet ham handed efforts of the western world to fix what they broke. Trouble is, it's too much of a stretch for them to say they don't know how.
So that's the model. Personally, I've found it to be a useful tool for understanding as far as it goes. All models fall down, and therin lies the ongoing challenge of expanding it or coming up with a more embracing one. Merely defending a model to the death is seldom helpful.
So, while we may accept that racism is not a two way street, and argue successfully against reverse racism, misunderstanding of the motives and intentions of an individual is most certainly a two way street. Stereotyping white adoptive parent in my mind comes under this heading, at least from what I've read here. There can be a real wonderful human being with much to offer another human being crying out from under all those layers of privlige, layers of which they may be fully aware.
Actually what I personally see going on here is people engaging in systems advocacy, on a fairly mega level, and others looking at individual advocacy, which works differently. These groups are talking past eachother. In my job I do both, but more of the latter.
That a society should be able to rear it's own young in a pro social manner and meet all the developmental needs of the young person is self evident. Where this breaks down, creating circumstances where that society may heal and fix itself should be paramount. That precludes saying "wow you're screwing up, we'll just come in and take your final generation, making them like us because we're so great." The example of the treatment of First Nations in this country is most apt, and I fully understand why FN posters here are the first to bristle at seeing this happen to others.
Then there are individual kids living in this society. They are not social models. They are real humans deserving all the dignity and chance at life the world can give them. Each one is:
a) like no other person
b) like some other people
c) like all other people
The anti-racism model focusses much on 'b', for the good reason that that has presented the biggest problem, relating as it does to the cultural/ethnic aspect of ourselves. Any family which can balance the three factors in relating to their members can be successful in the presence of any ethnic diversity.
I'd like to look at the child who is like no other people just now, because I know of a few such adoptions. Baby x is recieving medical treatment as she spent most of her first year wrapped tightly in blankets so she couldn't move around much. This was for management reasons. She recieved little interaction with others. She's coming along fine now. I don't believe this kid was hard done by by this process. Her parents will do fine. the society from which she came was I suppose doing the best they could with what they have, but a confluence of events, including a Canadian adoptive couple served to meet this kids needs.
Others of course are going to run into problems. You can have good people well prepared for the experience, bad people well prepared, etc. etc. This does not mean that such adoptions are of themselves a social evil.
Taramati, I like your posts so far.
[ 09 July 2007: Message edited by: oldgoat ]
Isn't it something like 2.7 billion people in the world live on $2 a day or less?
Resources are limited, even for wealthy western countries. And, westerners would rather have generous middle-class social programs for themselves rather than do anything substantive and lasting for those truly in need.
Edited to ask if you have a link or authors' names/book titles of the model you mentioned.
[ 09 July 2007: Message edited by: Will S ]
You have repeatedly attempted to link the treatment of people (such as FN and, I presume, the indigenous people of countries such as Australia) who were forcibly removed from their families to be raised in white communities and the situation of transnational adoption. However, this is a false analogy. These children are not being removed from their families - they have been abandoned and they are being raised in institutions. Children need to be raised in families - do you agree? Yes, ideally they should be with their birth families, but their families do not want them. Yes, the next best solution would be adoption in their own country, but a country which has, for instance, 10 million unwanted little girls is not suddenly going to find 10 million families wanting to adopt a daughter. Yes, perhaps the situation will change for the better in the future, but what is to be done right now for those children who are in need at this very moment?
I do not think I have to repeat what I have already said on the importance of social, financial and political changes and the fact that transnational adoption can only make the tiniest dent in a vast wall of suffering. The number of orphans and abandoned children worldwide is truly horrific - if you doubt me, check out UNICEF's website, for a start - and it is fairly clear that, having neither political nor economic influence, their welfare comes very low on the list of global priorities as far as the world's political leaders are concerned. Do you think the welfare of the poorest, least regarded children in the world - outcast even from their own families - is going to be suddenly moved to the top of the agenda? No, me neither.
No-one adopting a child from an institution in a developing country is kidding themselves that this is the answer to all problems, or that they're saving the world. All they are doing is offering one kid a chance of a better life. If you want to draw an analogy, the closest comparison is with people who move to more affluent regions to improve their situation. I have no problem with economic migration - I can fully understand the reasons which motivate people to cross borders in search of a better standard of living for themselves and their families. In a sense, the children brought out of countries such as China, India, etc are economic migrants. There is no doubt that their standard of living will be raised, including for many of them access to medical care which they would not receive if they remained in the institutions. However, they are getting more than material advantages - they get a family life, with the love and attention any child needs to enable it to prosper. Instead of complaining so much about adoptions, it might be more fruitful to consider the plight of the 99% of unwanted children condemned to live - and, all too often, die - in those institutions.
Not every adoption, whether national or transnational, is successful. If it comes to that, not everyone who rears their own biological children makes a wonderful job of it! However, with intelligence and sensitivity, issues of race and identity can be handled in a way that makes a child proud of their background and yet comfortable within the community where they live. And that is something which I do know about, from personal experience.
And, by the way, this is the first time I've ever been called a white supremacist! Many other things in my time...and I'm an old lady now...but never that! Just goes to show that you know nothing about me and mine.
[ 10 July 2007: Message edited by: Taramati ]
While this is probably true in some cases, I'd be careful with the term 'unwanted.' Sometimes these kids are put in institutions because their parents simply can't afford to raise them - that doesn't say anything about not wanting to have them, just not having the material means to raise them (something that is a larger comment on the inequality involved here). Just my opinion.
I read Makwa's statement not as accusing you of being a white supremacist, but that supporting the concept of "reverse racism" simultaneously supported the cause of white supremacy. I certainly know you're no white supremacist, and I suspect Makwa does too, but I agree that the notion of "reverse racism" is faulty equivalency logic, to the tune of sexism against men or "heterophobia." They're absurd, based on the way racism functions in our society.
Your points are all reasonable, of course, Taramati, but what do you make of the overwhelming tendency to adopt babies, rather than toddlers or adolescents? Above, bcg suggested that this impulse was based in a narcissistic desire to impose one's self on another rather than a real desire to help another, different soul. I am not accusing you or your daughter of this, but how would you respond to that suggestion?
And, moreover, how do you respond to the fact that it is Western colonialism and economic repression that produces a climate of unwanted pregnancies and impoverished social welfare? Doesn't a transracial adoption alleviate, perhaps unjustly, the responsibility Westerners share for the individual situation you hope to remedy? Kind of like buying carbon offsets while driving private jets and setting tire fires?
That said, I respect any serious efforts that individuals make to make life better for our children. It's hard to judge any individual case (except in the case of Madonna. Then it's easy.) I think what you keep stubbing your toe against is that, as oldgoat pointed out, this discussion began on the general trend of transracial adoption, while for you, it's obviously very personal. I don't know if I'd ever adopt, but I know that I, personally, am ill-equipped to deal with the cultural baggage that would accompany a third-world child, and would fear doing more harm than good. Of course, these fears accompany biological child births, so what am I to do?
We are analysing the overwhelming number of White families adopting Chinese and other kids of other cultures.
Well meaning western people have done great damage and continue to do great damage to cultures globally.
There are so many issues that don't come into the western consciousness. Its viertually impossible to fully appreciate the cross cultural things that Eurocentric/colonial minds will miss.
I agree with Catchfire, I don't think you were being called a white supremacist.
FYI It's a common miss conceptaion when discoussing race issues to assume one has to be white to be a white supremacist. It's unfortunate but true, some of the white supremacist/Eurocentrics are not white.
The concept of "it takes a village to raise a child" is something that is not fully appreciated or even considered. How or where is someone who knows little or nothing about a culture, supposed toattempt to find a proper place and space to create that village for a child in the western world.
I know some parents from other parts of the world, are having a hard time trying to help their kids not loose thier culture, heritage and true sense of identity. How much more difficult would it be for a westerner.
How can one possible begin to fill the void of social, cultural and spiritual knowledge that one can only get from being immersed in a culture?
There is an element of human rights abuse here as well. All humans have the right to self determination. We have the right to decide what aspect of our traditions we will uphold or discard. That right is taken from an abducted kid.
I can sense that it hits close to heart, for those who are well meaning. I think this is the heart of true anti-racits discourse. it causes us to really take a closer look at ourselsves, reflect and maybe change our minds and also have this discussions with our friends and families. Peoples lives are seriously negatively affected, by ignoring the reality.
Once upon a time we were abducted from africa, an when we got here paraded and sold. Now it seem to me that our children are now being shipped prepaid.
How are we to take care of future generations, if our kids continue to be stolen from us? Who will be left in the communities to do the productive work that needs to be done to sustian our communities.
In some cultures the children are the reponsibility of the comunity, not just the biological parents. So the fact that the parents are absent, does not mean that the children cannot flourish in the community, with appropriate assistance. The sort that can lead to self-sufficiency.
There are countless number of community driven projects that could greatly benefit from the funds that are spent on the billion dollar abduction/adoption industry. Such as the Mikinduri Children of Hope foundation, started by an African and supported by communities in pei.
Here is an Example of a project started by and for the community, with respectful support from westerners. http://mikinduri.com/
Mikinduri Children Foundation for Hope
There are other such initiatives, we just have to search deeper to find them.
I also want to add that I aggree that the comparrasim of FN abduction and the international abdoption are dead on. The arguments from westerners is eerily similar to the rationalisation for the kidnapping of first nations children.
On a separate note, I think it might be better if those that want to have discuss other issues of adoption start their own thread, instead of derailing this one by asking for analysis of mixed-race adoption and other hypothetical cases that are not related to this initial thread etc.
"i firmly believe that everything I know to be true, could be false .. this mindset allows me to learn and grow .."
Regarding the concept of "reverse racism", I am not denying the political and economical dominance of white people in global terms. What I object to is the racial stereotyping of any individual regardless of colour. Any generalisation about "all" white people is bound to be as inaccurate as a generalisation about, for instance, "all" Asian people. Personally I find it strange that an anti-racist forum would resist the idea that racial stereotyping is objectionable.
Regarding the wish to adopt babies, I don't think that that is confined to transnational adoption. I think you'll find it applies when people apply to adopt children in their own communities too, for the simple reason that many infertile people long for a baby. I'm not saying it's a good thing - of course there is an enormous need for the adoption of older children - but it's simply a human weakness, and you would have to be a very smug individual to despise someone because of it. As far as transnational adoption is concerned, you are very unlikely to get a baby anyway, even if you want one, as the process takes several years (as I remarked in my original post) and the child will be at least three or four years old by the time it ends. Many people do adopt older children, anyway, and children with special needs, as you would find out if you talked to some of them.
I have constantly laboured the point that there is a need for economical and political change on a massive scale to resolve the underlying issues - though I'm not sure that you would easily reverse the gender preferences of some societies - but I fail to see how doing nothing but criticise is morally superior to trying to help, even in a small and obscure fashion. Does transnational adoption alleviate the burden of guilt for Westerners? No, of course not. For a start, many Westerners could not care less about the situation in third world countries and would, if you asked them, say "What burden of guilt?" For those who do care, it's obviously not an adequate solution - it's a drop in the ocean. However, it's better than sitting on your hands and doing nothing at all.
I am part of a family which incorporates several different races and we have plenty of "cultural baggage." We deal with it, and we grow because of it. I think we are stronger, in many ways, than a family from a single ethnic background.
AfroHealer, you are being a little bit patronising by pointing out to me that one doesn't have to be white to be a white supremacist. I understand that, thank you - I also know that one doesn't have to be a man to be an anti-feminist! I also feel that your rather preachy line about "taking a village to raise a child" is particularly inappropriate when discussing children whose villages have explicitly chosen not to raise them. These are not children being stolen from loving communities - these are babies picked, sometimes literally, from the garbage and put into institutions where they may or may not survive to face adulthood on the streets. As I've mentioned before, India is asking the world to find homes for its 11 million abandoned children. Do you doubt that the Indian nation knows what is in the best interests of its children? Or is that something which has slipped past your consciousness, living as you do in Canada?
You do not need to start another thread to accomodate my opinions. I have nothing to add other than to repeat that a child needs the love and care of a family, not life in an institution, and that if there are no families in their countries of origin, then a loving family in another country can give a chance to a child in desperate need. Talking is not enough - thse kids need help right now. I'm proud that my child is working two jobs to save enough money to offer that chance to a disabled child who otherwise faces life, and probably death, in an orphanage. That's all I have to say.
[ 11 July 2007: Message edited by: Taramati ]
As you certainly have every reason to be.
I don't dispute that their motivation was primarily to "have a baby", not to be altruistic and rescue a baby. But I don't think I had altruistic reasons for having a baby, so I can't see criticizing them on that front.
Having seen the children when they arrived here, and how they have blossomed with love and stimulation, I have no doubt that they are better off. Of course it would be better for these children to be raised by loving biological parents or with parents of the same race, but this was not an option for these children. Yes, they have lost a large part of their cultural identity, but then so do many 3rd generation Canadians who have parents and grandparents who intermarry. And it's not a case of white parents adopting Chinese babies - these are already interacial families anyway - in one case mom is part African, part white - what "sort" of baby should she have adopted anyway?
Finally I think this is quite different from slavery or residential schools where children with families were uprooted for sordid gain or "re-education". If we had unwanted babies in our own backyard, no-one would think twice about adopting them. Why can't we extend that compassion around the world?
I only wish the adoption agencies were non-profit, ethical organizations. And that is something I am not at all sure about. The concept of "buying" a baby is problematic for sure. I hear that some of the money is for fees and expenses, and some goes to the local community in China. But there is a lot of room for abuse I think.
In the end, an action that is rooted in love and compassion is good, even if it is imperfect.
Transracial Abduction
These industries prey on people's good intentions. It doesn't make potential parents evil but like anything else, people should be made aware of what they are supporting.
One of Canada's handful of aboriginal Senators is Lillian Dyck.
Suppose a baby of whatever race is adopted very early by parents of whatever race(s): the baby cannot lose her cultural identity, because she does not have a cultural identity to lose. Culture is learned, not genetic.
Way to wash away racism and colonialism. It's about human rights. The rights of other cultures to exist without threat and to be able to raise their own children. Colonialism has set up a world dynamic where few, predominantly white people from western countries have benefitted vastly from the world's resources and have developed such a sense of entitlement that they feel they are doing the oppressed a favour by adopting their children. Sorry, you can't whitewash transnational/transcultural adoption that easily.
Do you disagree? Do you believe that culture is genetic?
You are failing to distinguish the individual case from the collective and societal position.
One white couple adopting one abandoned FN child is not cultural genocide.
Many thousands of white couples adopting many thousands of FN children, while white society stood by and left the FN community in dire poverty, was collective racial and cultural genocide.
Failure to see the forest is typical of American individualism.