Amy Barrett likes to show off her two adopted Haitian children. They make her look like a good, caring individual. Obviously, critics of Barrett want to make sure that the adoptions were above board, but the potential criticisms of her go much further. A number of observers suggest that transracial adoptions are “fraught with trauma and potential for harm.” According to this perspective, Barrett’s adopted children are victims of their parents’ implicit biases, and would have been much better off had they remained in Haiti.
Interestingly, there is now support for the position that Barrett is traumatizing her adopted children. Supposedly, the errands that these children are given are demeaning when compared to the errands that her biological children are given, and this reflects Barrett’s prejudice.
This came to the Judiciary committee’s attention because several years ago one of the children, while on a South Bend playground, complained to a friend about the unfairness of the errands she had been assigned. The friend told her mother, who recently recalled the incident and passed the story on to Mayor Pete, a former near frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, who passed it on to a Judiciary committee staffer who relayed the troubling story to Dianne Feinstein, ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary committee
Feinstein has called for an in depth investigation by leading critical race theory scholars to determine if household chores and other errands in the Barrett household reflect Barrett’s racial prejudice. She has also demanded that there be no vote on the nomination until this study is completed.
We will keep you posted.
