Angelina Jolie

KIDIST PAULOS ASRAT, writer of the Camera Lucida blog and an Ethiopian who lives in Canada, writes:

Congratulations on your brave post on transracial adoptions. I wavered to send you this, since the issue is so contentious, but I think, as you have shown, it needs to be said.

These days, there is a huge “market” for Ethiopian children for adoption into Western families. Besides Americans and Canadians, Australians are big competitors. Many say that Ethiopian kids are ideal adoptees, since they have mild manners, are alert, and are often attractive. Other African or Caribbean (mostly Haitian) children don’t get such rave reviews.

Of course, the Ethiopian government, and many other side-agencies, both in Ethiopia and in these adoptee countries, have made this into a profitable enterprise. I think it is terrible and atrocious.

There are many examples I can give of very satisfied white families. One was on Oprah recently, showing off its handicapped (she’s missing her arms) girl who taught herself how to swim, and speaks impeccable English she learnt in record time.

The most famous is Angelina Jolie’s daughter, Zahara. This is a notorious case, with an “out there” movie star, but I think it enunciates many of the problems inherent in this unfortunate enterprise.

Firstly, the birth mother recanted after the adoption. But I think she was convinced (coerced?) by various agencies that her illegitimate daughter would fare much better with Jolie. In fact, in her home country, Zahara would have had a myriad of older relatives, including a grandmother who was helping take care of her.

Secondly, Jolie has a strange and callous dynamic going on. Each time I see her with her own biological child, Shiloh, she seems to favor Zahara more, in subtle ways. Little blonde and blue-eyed Shiloh is in effect relegated as a back drop. Zahara will pick up on this. She will feel entitled. And so will of course Shiloh. I think it is a clear attempt at Jolie to change the dynamics of her country.

(Here’s another strange aside – Jolie keeps dressing Shiloh in “boys” clothes, and Zahara in dresses or skirts or brighter and prettier clothes. Who dresses a toddler in grays and blacks anyway? I have attached several photos).

But I think every transracial adoption has to have this element in it. I understand many families are desperate for children, and the availabilities are restricted in their own countries, but by the very nature of the difference in their adopted children, they will have to go to much greater lengths to make them feel accepted. So, this “affirmative action” of adoptee preference, which is exhibited in Jolie’s behavior, will invariably occur perhaps in good faith, with adoptive parents of transracial children.

Third, once these children grow up, as many of the commentators in the New York Times article you cited have said, they will feel the conflict of their background against their environment. Most Americans and Canadians are now so diversity sensitive, that these children will in all probability have happy childhoods. Yet, they will always feel this tug about who they are and what they’re about. They have the double burden of probably not even knowing who their original parents are.

But, it gets more complicated.

Since they have been told, or been brought up, that they are better than anyone, including the native-born white children, they must in some way feel they have a greater entitlement to these countries. Yet everything around them shows them that it is really to the contrary. The more astute ones will realize that the world around them has actually been manufactured to make them feel that way. So, how will that affect their adulthood, their own families, their contributions to the countries that they call home?

But, beyond that, in societies which now put non-whites on pedestals, what about the original whites of the country? How will a grown-up Shiloh develop? What will be her aspirations for her country? She will most likely grow up liberal, but isn’t that more-or-less a nihilist death cult that she will have inherited, which put a foreign girl before her?

These things are almost too horrible to contemplate. The damage to human lives, both in the adoptee countries and in the original countries of the adopted children is great. (For example, if Ethiopian kids are so smart and attractive, who is going to replace them when they have been ferreted out of their countries for the satisfaction of desperate liberal white families?).  Most people downplay all this, or don’t understand it, or just don’t believe it. But everyone suffers. The repercussions for the future are dire, for the adopted children, the adoptive parents, siblings and other native children. And for both the societies.

Liberalism is amazing. Huge errors (dare I say evils?) are committed at the drop of a hat.

By the way, I didn’t forget to mention the two Asian boys Jolie also adopted, but I’ve always been interested in the Shilo-Zahara dynamic since they’re both girls. I don’t in any way underestimate the difficulties these two young boys will face.

 —– Comments ——-

Laura writes:

Kidist’s observations are superb.  The brightest are often taken from their home countries. Also, as she says, the fact that international adoptees such as these are so far from home and have little chance of ever finding their birth parents makes the ordinary emotions of the adoption experience more intense.

But, I would like to know what she thinks about a popular counter-argument. This sort of adoption may have complications, many will say, but it is better than Third World children living in poverty or starving in their own countries.

Kidist writes:

My position has always been that countries adapt to their people, and people adapt to their countries. For example, in Ethiopia, the traditional Christian Ethiopia, beggars have always been given a holy place. They always beg in the name of God, so their interaction with ordinary people is actually sacrosanct.

This will sound callous, but I think the great suffering people feel in their own country is nothing compared to the great emptiness many feel in countries they feel alien towards. This existential suffering is far worse, far more damaging than the materialistic one. Poverty has always been with us. Societies have always found ways to deal with it. But, I know of no society which can deal with existential emptiness.

There is a verse in the Bible where Jesus says:

For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always. (Mark 14:7).

I agree with you that this desire to mix everyone together has opened the doors for an ungodly world. In that manner, we rush to help the poor, yet we forget to follow truth.

Eric writes:

Kidist’s article on international adoption brought to mind the bizarre drama of Mia Farrow’s pseudo-family, which has dropped out of public view.

Recall that Farrow is the actress who started Hollywood’s infatuation with collecting children from the far corners of the world. At her high water mark, she was the mother of fifteen children, eleven of them adopted. Her adopted children came from all corners of the globe, with nine of the six identifiably Asian or African, and only two of European extraction, although I don’t know where she found them. Of the eleven adoptees, five were adopted in partnership with two different men, and six were adopted by Farrow alone. Her four biological children have two different fathers.

While we in Middle America might find this a little strange, in Farrow’s circles, she was celebrated and lionized for her generosity and caring, and the press was full of praise. The prick that burst her bubble belonged to her then-husband, film director Woody Allen, who bedded and subsequently married then-17-year-old Soon-Yi Previn, one of the girls Farrow had adopted with a previous mate.

What struck me about the case was the way Allen, with all the moral judgement of an erect cock, sized up the situation and struck the softest spot. Farrow may have thought that she was really the girl’s mother, and her long-term boyfriend was really the girl’s father, but Woody knew better, and made his opinion known, as such men are wont to do.

It must have been one hell of a wake-up call for Mia. For all Allen’s faults, he understood that Farrow’s family was nothing more than a collection of exotic human pets, and that if he took some liberties in such an environment, he could never be held to account. When he was before a judge answering charges of child molestation, he blithely answered that the girl was of legal age, and he was never her legal parent or guardian. By that logic, he had done nothing wrong, and the judge agreed he had broken no laws.

Allen did not fare so well in divorce court, where he lost any right to contact his adopted children without supervision. His biological son by Farrow chose never to see him again, saying, “He’s my father married to my sister. That makes me his son and his brother-in-law. That is such a moral transgression. I cannot see him. I cannot have a relationship with my father and be morally consistent…. I lived with all these adopted children, so they are my family. To say Soon-Yi was not my sister is an insult to all adopted children.” I can’t argue with that, and even the judge who let Allen off the hook on criminal charges said his conduct was “grossly inappropriate.”

Allen is the easy target here, but what about the woman who assembled this bizarre collection of adults and children, and thought she had made a family? What about the people who supported and praised what was clearly the self-serving behaviour of an unbalanced woman? And what authority would let her adopt, knowing she was not married? In that situation, it is a near certainty that a man will come along, placing the adopted daughters in a household with no biological parent, a man with paternal access but no legal (or moral) restraint, and a woman inclined to please a man whom she wished to keep. Can it be surprising Allen took advantage? Is it asking too much to expect the State of New York to refuse adoption in such a case?

Allen and his daughter/mate/paramour took up housekeeping, eventually to marry. They appeared frequently together in public, and seem to have been accepted as a couple by New York and Hollywood high society. Mia Farrow is still bitter, but the balance of public opinion seems to be with Allen and Soon-Yi. They are still together, and it appears they have miraculously retrieved a something resembling a marriage from the wreckage of Allen’s and Farrow’s former lives, although they are over thirty years separated in age.

Except for one small thing: they have not had children of their own. They have instead chosen to adopt two small girls ….

Laura writes:

The whole thing was shocking and repulsive. Eric is right in noting how Farrow got away with little public censure for setting the stage for all this and for collecting children the way others might collect antique furniture or paintings. I haven’t kept up with it and hadn’t realized Allen and Soon-Yi had adopted children. Can you imagine them being approved? By the way, Farrow helped normalize adoption by single women, which is now widely accepted and  is of course the logical and necessary outcome of feminist entitlement.  Frankly, it blows my mind. As I said earlier, the desire to be a parent is like other human desires. It is not necessarily good.

Gail Aggen writes:

Apparently Angelina Jolie was very close to and idolized her mother, recently deceased. She is still grieving very much for her. I saw an interview with Jolie, wherein she was close to tears talking about her mother, saying what a warm, wonderful person she was. She went on to say that adopting these children is tied to her love for her mother – that her mother was the type of person who would love this and thus she is doing it as a kind of tribute to her.

I really do not know what to think. I can certainly understand her feelings for her mom, but do not understand the assembling of all these children as being a moral thing to do out of a sense of needing to complete something for her mother. I was struck not only by the sheer number and variety of these children, but also the speed at which she is adopting and birthing them.

When you have a baby, of course you need time to heal and replenish physically, but you also need time to grow the relationship with the child. It feels like she is objectifying them and not really appreciating their “personhood” by “collecting” them one after another, close in age as they are.

And of course the fact that she began the relationship with Brad Pitt, her partner, when he was still married to another woman is also troubling.

One thing is for sure, the magazines and celebrity gossip shows have probably made millions out of this “family”, and relentlessly continue to grind out stories about them for a very fascinated populace. This also is troubling, at least to me.

Laura writes:

Angelina appears to be mentally unbalanced. What is most disturbing is that an unbalanced woman, whether it is Jolie or Mia Farrow, can do this and receive the approval of the nation and the countries from which her children are adopted.

Jolie probably has very little in the way of  maternal feeling. One way a woman overcomes grief for her own deceased mother is to become her and pass on her mother’s good qualities to her own children. Angelina’s grief may be amplified by her own narcissism and her inability to be a real mother. Hollywood stars are not known for their stable family lives, but this sets a new standard. As Kidist points out, she has helped further politicize family life. For the life of me, I can’t understand why people think of her as representing an age of racial enlightenment. To me, she represents an age of denial and heartlessness.

Ingrid writes from Europe:

I have been following your posts on interracial and international adoptions, and it reminded me of a documentary, called Daughter from Danang, that I had seen a few years ago. The documentary, which can be seen here, tells the story of a half-Vietnamese, half white American woman who was born in Vietnam, during the Vietnam war. Her father was an American soldier, who left when her mother was still pregnant. She was eventually sent to the US, where she grew up. As an adult, she finally decides to start searching for her mother, with whom she had lost all contact. She ends up visiting Vietnam and things don’t go very well. I think that the documentary touches on many of  the issues that have been discussed on your blog recently.

Generally, I tend to agree with you, Laura, on international and interracial adoptions. I don’t think that they are, generally speaking, a good idea. I don’t feel that it is right for a parent, or two parents, to take a child from his native country/culture, and then force him to grow up somewhere as a racial and ethnic minority where he will not learn to speak his native language. Not to mention, I assume that many (most?) children who are adopted by foreign parents lose their citizenship in their country of birth and acquire the citizenship of their adoptive parents, without being given any choice in the matter.

However, I feel that the situation of the Amerasian children was a little bit different. [Laura writes: Yes, it was very different, but the cultural homelessness of the Amerasian children is similar to that of international adoptees.] I am not writing to make a judgement on whether it was “right” or “wrong” to send them to the US, even if they had a mother and were not orphans. They were, after all, half-American and entitled to US citizenship, and the US government had an obligation to protect them if their lives were indeed in danger in Vietnam. I just think that the documentary does a good job of showing the difficulties that this woman faced, and I felt very sympathetic towards both her and her family in Vietnam…it is easy to understand why there were so many misunderstandings between them.

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