If you’re Angelina Jolie, having children is like color-coding your closet. She likes her colors and shapes distinct, her black has to be really black, her white truly pale. This is a smart move because, as every fashionista knows, it’s accessories, especially the ones that hang around your neck or are highly visible while you carry them in your hands, that need to be distinctive.

 

As she said in a CNN interview, the determining factor for the next child adopted will be gender and race, as the Jolie-Pitt family closet needs “balance”. Hmmm. I see how that concept of diversity of color may apply to purses, but not to children. I gather that Jolie is trying to create her own global village (perhaps she will even buy the rights to “It’s a Small World after All”) at home.

 

I sympathize, as I too came out of an assorted closet (Polish mom, Honduran dad and Taiwanese sister-in-law) and while the experience was unique, it was based on love and circumstance, not social engineering.

 

Picking which child to love based on country of birth and ethnicity is counterproductive to the goal of teaching respect for other cultures and human equality.

 

It implies that the desired effect cannot be achieved without color combinations.

 

Nevertheless, rest assured that if all you’ve got in your familial closet is black; you too can raise globally aware children.

 

Ensuring that your family is a microcosm of the United Nations does not ensure that the children will in fact be tolerant and embracing of human diversity. The color or gender of the child does not determine that, her upbringing does.

 

You do not need to have 6 kids (I am assuming that Jolie will not go as far with diversity as adopting a penguin) to convey messages of unity, acceptance and peace. As in fashion, what matters is quality, not quantity.

 

Speaking of quality, it would be nice to see Jolie’s next child come from an orphanage in Nebraska. The domestic children are as lovable and needy as the ones abroad.

 

If the true objective of adopting another child is love, then his or her skin color or latitude of birth (which seems so important to Jolie that she had two tattooed on her arm) should not come into the equation.

 

Few people have both the character and resources to go through the complex and drawn-out process of adopting a child in the United States. When people like Jolie go though all the additional trouble to get a baby that happens to have a foreign citizenship, one cannot help but to wonder that her intentions are.

 

There are children of all races and ethnicities born in the United States awaiting adoption this very moment. Why does Jolie feels that her next acquisition must have a foreign passport?

 

Her approach to building a family is like that of putting together a wardrobe to impress all those who get a glimpse at it. Not only do the colors and shapes have to stand out, but clearly so do the words “Made in”.

 

Nevertheless, Jolie will get her token baby soon enough. As we have already seen, she is good at getting exactly whom she wants, no matter what the consequences.