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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, do you know any black people? Do you have any black friends or is there anyone in your life that your child would look like? Are you willing to make an effort--not talking going to church--to cultivate more relationships with black people and go places where your child will see black people in order to make them more comfortable in life?[/quote]

We don't have any close AA friends. I did when I was growing up, but we gradually drifted apart after college when we all wound up in different cities. I have a number of AA colleagues and am close with one, but in a close work colleague way, and she is my mother's age. I'm not sure DH has ever had a close black friend; he grew up in a Jewish and Italian enclave in NY. We have close friends of other races but not AA, as it happens. Honestly we are both introverts and don't have a ton of close friends anyway, and most of them aren't even in this area.

There are a couple other people of color in my family; my sister's husband is half Puerto Rican (was raised sort-of Jewish and sort-of nothing), and one of my cousins married a Japanese woman and they have bio kids; but other than that we're a pretty typical Ashkenazi Jewish family with the lack of diversity that implies.

Maybe it's because I'm an introvert but I'm not sure how I would "cultivate more relationships with black people" unless they approached me if I had a black child. I can't really see myself walking up to someone I didn't know and trying to strike up a conversation just because they were black. I could see this being relatively easy if we joined a black church. But we're not going to do that. I see black people all the time, just like I see white people and Asian people and Hispanic people and gay people all the time. There's plenty of visual exposure. But that's not the same as actually knowing people. Maybe it's a failure of imagination on my part.[/quote]

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