The Adopted Black Baby, and the White One Who Replaced Her<br />“Listen carefully,” Amy recalled her mother saying, “because I’m only going to tell you this story once.”<br />It was around 1970 in Deerfield, Ill., and Ms. Sandberg told her youngest child a closely guarded secret about a choice the family had made, one fueled by the racial tensions of the era,<br />that sent a black girl and the white girl that took her place on diverging paths.<br />“There were no people of color in that community at all,” Ms. Smith said, adding<br />that “when white people have to deal with black people, I think, there’s a misperception of who we are, what we stand for.”<br />Join a deep and provocative exploration of race with a diverse group of New York Times journalists.<br />She greeted the news that she had been given up by a white family by telling Ms. Roost<br />that she held no hard feelings, and would not have wanted to be raised by white parents in a white neighborhood.<br />“When I found out she had been adopted by a black family, I assumed her life probably wasn’t as good as mine,” Ms. Roost said.
