We are not the traditional looking family and that is great with us. When we adopted our kids we could have said we want kids who have the same color hair, skin tone, and eyes so they would have matched us but instead we said we don’t care about any of that only that they were healthy and needing a family. That is truthfully what I think is all that matters.
When we started the adoption process we had asked friends who are African American if they thought our child, if we adopted an African American child, would get ostracized by that community for having Caucasian parents. Each time we were told no, they felt the child would be accepted by both ethnicities. We felt really good about hearing that because had we been told that the child would be troubled by us being their parents than we would have had to give harder consideration to adopting outside of our race. We did not care about race but we did not want our child to be treated badly because of our race.
As you already may know we have had some problems with people and their negative opinions of Caucasians adopting an African American child. Would it shock you to know the people we have heard negativity from are all from one race? That is true, but can you guess what race the people are that gave us negative comments? Every time we have gotten a negative reaction it has been from a Caucasian! First the guy at the fast food restaurant then the door checker at the kids friendly pizza and amusement restaurant. Not once has a person of African American ethnicity made a rude or snide comment about us raising a child of a different race.
As a Caucasian person I was really shocked to by this, I never would have thought we would have gotten this reaction. We never considered having to ask Caucasians if the child would have a problem being accepted. Maybe it was our naivety but it is not like we were living in the 1950’s.