The Wise family is adopting a little boy who currently lives in an orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Photo from Los Angeles Times

Sifting through the adoption-related news media from the past week, I’ve encountered a deluge of stories about the devastating impact of the Haitian earthquake on, um, straight middle-class white people in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe.

My inbox is infested with melodramatic stories of good straight middle-class Christian white people who’ve bonded with “their” Haitian children through pictures, orphanage visits, and on religious missions. The Washington Post announced, “Prospective parents grow more worried about Haiti’s orphans,” and the The LA Times declared, “Children are safe, but US parents’ adoption dreams are buried in rubble of Haiti earthquake.”

“Heart-wrenching,” “excruciating,” “tragic,” “anxious,” and “fearful.” These are the terms used to frame white adoptive couples’ emotional experience of the disaster.

The children are always “safe” and “unharmed” in these stories. The economic and political origins of the children’s availability to the adoption market are erased as the individualized and apolitical personal crises of privileged white couples command center stage. The verbal violence and erasure continue in adoptive parents’ testimony about “their” Haitian children’s current situation. The children are only “living” in Haiti. Their “forever families” are waiting for them to be sent “home” to Kansas or Illinois, Indiana or Montana.

We hear it told from the adoptive parents’ perspectives:

“My hope is the country [Haiti] will see the need of getting children to their forever families.” (Couple Adopting Haitian Children Wait for OK)

“Naturally, the absolute concern is the safety and rescue and providing supplies for everybody there. . .But there are also U.S. citizens that need to come home.” (Adopted Children Remain In Haiti)

“This has been a very long trip through the dark. . .The adoption process is very difficult and it’s hard to know what’s happening. And now the earthquake. We can’t really reach anyone to find out about our child. This is a boy who’s not an orphan anymore. He’s simply being held hostage by his own country. We have to get him out of there.” (Adopted Children Remain In Haiti)

What’s more, the quake itself is reframed as just one among many obstacles to a completed adoption for these entitled white people!

[Kim Wise] and her husband, Warren, have been trying to adopt a Haitian boy named Mika for two years, a saga marred by food riots, four hurricanes and now the earthquake. (Children are safe, but US parents’ adoption dreams are buried in rubble of Haiti earthquake)

“‘Our second adoption was five-and-a-half years because Haiti fell apart.’ Erin says hurricanes and government upheaval were to blame.” (Adoptive families now fear the wait to bring their Haitian child home will grow)

“All they were waiting for were passports and visas to get into the country to pick up their adopted children. But the government building holding all their paperwork crumbled to rubble in the earthquake and the judge that granted the approval was killed. ‘Those are my kids — in the eyes of the government they’re ours,’ Kristen said, her voice cracking. ‘I just can’t prove it.’” (Couple’s years-long adoption progress now uncertain)

I mean, take a step back, white people! Maybe I’m the one being melodramatic now, but why is the world of international adoption so completely effed that the significance of someone’s death can be reduced to the obstacle it poses to white adoptive parents getting what they want; and why is the collapse of buildings where important adoption documents are kept considered a tragedy, not for the city or its people, specifically the adoptees, or most especially the people who were actually inside the building when it fell, but for the hundreds of “waiting” parents who will have to wait longer now?

And just what is all this focus on the tragic plight of white adoptive parents covering up? What it usually does: a history of U.S. military invasion and occupation, U.S.-backed dictatorships, and neoliberal policies, to name a few. In other words, the very same economic, political, and military interventions that adoptees of color everywhere are intimately familiar with, because they are what created us.

But getting back to the past week’s media coverage, this story is not about the children, or their future. White adoptive parents are the real victims of this tragedy, and it is their pain, and their experience of trauma that propels the story. If the children mattered, following up the trauma of a devastating earthquake with the trauma of complete cultural, racial, linguistic, and geographical displacement would be questionable if not unthinkable. Expediting immigration paperwork when all records have been destroyed, and creating loopholes to allow the swift export of Haitian children for permanent placement in the U.S. and elsewhere would not even be considered.

“A longtime advocate of streamlining international adoption, Klobuchar, D-Minn., is asking that the departments [of State and Homeland Security] grant ‘humanitarian parole’ for as many as 900 Haitian children matched with American parents whose paperwork has not been completed.” (Klobuchar seeks help for Americans poised to adopt children from Haiti)

“Rev. Gordon Lewis is founder and director of Mission of T.E.A.R.S., a licensed adoption agency in Ontario which has a large charitable program in Haiti. . .’It would be nice if our government could say to the families who have been matched with a child to at least allow them to foster the child into Canada in some format with an agreement with the Haitian government that these legalities will be worked out,’ he said.” (Intercountry adoptions between Canada, Haiti face challenges in quake aftermath)

“‘We’re not looking to the Haitian government to complete the process were [sic] looking to the U.S. State Department to step up and to help us to finalize to get our son and the other adoptive children to the United States where they will be safe, they’ll be with their forever families, and hopefully the immigration issues will be cleaned up in the future if there are any’, said Michael Lancer.” (Lancers Haitian Adoption)

“Child advocates are hoping the U.S. government grants humanitarian parole to these children within a few days. Once that happens, the next hurdle is airlifting the children out.” (Haiti’s Orphans – Old and New – “Scared”)

Yes, they actually used the A-word. By the end of the weekend, stories were breaking about the first arrivals of Haitian adoptees to their new homes.

Six Haitian “adoption children” were transported via airforce plane to the Netherlands over the weekend (First group of evacuees, including six adoption children from Haiti, arrive back in the Netherlands), and the Dutch government followed up with another plane set to pick up 109 Haitian children without completed travel and/or adoption documents to be adopted by Dutch families.

In Kansas City:

“The destruction wrought by Tuesday’s earthquake in Haiti had birthed a miracle. . .

“Jackson, 7 years old and still disoriented, walked out first. Alecia reached for him and pulled him tight, her baby finally safe on American soil. From there, chaotic rejoicing consumed the family. The dozen gathered grabbed the children, they squeezed, they kissed, they said, ‘I love you,’ they thanked God. . .

“Before going to their house, the O’Byrnes first drove to their home — First Baptist Church. For years, church members had followed the family’s journey, had poured their souls into prayerful intention.” (Family, orphans unite)

I avoided watching the clip of Pat Robertson’s comments on Haiti all week. I finally gave in last night, and well, all I can say is, it’s no coincidence that the international adoption industry was pioneered by like-minded evangelical Christians Harry and Bertha Holt over fifty years ago.

“For the Holts, family-making required faith and altruism, not social work or regulation, and they found nothing wrong with the idea of Americans adopting foreign children, sight unseen. American childhood, they assumed, was unquestionably superior to childhood in developing nations. The Holts’ form letter seeking adoptive parents included the following request. ‘We would ask all of you who are Christians to pray to God that He will give us the wisdom and the strength and the power to deliver his little children from the cold and misery and darkness of Korea into the warmth and love of your homes.’ For the Holts and many of their supporters, Korea was a backward country whose children deserved to be rescued.” (The Adoption History Project)

Substitute Haiti for Korea, and see how many average American heads start nodding.

“‘We’ll go any place in the world to pick them up,’ Kristen Becker said. ‘We’re just praying. Our hands are so tied. We’re not the only ones. There are hundred of U.S. adoptive parents that are in the exact same position.’ (Couple’s years-long adoption progress now uncertain)