ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the theoretical contours of the public debate over transracial adoption (TRA) in the United States. The issue of TRA is practically non-existent in Brazil because so few Brazilians are willing to adopt black children. Racial intimacy, once legally prohibited, continues to be taboo. The specificity of US racial politics and its impact on the social and legal practice of adoption can be brought into sharper focus through an examination of how race affects adoption in other locations in the African Diaspora. Both Brazil and the US were major slaveholding states. Brazil's internal racial dynamics in turn impact its relationship with the US and other wealthy western nations, an impact that is evident in the practice of international adoption. The chapter focuses on how the racial narratives of Brazil and the US perpetuate economic and social divisions along racial lines, and how these racial orders affect adoption in each nation.
