[LadyBugz]

I've been following the Black Culture thread on the AA parents board with interest hoping it would answer me, but the turn its taken looks like it won't, so I'm going to ask you.

We are adopting through the state and are open to every racial background. One of the posts I read emphasized the need for the home environment to be multicultural. For the child to see his culture within the home environment. So I started wondering just what that meant I should have.

African tribal masks and safari animal prints seems to really minimize the breadth of black culture, and many black people do not even have roots in Northern Africa. We have friends from Africa, and the only discernable African "artifact" in their home is a small stool from their childhood that they would take with them to sit on at people's houses. We have several black friends, and their homes are typical middle-class homes. One could not discern that it was a black home over a white one. Our own house is overrun with books--a good amount of which are (fiction and non-fiction) multicultural. Toys are mainly neutral, but dolls include the spectrum of colors. Decorations are pretty much neutral as well-a cross collection, family pictures, that type of stuff.

So what exactly would you expect/hope/suggest to see in a home that intends to adopt transracially?