It’s about love, not race

It’s not easy being a gazelle in a family of lions.

Adoption always comes with complications, but there are more of them when the parents are white and the child black. In the 1970s, black social workers said not enough was being done to preserve black families or encourage black people to adopt, and placement with white parents might leave children without the cultural base they’d need to negotiate America’s racial hierarchy.

But kids can’t wait for social perfection.