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Reclaiming Self-Determination: A Call For Intraracial Adoption, Jacinda T. Townsend

Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy

The wholesale marketing of Black children to suit the economic interests of others was one of the cruelest aspects of slavery. Sons and daughters who were traded away from their parents would later struggle in vain to remember their families, their customs, and their countries of origin. Even the extended families which evolved in the transient slave communities were continually fragmented as children and their caretakers were merchanted to different plantations according to the whims of White slavemasters. 1 Although due to quite different circumstances, today the Black community continues to lose its children. At present, government sponsored entities, 2 …