Ronni Gura Sadovsky

Family law institutions often presuppose (or overtly claim) that transcultural adoptees ought to be socialized into the culture of their birth parents, and that this moral entitlement should guide the placement of children in adoptive homes. In this paper, I argue that this discourse of genealogical heritage mischaracterizes the moral rights of adopted children. Transcultural adoptees do not have a right to inherit a particular culture that is antecedently ‘theirs’; rather, they (like all children) have a right to cultural belonging. Cultural belonging is achieved when a person’s identity is validated by the cultural concepts that organize her life. Understanding transcultural adoptees’ cultural entitlement as a right to cultural belonging captures the kernel of truth in the talk of genealogical heritage. Like all children, transculturally adopted children have a right to be socialized into a culture that embraces them rather than excluding or stigmatizing them, but unlike most children, transcultural adoptees face a heightened risk of cultural exclusion and stigmatization.

Social norms forbidding rape jokes, blackface, and flag-burning exemplify a peculiar form of etiquette, which I call political etiquette. Just as compliance with ordinary etiquette expresses respect for the other individuals involved in a social encounter, compliance with political etiquette expresses respect for social groups. In this paper, I propose that we understand political etiquette as a system of conventions whereby we indicate our commitment to treating vulnerable social groups in accordance with their rightful status. Because we have a standing obligation to assure all members of our community that their rightful social status will be respected, we have a powerful moral reason to conform with all existing political etiquette norms whose target social groups lack such assurance, even when compliance with these norms is not antecedently morally valuable. Alongside our moral reasons to comply with some existing political etiquette norms, we also have moral reasons to fortify good political etiquette norms and to reform or erode bad ones.