Just to echo Lisa, transracial adoption can be a great thing. You will, of course, need to take a hard look at what else (besides
love and creature comforts) you'll need to provide to ensure a happy, healthy and well-adjusted aa, biracial or multi-racial child (got an aa hair salon or barber nearby?).
Expounding on Lisa's comments, you'll need to determine whether/how you benefit from being cc in this country (white priviledge). Do you understand that any priviledges you enjoy as a cc will not carry over to your aa child and have/will you come up with strategies to deal with that (ex. relocating, broadening your base of friends, attending cultural summer camps, etc.)? You'll need to think about what
could happen if your aa son/daughter wants to date in high school and has a hard time finding one in a predominantly cc community and/or faces subtly disapproving cc parents. Or in the alternative, what
could happen if your aa child identifies so closely with cc people that he/she is rejected by other aa's in high school or college for 'acting white' or 'being an oreo'. These things
do happen (although not to everyone) and you'll have to be prepared to address them.
I give folks props for considering transracial adoption...it's certainly not something I could do (adopt a cc, asian, or latin child in my case
.) It takes some serious committment to do it well. Shoot, any cc child I raised would probably end up like Eminem (sans trailor park beginnings).
Anyhoo...there are a lot of great threads here on this topic as well with input from all members of the triad.
In answer to your questions...
DH and I are both aa and we adopted a biracial little girl. About half my familiy is cc, with a few asians tossed in for good measure. My step-mom is Mexican and has a stereotypically HUGE family that I
love (she's one of 13 kids)! So yeah, we have everything from menudo and spring rolls to greens, ham hocks and salmon croquettes at our family gatherings. We also live in a very diverse community. DH is military and military neighborhoods tend to be more diverse than average.
I mostly grew up in the northwest and CA but spent some very traumatic years in upscale Connecticut and Arkansas neighborhoods.
Being around other aa's was VERY important to me growing up. Actually, more important than simply being around them was being able to develop friendships with aa's that shared my family's cultural traditions and values. Depending on our location, that wasn't always possible. In my Arkansas community, for example, aa kids weren't allowed to be smart and athletic, into rap and obviously college-bound. As a result, I had to choose my friends from two groups - those labeled "hood rats" and those labeled "oreos" and making that choice had very obvious consequences as far as the treatment I could expect from teachers and administrators. In our CT town, we had to have aa's bussed in from Hartford to attend school (so far as I could tell, there were no locally grown black folk) so there was no one to hang with after school or on weekends. It sucked. Big time. Not a soul among my classmates had heard of Morris Day or Neneh Cherry. Ugh!!
Clearly, IMHO, the depth and breadth of your connection to the aa community will absolutely be important if you choose to adopt transracially.
So...I wish you the best in developing those connections.