Jennifer McDuffie-Moore, 43, and her husband Harry Moore, 37, a black couple from Collingdale, Pennsylvania, adopted 3 years old Brayden and Trevor after they were parted at birth from their biological mother who suffered from drug addiction.
The black couple, who started adopting since 2009, initially experienced the challenges of a transracial adoption in 2016 when they adopted Keenan, who is also white. But they said that it was harsher embracing the twins in the repercussion of George Floyd’s homicide and at the peak of the Black Lives Matter crusade.
A white family adopting a black child is common but as Jennifer and Harry were black, it took them more than 7 years to adopt Keenan. While going through the legal procedures, several inquiries were thrown to them to question their ability to foster a white child.
They do hear little whispers and strange looks while going to the supermarket and getting gas with their adopted kids but the couple had never paid attention to it. They try their best not to feed into any nonsense about what people feel about them.
Brayden and Trevor were only three months old when the couple first took in the twins for a break as respite care for a foster parent stressed enough to look after the toddlers. They were supposed to stay with them for a weekend but then time went by and they were nearly a year old and the couple’s whole family and their church leaning in and they ultimately started the adoption procedure and now they are with Jennifer and Harry ever. Brayden and Trevor formally adopted the identical twins two years later and they joined their biological children Joy, 21 and Kourtney, 11 and their adoptive kids Keenan, 10 and Sanchez, 8 in the family home in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.
Jennifer and Harry described how strangers blame them of abducting their own children and racist episodes they have experienced as the black parents of white children.
Sometime back when they were playing at the park and the twins didn’t want to go home while Jennifer was trying to take them home, an unfamiliar person threatened to call the cops. The couple added that they have been dragged over by the police uncountable times while carrying their large family in their 12-seat minivan. They recalled an incident five years ago when they were coming back from a family outing. Cops interrogated the couple over two white foster girls who were in their van and asked that whose kids are those and he wasn’t kind about that.
Jennifer and Harry now feel they cannot visualise their family without Brayden and Trevor. They have woken up to look after them from the time they were just three months old.
Jennifer and Harry feels that we had to have dialogues with our children to admit that everyone is different and not act like to be color blind. The couple knew that what they were doing was the right thing to do and asserted that they would not let race affect their decision to give a home to needy children.
There are lots of kids out there deprived of homes. Instead of analysing what color people are or their sexual category or their preferences, people should appreciate that love certainly does support a family.
