Meanings of interracial adoption for white couples that adopt black children

Abstract

The racial democracy fallacy marks the Brazilian society and generates veiled and explicit racial tensions. The white group hegemony converts whiteness into de standard, taking away from that group the notion that they are also racialized beings and transforming racism into a mark of their speeches. It is in this context of racial relationships that interracial adoption in Brazil takes place, where blacks kids being adopted by white parents is recurrent, but still underexplored by Brazilian Psychology's literature field. This research is based on the social constructionism epistemology, which prioritizes the comprehension of how meanings are relationally produced, through language use. Has as a general objective to make meaning with white parents that adopted black children about interracial adoption in the Brazilian context. Specifically, aims to a) understand how parents' participation takes place in the construction of their child's racial identity; and b) which resources they use to face racism situations, if/when experienced. Ten white couples that legally adopted black children, at least 2 years before, will participate and that voluntarily accepted to participate in the study and will be signing a Term of Free and Informed Consent. These couples will participate in a semi-structured interview that will look for addressing themes like adoption, interracial adoption, racism, and racial identity construction. These interviews will be recorded and transcripted, and analyzed by thematic analysis procedure, divided into three steps: (1) floating reading of the transcriptions re-forecasting data about the context of the interview; (2) elaboration of a map of ideas association; and (3) analysis of the maps, searching for the meaning-making. We expect that this study can contribute to a better understanding of the interracial adoption phenomenon, stimulating posterior studies in this field and basing actions that promote further reflections on the issues involved in this process. (AU)