I grew up on a street in Lincoln, Nebraska where I knew every face on the block. And not one of them looked like me.
I wasn't sad about it at the time, and I didn't have words for what was happening yet. Kids don't sit around thinking about race. They just pick things up. The neighborhood gives them plenty to pick up, whether anybody planned it or not.
Here's what I picked up on that street. Whoever owned a home, whoever ran something, whoever seemed to be doing alright on that block was white. That's what I saw every day. Nobody had to say it. I just lived inside it for eighteen years.
If you're white and raising a Black child, where you live is about more than finding a good street and a good school. Your neighborhood is teaching your child something about race every single day, whether you planned that lesson or not.
Most white parents who adopt Black children don't think of where they live as a race decision. They picked the neighborhood because the schools were good, or because family was nearby, or because the price worked. None of that is wrong. But your street is also telling your child something about what the world looks like and who belongs in it. And if you didn't pick it with that in mind, it's worth looking at what it's saying to your child right now.
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I can take you back to preschool. Every other kid in that room was white. I knew it then, even without words for it.
When it was nap time, the teacher set up cots and put on soft music to get us settled. All the other kids fell asleep, and I laid there wide awake, looking around the room. I couldn't close my eyes. Kids would come over and touch my hair without asking, stare at me like I was something they hadn't seen before.
I felt out of place in a way I couldn't have named at four or five years old. But I felt it. Something in me knew there was no one there who looked like me, and it wouldn't let me rest.
That room is still clear in my head. I can still hear that soft music playing while everyone else slept. I was in survival mode at nap time. That's what growing up as the only one does to a Black child who has no language yet for what's happening to them. It runs underneath everything, quiet and constant, until it isn't quiet anymore.
The parents who figure this out aren't the ones who move to a different neighborhood. Most people can't do that. They're the ones who look at their child's world and ask what's missing, then go find it on purpose. That means Black spaces where their child can just be, like a Black church, a cultural event, a mentor, a summer program, or other families who look like theirs. It means books in the house, shows on the screen, music in the car, and posters on the wall that show your child Black people front and center.
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The damage from growing up as the only one doesn't announce itself. A young child goes quiet about things they can't name. Those things don't disappear. They show up years later in a teenager who doesn't know how to be around other Black people, or in an adult child who walks into a room full of Black people and feels like a stranger. The parents who get out in front of it are the ones who start now, while their child is still home and still looking to them for help.
You can't change the neighborhood overnight, but you can change what the neighborhood means to your child by building a world around it where they can also see themselves.