After I Adopted Two Black Children, I Realized My Church Was Full of Racists
“It’s really good that you adopted him. Then he won’t be ghetto like other black kids.”
My head snapped up from watching my 10-month old black son toddle towards the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the front of our church. Since he was too full of energy to sit through the sermon, we often ended up listening from a distance while he explored the lobby.
I saw one of our church staff standing there, a man in the operations department, watching my son while directing these misguided, hateful words at me.
“Excuse me?” I replied.
“Well you know,” he said, “I bet he won’t be like those black kids, because you are raising him right.”
Too stunned to answer, I scooped up my son and walked away. I had felt increasingly disconnected from our church since becoming a multiracial family through adoption. At that moment, it was clear to me that my family needed to break away from the church that had been so important to us for so long.