CNN has a Problem... with BLACK Women and Adoption

By Gina McCauley

Have you heard folks? CNN is in the midst of an "investigation"- an investigation of Black people- Black people in America. CNN had enacted the cable news version of JIM CROW, whereby it abdicates its responsibility to provide uniform coverage of all aspects of American society and has segregated all coverage of "Black" issues to its nice little voyeuristic "black box" called Black in America. The old south would be proud.

In this segregated "Coloreds Only" coverage CNN has decreed that Black folks are "Challenged." In other words, we are to be defined by our dysfunction. Early indications are that everything CNN "investigates" during its "Black in America" series is clouded by CNN's "Challenged" lens. No victory will be celebrated in the absence of injecting defeat. No success acclaimed without significant coverage to failure. To the extent that Black people in America have the ability to be happy, content, loving, caring, accomplished or secure, CNN will always make sure that we're reminded that those wonderful things are EXCEPTIONS. In other words, our natural state is to be depressed, agitated, hateful or incapable of love, indifferent, underachieving wrecks.

For example, just last week I read a headline about African American women and adoption. "Single Black Women Choosing to Adopt" I thought great! I'm a single Black woman who anticipates adopting at some point, let's read the article. I thought is might provide some additional insight into the process and the unique experiences of women just like me. Wouldn't you know that an article which purported to be about Black women and children ended up being about the failures of Black men?

She broke off relationships with men who didn't want to settle down. She refused to get pregnant out of wedlock. She prayed for a child.

Duren's yearning for motherhood was so palpable that her former fiancé once offered to father a child with her. But he warned her that he wasn't ready for marriage. CNN.com

And that's just in the first paragraph. Is this a Terri McMillian novel or some type of investigative journalism?

We're seeing more and more single African-American women who are not finding men," Caldwell says. "There's a lack of qualified black men to get into relationships with."

We're doomed!

"In many cases, it [the pressure to be a mother] begins to set up feelings of unworthiness, poor self-esteem and the feeling that 'I'm not fully a woman,' " Oliver says. [Should this low-self esteem having woman be adopting a child?]

Your children are DOOMED!

The article goes all over the place. From the frequent and now cliche laments of "Ain't no menzuses 2 be found" to colorism.

Instead of providing adoption as a viable option that provides Black children... in AMERICA with a loving homes, it turned into yet another TRITE news report about the futility of single Black women with degrees ever getting married. Instead of focusing on the children, it focused on our romantically-challenged lives. You would think that Black adoption was some new phenomenon brought on by the "man shortage." But alas, adoption in the Black community isn't anything new. In many ways, its an ingrained part of our culture.

Here is a newsflash CNN, had you "investigated" you would have discovered that since the days of slavery when Black children were ripped from their mothers and sold, other Black women and men have been adopting other people's children.

Slave families were extremely vulnerable to separation. As a result of the sale or death of a father or mother, over a third of all slave children grew up in households from which one or both parents were absent. About a quarter of all slave children grew up in a single-parent household (nearly always with their mother) and another tenth grew up apart from both parents.. . .

Ties to an immediate family stretched outward to an involved network of extended kin. Family destruction and dispersal created extended kinship networks stretching across whole counties. Whenever children were sold to neighboring plantations, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins often took on the functions of parents. When blood relatives were not present, strangers cared for and protected children. Slave parents taught their children to call all adult slaves "aunt" or "uncle" and younger slaves as "sister" or "brother." In this way, slave culture taught the young that they were members of a broader community in which all slaves had mutual obligations and responsibilities.
Digital History

We all have play cousins or know that grandmother in the neighborhood who never met a child in need that she would turn away. We all remember the stories of Mother Hale adopting AIDS babies. See, I discovered all this in less than 5 minutes online. You have to wonder how much time CNN put into its "investigative" piece about Black women and adoption.

Were they really interested in adoption or making the case that it sucks to be Black in America. I mean, the discussion thread associated with this article is entitled What Are the Biggest Challenges facing African American Families? What about "Why Your Black Family Rocks!" or "Tell us About Your Black Family"or "Were you Adopted" or "Share your adoption experience." Nope, uh uh.

No history, no commentary from historians providing any historical perspective, just a bunch of relationship advice and commentary that you can hear on any given afternoon on Black radio or Judge Judy with a side order of colorism thrown in the mix.

CNN isn't attempting to be ground breaking or introspective, but desires to dabble in the most exploitative of stereotypes, that Black women are going to die old and alone and be eaten alive by nine cats. What else is new? CNN staffers could have just referred their audience to their sister company ESSENCE communications if it wanted to do a story about the romantic hardships of Black women.

I predict that the rest of CNN's Black in America 2 will have NOTHING whatsoever to do with Black people, but we will no doubt tune in in droves because we are so starved for any in depth reflections of our lives, that we will hold out for the table scraps thrown at us by CNN.

A CNN producer arrogantly quipped to a Black audience at a Black in America viewing party that the series was not going to be PR for the Black community. Well of course it won't be, but does it have to be a freaking funeral dirge? . Was it too much to hope that CNN would actually have to do groundbreaking reporting and investigative journalism that looks beyond trite stereotypes and caricatures? To so, CNN would have to unshackle itself from its conclusion that to be Black in America is to be America's "problem people."

CNN is so committed to this parade of pathology, that no aspect of Black American life can escape it, not even the bond between mother and child. That's why I have little hope that Black in America 2 will do much more than Black in America 1. Sure, they'll trot out success stories and people doing good works in the community, but the lens through which Soledad O'Brien and her producers view Black folks in America is one that is clouded by their editorial decision that Black people are "Challenged." Of course we are, but that's not all we are.

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Gina McCauley blogs at What About Our Daughters and Michelle Obama Watch and hosts the annual Blogging While Brown Conference. For The Black Retort, McCauley is writing a series of posts entitled "CNN has a Problem." Follow Gina on Twitter.