Part I: Challenges ‘We do see color’ Introduction

Challenges

Identity

Education

Police Brutality

Origins Quest Deborah Hill admires daughter Lizelle’s twists, done at the Neema Hanifa salon in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Arzouma Kompaoré/VOA)

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — For more than 20 years, Megan Walsh has helped families welcome adopted children into their homes. She has found that the challenges increase when a parent and child differ in race.

‘At 10, he's just starting to notice that people might be looking at us, that we don't look like every other family in town, that there aren't as many black children in our neighborhood."’ – Erika Tode, about son Jayden

"A lot of adoptive families struggle when they adopt transracially because they are maybe not so comfortable stepping outside their comfort zone," Walsh said, stressing that parents must recognize "they're asking their child to often be the minority" in their families and beyond.

Walsh was the longtime director of La Familia-Namaste, an adoption agency in this capital city in the southwestern United States. La Familia finds families for roughly 80 children a year. A third of its placements are transracial. Walsh moved back to her native Washington state last year, and now works as a behavioral health specialist at a pediatric therapy clinic.

In Albuquerque, she helped the Hill family, whose South African-born daughter, Lizelle, now 16, knows what it feels like to be "other."

"Sometimes, I'll walk into a class, and the first thing that comes to mind is, 'Is there another black person in this room that I could relate to, that looks similar to me?'" she said.

Lizelle's parents are white, and mindful, as Walsh has counseled, of respecting a child's differences while nurturing a sense of belonging.

That understanding brought Lizelle and her mother, Deborah Hill, to Kamaria Creations, a hair and skin salon specializing in treatments for African Americans.

"With most [transracial] families, what I found is that they start by coming in and asking about hair. That's the initial referral — 'I need to know about how to take care of this child's hair!'" said Neema Hanifa, the salon's owner.

"It's so much deeper than that," Hanifa added. "Self-esteem, of course. How a child feels being in a place like New Mexico, where we have such a small population of African descent."

Under 3% of New Mexicans identify solely as black or African American, according to Census data.

Hill says that through her daughter — and also through son Levi, adopted after his birth in Albuquerque to parents of Haitian and Kenyan descent — she came to understand that "hair is a sociopolitical issue in our culture." She not only found the salon for her children, but she also has studied blogs, books and YouTube videos on styling and caring for black hair.

"We are very much connected with the black community here and in other places we've lived, including Africa," Hill said in an email. She and her husband, George Schroeder, believe their children should "not grow up in an entirely white context, as this will not be their experience when they launch out onto their own."

Walsh thinks parents involved in transracial adoptions of black children should look for adult racial mirrors for them — black pediatricians, teachers, dentists — especially when they live in predominantly white areas.

"Look for friendships with people (who) are their child's ethnicity, but also friendships of any ethnicity," Walsh said. "Kids need to know that their parents appreciate and value people of other cultures and see them as equals."

She added, "Learning to value everyone of every ethnicity and not be afraid of what we don't know, I think that's what's really important. People that get really stuck on being colorblind, I feel that they're doing their kids a disservice, because they're not teaching them that how they are is wonderful, and how they came into this world is important and vital for everybody."

Families can struggle with transracial adoption because it often forces them to step out of their comfort zone, says Megan Walsh, former director of La Familia-Namaste adoption agency in New Mexico. (Arzouma Kompaoré/VOA)

Watch the full report.