My Problem With Biracial Identification

Husband and I have decided to make our family consist of bio kids and adopted kids.  Our bio kids, no doubt about it, will be biracial.  Our adopted kids may or may not...who knows?  I personally would prefer it but it isnt that big a deal to me.

What made me bring this up is a whole heap of things talking about black identity and this crazy biracial problem with identifying with a race blah blah blah.  Let me be forward.  This is stupid.  Husband has it in the back of his head but I started researching now so Im at least somewhat familiar with it when the time comes.  When I started researching adoption in the US, I saw that it could be tricky especially because wed prefer an orphan/foster child.  It seemed like a lot of the younger children had needs beyond what we could handle or in sibling groups with older children (which we dont know if we could handle...maybe in the future.)  That settled it.  We would either fost adopt a young child/baby or go international.  In the end, we will probably go with fost adopt but this didnt stop me from looking into international.  After all, there are cases of parents that were likely to have rights terminated that turned their lives around and got their children back.  I can see how fost adopt can lead to some major heartbreak.

If I had the room, money, and if husband would let me, this would be what our family would look like. Large and full of children with varying races.

In my search for international, I checked out China due to the mass amount of orphans there.  I also checked out Korea which I read had more boys than girls.  There are heritage camps just so these children can know their culture.  Fantastic!  As I started looking back into domestic adoption, I saw that a lot of black/biracial children were being adopted by white parents.  They also felt social identity was a huge part of adoption and thus tried very hard to bring culture to their children.  There is a huge problem with this.

Black kids...lets talk about black people.  Black people in the US are, in general, a mix between a bunch of African people at least and usually have at least a teeny bit of something else (Native American or white) in them.  Personally I identify myself as black mixed.  This is because my Native American, black, and white ancestors dont go that far back.  A good handful of my family, including my mom, could easily blend in with snow.  People can tell that my hair isnt as kinky and my face has Native features.  My hair is longer with a mixed texture.  Most of my hair curls with very few ringlets.  

Back to black people.  There are a bunch of people in Africa, all with different cultures.  To say that you are learning about black culture is just plain stupid.  Black culture is American culture.  Unless you know your African tribes, you can only go back to slavery times (AKA the start of America.)  So please tell me...what culture exactly are you teaching your black/biracial children?  Is it not just American culture?

Two very different tribes.  Where ya from?  How do you know?

You can also say the same for white children.  When I say white, I mean pale-skin-multi-ethnic type children.  In other words, if you adopt a child from Russia, they have a culture to learn.  If you adopt a Spanish child, they have a culture to learn.  Adopt a child who was born from a family of predominantly Irish people, they have a culture to learn.  If you adopt an American "Caucasian" child, their culture starts right here in America when people started coming here on boats.  

Now since black people have this American culture and white people have this American culture, guess what black and white kids have?  Well you know...American culture!  Teach em about AMURIKUH!

By all means learn about your children.  Kinky, curly hair is much different than straight hair.  Thick, Mexican hair isnt like thin, European hair.  Hell it seems even thin, Asian hair isnt like thin, European hair!  Must be easy with boys but girls...we like to look pretty.