[tgreen]

My wife and I have the opportunity to adopt a biracial child (black/white) this coming march. We are white and while we know that we can provide for this child with love and material possessions we have no real idea about the challenges that we will face or more importantly, the child will face. I would appreciate anyone, that is in our shoes that has advice to offer, sharing their opinions with us.

[Cjmeck]

I will start by telling you that my daughter is biracial (black/white) and adopting her has been one of the greatest blessings and joys in my life. It did not surprise my husband and I that we could totally love a child that we did not create. It did not surprise us that while we are not color blind, the differences in our skin tone are insignificant in our love for her. Most days I forget that she is part African American and we (and our bio son) are Caucasian. She is only 19 months old so I cannot comment on how her growing up in a transracial family will affect her, or your possible child. What I've learned in the past 19 months is that when the world looks at my daughter, they see a black child. I've learned that most people are receptive to our family; while others have expressed disgust. When I'm out in public with both of my children--its assumed that they have 2 different fathers (while I know that's biologically true, it is not a reflection of our actual situation). I've been called a slut. People have assumed she is my biological child and therefore, I cheated on my husband. I imagine that if I had adopted a full AA child, I might not have run into these situations. I was also surprised that among the people unhappy with my family, the majority were AA women. I'm not sure why. So sometimes, I feel like we don't fit in with the white community or the black community. I wonder if this is how my daughter will feel.
My mother tells me that I was the perfect person for this. I'm very outspoken, thick-skinned and I generally don't internalize things. Its funny, because we went to a pre-adoption class and the social worker told me these things would happen. She was sooooo right.
We have recently moved from SW Ohio to Colorado Springs. I've been pleasantly surprised at the change in attitude here. I'll attribute that to the diverse makeup of the area due to the military population.
I would not change our decision or my daughter's race for anything in the world. I had the experience of parenting a CC child alone for 5.5 years. So, parenting transracial is different, its more challenging. But it is also so much more rewarding for our entire family. We see the world in a different light.

[sugarandspice697]

My daughter is not BR and niether are we Caucasian but perhaps I can give you a different point of view. My partner and I are both African-American and our daughter is Chinese-American. When she first came into our lives, we felt the same way you did. We didn't know any other transracial familes in our shoes nor were there books/resources to guide us in the right direction.
I have found that having Asian American friends has been the best move for our family. In fact, when we were discussing culture, one of our friends told us not to go out and seek culture but to bring culture into our home by having friends of her race and minimizing the situations where she is the only Asian. Therefore, we changed churches and enrolled her into a diverse Montesorri school.

Also, even though we embrace her roots, there are times where we're just like any typical family (like Cjmeck mentioned earlier) and we just don't care about her race.