Transracial adoptions still stir trouble

Fiona Graham is white, but she has been racially abused when out with her children over the past few years. ‘They don’t shout at the kids, but there have been a few choice things said to me,’ she says. ‘Paki lover’ is a favourite. That’s if she’s not with her oil rig worker husband, who is as white as she is and of an intimidating stature.The Grahams have two children, Aisha, 10, and Burhan, five, who were born to a British Pakistani woman and a white father in the north-east of England. The couple, from Stirlingshire, adopted the children three years ago and Graham knows they will have some unique issues ahead of them as a family, but she is determined to be as prepared for them as she possibly can. “Aisha had been in care for two years and Burhan for 17 months, all his life, when we first asked about them. But we were refused point blank because they were looking for a Pakistani Muslim couple. It took another five months before their social worker would consider us. But as far as I was concerned, the kids were being brought up with white Christian foster carers with no one else in sight for them. When Aisha first arrived here she had never even heard the word Pakistan. I do see how much they need to learn about their heritage; in fact, I see it more now than I maybe even realised at that time. Already Burhan recognises there is a difference in colour between us…”

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