Give Sandra Bullock Some Credit, Please

Normally I wouldn't post about a celebrity adopting a baby (it's great when it happens, and it's common enough here in 2010.  Lots of kids need loving homes.)  But actress Sandra Bullock is getting a lot of flak for adopting an African-American baby boy.

But when Oscar-winning actress Sandra Bullock appeared on the cover of People magazine with her newly adopted African-American baby, the image stirred discussion in the black community and on blogs aimed at that readership.

"We have a poll up right now on the site that asks a question about interracial adoption," said Marve Frazier, chief executive officer of Bossip.com and chief creative officer for its parent company, Moguldum. "For the most part people have been saying it's great that she adopted a baby from the United States."

Still, the topic of transracial adoptions is a sensitive one, made even more so when the adopted parent is a celebrity.

In a piece appearing on the site Black Voices, writer Lola Adesioye notes that Bullock joins other stars, including Madonna and Angelina Jolie, who have adopted black children. Madonna and Jolie's children are African and Bullock's new son, Louis, is from New Orleans, Louisiana.

"As Bullock's case shows, a white celebrity adopting a black child raises questions as well as suspicions," Adesioye writes. "Why do they want a black baby as opposed to a white one, when there are also white kids who are up for adoption?"

Lemme tell you guys a story.

About 35 years ago, another African-American baby boy was adopted by a white couple.  In Nebraska, of all places.  He was a happy little baby, and his parents loved him very much, and just to really tempt fate, the couple had a biological child 18 months later and they all moved down to the mountains of western North Carolina.  The other kids there thought this was kinda weird and asked the boy questions (to which the boy answered to the best of his ability) but he had a Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox and a pair of Chuck Taylors and a Rubik's Cube, and a goofy little brother, so they thought he was mostly normal.  (Well, the kid really was too smart for his own damn good, the adults around him pretty quickly figured out. He was handy at fixing the school's digital clocks and reading about 8 years over his grade level.)

Kid turned out okay, although I hear he's one of those dirty f'ckin hippie political blogger people these days.  Point is, his parents loved him very much and fate gave him a second chance right off the bat, and they loved him as their own because he was their own, really.

So when Sandra Bullock adopts an adorable little African-American boy, she's trying to give a kid a home and make things just a little better in the universe, one person at a time.

We should all be that lucky.