Marshallese Adoption: Our Country's Tradition of Exploiting Black and Brown Women



Let me preface: NOT ALL MARSHALLESE ADOPTIONS ARE CORRUPT, NOT ALL AGENCIES ARE UNETHICAL, NOT ALL INTERNATIONAL AND TRANSRACIAL ADOPTIONS ARE POORLY MOTIVATED.


Though many of these organizations work diligently for the ethical placement of children into adoptive homes, there are also corrupt individuals, agencies, and adoption professionals that capitalize on vulnerable women and children, especially those in poor marginalized communities.

The recent NPR coverage of Marshallese adoption fraud (read more here: https://www.npr.org/2019/10/09/768533784/arizona-official-arrested-in-multi-million-dollar-baby-mill-adoption-fraud-schem) is a prime example. However, I think it’s important for us do more than say, “Welp, he was one bad guy, most adoptions are good, let’s move on.” I think that’s too simplistic. I want to advocate for a deeper analysis, one that takes history into account. I see this Marshallese case as a modern expression of the white supremacist ideologies, and political and economic policies that served as the foundation of our nation. Paul Peterson’s vile objectification of Marshallese women for profit is an indication of an American system functioning as it was designed: for the benefit of white, property-owning, capital seeking individuals at the expense of people of color. We must see this for what it is: as a contemporary manifestation of our country’s long-standing tradition of commodifying, exploiting and dominating the bodies of black and brown women.

This tradition of unethical behavior is present in slavery, the field of science and in the realm of female reproduction. I want us to realize that the case of Marshallese adoption is the fruit that is born from the soil of historical exploitation of black and brown women.

Slavery

Phrases in the article like “human trafficking,” “treated as property” and “baby mill,” to describe the situation of the Marshallese women are reminiscent of the experience of enslaved Africans. Transported en mass in multi-level, cramped and fecal infested ships, Africans were the first group of people to be trafficked for profit in the United States. Displayed in public, assessed for quality, bought and circulated, Africans were treated as property. When continued importation of African slaves was eventually prohibited in the early 17th century and the rise of King Cotton made plantation owners hard-pressed for more able-bodied workers, enslaved women were sexually exploited and systematically bred to sustain plantation economies - the original baby mills.

Science

J. Marion Sims, known as the father of modern gynecology, was a physician in the mid-1800s that was often contracted by plantations to tend to the enslaved. His signature techniques and “pioneering” surgeries were perfected on enslaved women without anesthesia (you can read more here: https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves). Medical discoveries at the expense of brown and black people, especially women, are part of our national narrative, a narrative that is often swept under the rug. It’s essential to make note of the position of power occupied by people like J. Marion Sims and Paul Peterson: white men, supported by surrounding communities, adorned with (and protected by) the prestige and status of “knowledge” and “expertise.” Power inequalities made plantation expansion and medical innovation possible because of the domination of black and brown women’s wombs. Writer Kwoya Maples brilliantly and hauntingly fictionalizes the experiences of Sims’ patients in her collection of poems MEND (you can find it here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40080583-mend).

Female Reproduction

Forced sterilization is a reality of many minoritized groups of women including Native American, Puerto Rican and Mexican American women. The country’s first sterilization law was passed in Indiana in 1907. This practice, a form of population control, was disproportionately administered to the incarcerated, low-income single mother’s deemed “loose” or “immoral,” the handicapped, and other populations of “undesirables,” (to read more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449330/). The secretive procedures, often done under the guise of other medical services, were a form of cruel and unethical dehumanization of women’s bodies, especially those of color. We see such clandestine and untruthful practices present in many forms of international adoption, where oftentimes mothers are seen as property to transport across borders, bodies dominated in processes of money laundering, smuggling, and lies. “Undesirables” exploited for the desires of others.

Again, it’s important to note that not all adoption agencies, consultants and professionals are corrupt. In fact, I’ve been pleasantly surprised and filled with hope because of the adoption communities I’ve connected with in person and over the Internet. It is not my intention to disparage adoption, transracial adoption, or international adoption but to point us to a core of American identity that continues to wreak havoc and rear its ugly head in contemporary vestiges. We need to wake up. America is not creative. She continues to relive her original sin in new manifestations. It’s only when we are able to chop the dragon down at its the source, in the hidden places of our original foundation that was built on the bodies of black and brown people that we can see the Paul Peterson’s of this world for who they are: ghosts of our colonial and white supremacist history, trying to anchor America to the past rather than champion her into the future.


Torie DiMartile