Promotion for an episode on U.S. adoption by the show “It’s Been a Minute,” aired on Nov. 26, 2024; image provided for purposes of editorial comment and criticism only.
Once again we have a show in the public radio universe, “It’s Been a Minute,” on Nov. 26, 2024, centering the voice of someone who, while being a worthy academic author, is not an adoptee and will never fully have the critical perspective of lived experience.
For the record there are dozens and dozens of adoptee authors who have contributed significant research to policy debates on the harm of this system to millions of separated families. They continue to be boxed out, denied any access, and ignored by legacy media who could care less about their expertise to actual policy proposals for restoring legal rights and assisting those harmed, including intercountry adoptees now in legal limbo with the incoming Trump administration promising unprecedented mass deportations of people.
And I personally object to this framing—”coming out of the fog” (a term other adoptees use, and that is always their right to describe their experience any way they want).
The promotion notes: “But adoptees and birth parents are opening up online about ‘coming out of the fog’—a term for becoming more openly critical of adoption, or facing the grief within their adoption stories.” I don’t use or even acknowledge that term as relevant to having an honest discussion of the history of mass family separation of millions of families, in the United States and abroad. For millions of us, this is a critical issue of denied legal and human rights, and such terms that don’t center the root legal inequality, promoted by the foundation of lies and deception to this system, prevent us from talking about solutions. I’ve never had fog. What I’ve had are denied basic human rights—that exist on the books to this day.
Finally, where the hell were Brittany Luse or NPR when, for instance, there were real policy debates going on in Michigan between November 2023 and February 2024, on bills that could have restored legal rights to tens of thousands of people denied their vital records only because they are adopted.
Do better public radio, NPR, and your many hosts. Talk to the experts and talk about real solutions.