[Editor’s note: Not surprisingly, pop icon Michael Jackson has come up more than once in ARP discussions of race, self-esteem and Eurocentric beauty standards. How does one explain to children a young, black man seeming to morph into a white woman? How does one explain to children an icon of black music–a Motown star no less–that seems [...]

TIME magazine wonders “Should Race be a Factor in Adoption?”
Should adoption agencies discriminate by race, or even by a person’s racial sensitivity? According to current U.S. law, no. Since 1996, it has been illegal to consider race when determining whether families are suitable to raise adopted children — the law was intended to increase adoptions [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Dawn Friedman
When we decided to pursue a domestic adoption nearly five years ago, my husband and I – both of us white – decided that we were open to adopting transracially. We were naïve about this – we really didn’t understand the challenges for children adopted transracially – but when we [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Cloudscome
Weaving a Family: Untangling Race and Adoption by Barbara Katz Rothman. Beacon Press, 2005.
Rothman is a professor of sociology at Baruch College, CUNY. She’s written several other books on motherhood, giving birth, race, and gender. In Weaving a Family Rothman talks about her own experience as a white mother of three [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Lisa Marie
I come to Anti Racist Parent as a black woman, as a transracial adoptee and as a woman who recognizes parts of myself as a mother to my friends, my family, my youth, and my students – while at the same time, I have no biological children.
I was born [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Tami Winfrey Harris
When my husband and I began making plans for my 13-year-old stepson to move from Chicago to live with us in our new home in central Indiana, I was ambivalent. I promise I am not a wicked stepmother. I love J. He’s a caring kid with a fun personality [...]

I wrote this piece a few years ago when I was a monthly columnist for a parenting-related site sponsored by a child advocacy organization. Disclaimer: I really enjoyed writing for that site, and my editor there was the best. However, this particular column was nixed because what they were looking for was more [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Tiffany Pridgen
Lately I’ve been thinking about what it means to “raise black children,” specifically when the children in question are multiracial. Apparently because they are part black they have to be treated with special consideration as they’ll face special prejudices.
It’s not a subject I typically devote a lot of brain [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Tami Winfrey Harris
I am a black woman who has spent my life trying to explain who I am.
I am the daughter of a son of the Jim Crow South. I am a member of a black family that helped integrate a white enclave in the 70s. I am the kid who [...]

by guest contributor Tami Winfrey Harris
“Maybe Aunt Tami can be the clown at my birthday party.”
So my five-year-old niece told my sister. It’s not that I can juggle or do magic. I don’t own a pair of big, floppy shoes or a red, rubber nose. It’s the hair.
My hair is nappy. It is coarse and [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Dawn Friedman
We are a transracial family. My husband, my son and myself are white. Our daughter is African-American and joined our family through an open, domestic adoption three years ago. Both my kids are being raised in my Jewish faith in that their formal religious education is happening at our synagogue. [...]

by columnist Deesha Philyaw
The question Jan, a local poet, asked me should not have caught me off guard, but it did. She wanted to know if I would be reading later that evening at an open mic she was hosting as part of a 4-day conference on adoption and culture being held here at [...]

by columnist Deesha Philyaw
I like to talk about race. I joke that, as a black woman, particularly as a daughter of the American South, I was born to do it.
I was born and raised in Florida by my mother who remembered drinking from “colored” water fountains, and by my grandmother, one of many women [...]

Let me live in my house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish- so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?-
Let me live in my house by the side of [...]

by guest contributor Tami Winfrey Harris
A couple of months ago, I asked my stepdaughter about a young, black student at her school. “She’s okay. You know she talks like a white girl. At first I thought she was weird,” she replied.
The comment struck me. You see, I’ve been that “weird” black girl—that [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Jason Sperber
This is where we live.
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I took our almost-three-year-old daughter to her first county fair. She got to eat French fries and funnel cake, look at cows, and dance like crazy to Los Lobos, performing live in a concert sponsored by an [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent Columnist Liz Dwyer
A couple of weeks ago, I was at someone’s home talking with another woman who was also a guest. As we talked, my two sons were hovering around, quietly doing their usual Power Rangers imitation. My six year-old popped over to demonstrate some of his moves for me, and this [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Vera L
During this past school year, the idea of beginning a group for parents of African American students at my sons’ elementary school positioned itself in the forefront of my mind. There is already a group at the school for Latino parents. One of the Latina moms decided to [...]

by Anti-Racist Parent columnist Tiffany Pridgen
I spend a lot of time being the only black person in a group. I’m used to it — that’s the way it’s always been and it’s rare that I ever feel uncomfortable about a situation. It’s not even because I didn’t grow up around black people — it’s because [...]

Dear Anti-Racist Parent,
I appreciate the content on your blog. I have read some very interesting and touching things here.
My sister is considering moving to the south. She is a single mother of two mixed-race boys – 1/2 African American – 1/2 Caucasian.
I am starting to worry that they boys may be met with more resistance [...]