Introduction: Race Is a Fiction … Coloring Children and Parents Nonetheless

Abstract

Race is a 15th century invention, born of a marriage between European imperialism and white-supremacist pseudo-science, meant to explain the reasons for phenotypic differences found among humans in disparate parts of the planet Earth. Race survives and thrives in places where people of various nationalities meet because one or more of the persons involved in the encounter have been exposed to racial thinking beforehand. Racial thinking may be found at national borders, in neighborhoods and their boundaries, in schools, in policies shaping border/ immigration, housing, and schooling processes, and in workplaces and places of worship. Race and racial thinking also rear their hydra-like heads in family formation practice and policy, including practices and policies related to adoption.