ABSTRACT
One of the anxieties expressed by opponents of ‘transracial adoption’ and fostering is that white families will be unable to provide black and mixed-parentage children with the skills and ‘survival techniques’ they need for coping in a racist society. What these skills and techniques are has been very little discussed, but the question raised is obviously important. In this chapter we discuss the ways in which the mixedparentage young people in our sample said they dealt with racism, the advice they said their parents had given them and whether they had found it helpful, and the models with which their parents had, perhaps unconsciously, provided them. We also compare the advice and models provided by black and white parents, and describe the support that came from other sources, such as teachers and friends.
