Transracial shmasracial

We're fresh off our December adoption meeting and I always have a good couple of weeks after each of these meetings.  They tend to remind me about the end goal and how we just have to stick in there because one day it's going to happen for us.  This meeting was about Transracial Adoption and I was pretty excited about the topic in general.

In the beginning of this whole adoption process we were given a boatload of paperwork and one of them was a Transracial Adoption questionnaire booklet who's job was to ask us questions that would put us in situations where we had to think abotu whether or not we would be comfortable adopting outside of our race.  I was pretty confident about my answers to the questions but when everything was said and done, I was one question away from falling into the "maybe you're not really ready to adopt outside of your race" category.

I was shocked.

I consider myself pretty diverse and a non-racist individual.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that I fall into one of the smallest minorities on the planet.  Female.  Mexican.  Lesbian.  I couldn't believe that I was one question away from the being in the next category.

So ultimately this brings up the question of whether or not Kristen and I are prepared to adopt outside of our race.  And I guess the short answer is:  I'm not sure.  I listened to the stories of the adoptive mothers that were there tell their stories of raising their beautiful African American daughters and the comments that even the most well-intentioned people would make.  How would Kristen and I handle those?  Would we be equipped to response with kindness rather than rash responses?

I would like to think that racism doesn't exist in the world that I live in today.  That it's almost 2011 and it's time that we put all of that behind us.  I'm no better than you and you're no better than the person next to you.  Regardless of your color.  But here's the thing that I've been painfully aware of most of my life.  Aside from the fact that it's obvious that I'm female and unless you know my last name, I've pretty much been able to "hide" the fact that I'm Mexican or the fact that I'm a lesbian unless it's something that I want you to know.  The idea of adopting a child of color or of a different race puts everything out there.  They're going to have 2 mothers, they are going to look different than us and they are going to be adopted.

I don't know.. I feel like I'm babbling.. it's almost 11:00 on a Friday.  Maybe it's time for sleep and more blogging later :)

Oh yeah, FYI:  I'm blogging in purple and this font and Kristen's taking the white font.  Now you can keep track of who's talking smack about who!