Interracial Anything

A few months back a friend of ours parents found out we were adopting cross-culturally. To our surprise they though it was bad because we had decided to adopt African children.

To my amazement many Caucasian and African American groups think this is very wrong.

The main argument is that Caucasians cannot raise African Americans because their culture is too different and vice verse, and that culture is the most important thing you have.

I sometime think the logic of people who make statements like this is a bit un-thought through and really makes no sense when you break it down.

My children are from Ethiopia so the African American culture is just as foreign to them as say Chinese.

How come no one has problems with a German person adopting a Swedish child, Their cultures are very different.

How about a Mexican adopting a Guatemalan?

I think the culture rhetoric is really a disguise for racism, that people think sounds better.

Egyptian is quite a bit different from Sudanese even if it's the same continent.

Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but Somali culture in the Twin Cities is much different than African American culture in the Twin Cities.

Bosnian culture is much different than Russian.

It seems to me that the culture bomb gets dropped only when skins colors get too different.

If I am right then I think it has more to do with racism than culture.

Not to dig our head in the sand we are fully aware there are differences and challenges that we will face that others will not.

Even more to my amazement saddly some of the statements made were from "Christians" who were trying to support their disagreement with us through Biblical texts.

Desiring God recently but out a very helpful commentary called " The Ethics of Interracial Marriage" which deals with alot of the same disagreements people use to try and justify their ideas about interracial anything.

About a month after that my wife and I attended a great cross-cultural adoption seminar at our church. One of the social workers made the statement in response to the above statements that has stuck with me.

"Culture always changes, what is acceptable now may not be in a few years, but character never changes and that is what you should bank on".


We know that there will be difficulties, stares, questions, being that our family is multi-cultural, and we are relying on God's grace and seeking wise counsel from some of the many other families at our church who have adopted from all across the globe.

We though think that it is a beautiful thing and that God calls us to look after orphans and widows in their distress and not only the ones that are from our own race.