I think one of the biggest challenges for our adoption is the transracial element. We’re adopting a kid from Ethiopia—they’re going to be black. We’re very, very white. That can pose a lot of problems.
In our pre-adoption classes they had us do an exercise where we put a colored bead in a cup to match the race of each person they read off—your doctor, your boss, your coworkers, your neighbors, your favorite author, your favorite actor, your favorite musician, your vet, your barber, your lawyer, your accountant, your fill in the blank. At the end of it I had a lot of white beads in my cup. So did everybody else (including the black guy), which is partially because Minnesota is predominantly white. But it helps to see it so vividly.
As a child grows up they need to see people who look like them so they don’t feel like a complete outcast. And that means intentionally trying to be more diverse for the sake of our child. We’ve already made some good steps in the right direction—living in a diverse (for Minnesota) neighborhood, owning a decent mix of multi-cultural books, etc.—but we’ve got a long way to go.
In general, I think race is going to be a tough issue.