Black Parents, White Daughter

What's wrong with this picture?

Nothing to me but for many others a lot.

I've seen quite a few Caucasian parents/African-American child adoptions but I've never come across an African-American couple who had adopted a Caucasian child...until now.

From Newsweek...

As a black father and adopted white daughter, Mark Riding and Katie O'Dea-Smith are a sight at best surprising, and at worst so perplexing that people feel compelled to respond. Like the time at a Pocono Mountains flea market when Riding scolded Katie, attracting so many sharp glares that he and his wife, Terri, 37, and also African-American, thought "we might be lynched." And the time when well-intentioned shoppers followed Mark and Katie out of the mall to make sure she wasn't being kidnapped. Or when would-be heroes come up to Katie in the cereal aisle and ask, "Are you OK?"—even though Terri is standing right there.

Is it racism? The Ridings tend to think so, and it's hard to blame them. To shadow them for a day, as I recently did, is to feel the unease, notice the negative attention and realize that the same note of fear isn't in the air when they attend to their two biological children, who are 2 and 5 years old.

The irony of course is that black folks have been taking care of and essentially raising white folks children for centuries. To think that a black couple raising a white child is now somehow inappropriate is absurd.

The entire article is well worth a read.