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People who adopt do so for a variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that nearly all adoptive parents love their adopted children like their own offspring.  

As a white foster and adoptive mother with a black daughter, I’ve learned that in transracial adoption, love is not necessarily enough. 

Transracial (or transcultural) adoption means placing a child of one race or ethnic group with adoptive parents of another race or ethnic group. In recent years, international adoptions from other countries have become common—particularly among well-to-do white couples. These adoptions can cost tens of thousands of dollars, as they usually entail trips to the adoptable child’s country of origin, not to mention lawyers’ and adoption agencies’ fees. 

It is a source of frustration to me that relatively few parents willing to adopt outside their own race will not, or do not consider domestic adoption through county or local foster care agencies (which costs nothing). 

I became a certified foster parent in 1999; not because I was interested in adoption (I was already a contented single mom to a Caucasian son, then nine), but because I recognized that there was a dire need for good foster families. I wanted to help others, and I wanted to help myself spiritually and psychologically by embarking on a venture where I could make a difference. 

I didn’t count on falling head over heals in love with my first foster child, a two-year-old who had been abandoned by her troubled parents. Their rights were soon terminated. I thought long and hard about adopting her, and in the end my heart won out. In the meantime, and to this day, I’ve cared for over a dozen other foster children—a myriad of ethnicities and circumstances—for periods ranging from two days to several months. 

My daughter’s adoption was finalized two years after she was placed in my home, but the learning curve began the day she arrived. I had to learn how best to parent a child whose skin is many, many shades darker than mine; who, in others’ eyes, could not possibly be my biological daughter.  

I think it's extremely important for any transracial or transcultural family to become familiar with the culture and history of their adopted child's country or ethnic background. 

In my case, it means reading or rereading books by such authors as Ralph Wright, Alice Walker, or Aliona Gibson’s quintessential Nappy: Growing Up Black and Female in America. 

It means acquiring multicultural children’s books, multicultural dolls, and movies with black heroes and role models. 

It means talking about black pride and racial issues as soon as my daughter can understand. 

It means cultivating more friendships with African Americans, and it means ensuring that my daughter stay in ethnically diverse schools and communities.  

It means learning how to do cornrows and letting go of my self-consciousness about browsing the aisles of stores that sell black beauty products.  

It means confronting my own prejudices and stereotypes—by not crossing to the other side of the street if an unfamiliar black man is walking toward me, or by accepting that Black English is only an alternative to the way I speak.  

It means learning that race is an issue: that even though some people’s ideal would be for a colorblind society, understanding that this attitude can prevail from a position of white privilege is paramount.  

It means finding humor in the face of misguided comments, like the one at Andronico’s last year: “Oh, are you baby-sitting?” 

Or more difficult to swallow, it meant believing that my decision to adopt across racial lines was the right one after a black acquaintance who objects to transracial adoption filed a bogus complaint against me. 

At a Juneteenth celebration my daughter and I went to a couple of months ago, I was one of only a handful of white attendees. My now six-year-old child  

rocked and rolled in the inflatable jump tent, munched on pizza, and bugged me for cotton candy. When another child about her age noticed me nearby and asked her dubiously, “Is that your mom?” my daughter replied in a confident voice, “Yeah!” 

It wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that she’s asked that question. 

It might be delusional on my part to assume she’ll always be so accepting of me. But I know I’ll do everything I can to instill in her a sense of pride—in herself and her culture, and pride in our transracial family. 

Because for me my daughter is a gift, and I feel privileged to be her mom. Love is only the beginning of what I hope we’ll share as she grows.  

Annie Kassof is a Berkeley resident.