What’s wrong with being color-blind?

Oh yes, you will soon get bored with the multitude of adoption posts on my blog from here on out. It’s going to become a part of our life now, I’m afraid.

The paperwork has been filled out. Like I said before, we have to start the process all over again, so we have to re-attend the informational meeting. Because they make parents adopting from the foster system go through the same process as potential foster parents, the informational meetings are booked solid– until JUNE. The first meeting we can get into is June 14th. So now we’re playing the waiting game game again. I’m passing the time by reading books and articles and flooding my brain with way more information than I need to, causing {probably} needless worry on my part.

Let me back up a bit.

To give you a bit of background information on what we are doing, children that are adopted from the foster care system are most often school-aged children or teens. Additionally, many have siblings and/or special needs. There are no babies, which is why we decided to pursue this avenue for adoption. We know that the child we adopt will fall into one or more of the following categories:

1. minority
2. physical disability
3. mental disability
4. sibling group

As of right now, the only category we are eliminating from our realm of possibility is a sibling group. We are open to adopting a child of a different race, be they black, red, purple, or polka-dot. I don’t care. It has never crossed my mind to worry about race, because I don’t think it will matter to the child we adopt, right? All a child wants is a family, right?

Then I read this article in USA Today, which basically makes the claim that white people adopting a black child is not a good thing, and it made me question my motives. Am I just being stupid? Am I really that naive in thinking that a minority child could not flourish, prosper and be loved and accepted in our small, virtually all-white community? The article basically insinuates that if I adopt a minority child and instill the idea that “race doesn’t matter” they are in for a rude awakening when they go out into the real world and see that race does indeed matter.

When we held our family meeting on Thursday night, I was surprised at what my kids had to say when I posed the question to them, “How would you feel if the child we adopt is not white?”

I expected my kids to be the ones in the family that wouldn’t worry about race. But they questioned it even more than I did. My 15-year brought up the fact that there are only TWO black students in her entire high-school. My 10-year said there is ONE black student in her grade 3-5 school. But they weren’t showing concern for themselves having a non-white sibling. They were showing concern for how that sibling would feel being the minority in all-white family and being the minority in school.

So, now I ask: Does it matter? SHOULD it matter?