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I am white British/ Russian mix, with my British grandfather having been raised in India with some Indian ancestory. My brother lives in Bangladesh and is married to an American. They have boys born in Belgium. As children we experienced racism with Russians being viewed as the "baddies" in the days of the cold war. I consider myself fairly culturally aware.I worked in South Africa for 14 years in rural Zululand where I was very much in a white minority. While we "whites" (some of whom were black but educated and from outside the area), were clumped together, I found the Afrikaans culture and even the English South African culture was quite different from my own. The Zulus saw us all as one homogeneous ethnic group but we were not. I felt totally out of my comfort zone when visiting an Afrikaans family as I knew there were ways they expected a young white woman to behave, but I wasn''t entirely sure what these were!In my time in Zululand, I learnt the language, lived in an entirely Zulu neighbourhood and absorbed quite a bit of the culture and values into my way of life. While there, I married a British man and we had a birth son and shortly after also adopted a black daughter. We followed the local ways of keeping my AD''s hair very short and easy to manage. The kids played with Zulu kids and a few white kids, read books about black and white children, sang songs in Zulu and occasionally tried Zulu food (which none of us found very inspiring)Two years ago we moved to the UK and this year decided to start the process towards adopting another child. Our social worker considered us as being suitable for a transracial child. However, as time has gone on, she has being questioning whether we are meeting our daughter''s ethnic needs and therefore what evidence there is that we will meet another child''s ethnic needs. I am now finding I''m being pressured to quickly learn and take on board British black afro-caribbean culture and make sure that my AD is exposed to this, as it is now seen as what reflects her identity (but is quite unlike the Zulu culture where we lived before). I was critised for her hair not being properly cared for and have now started taking her to a black hairdresser where she sits and sobs her way through several hours of hair care. The SW also suggested that I take her to a local Afro-caribbean club. However, I find this does not do anything towards maintaining her Zulu heritage. Also, AD seems to feel uncomfortable when she is among black people. She probably feels like I did with the Afrikaaners. Over time she will learn about the culture here, but we have only been here 2 years so it is early days.We have South African friends here who we can chat with about braais, bakkies, game park experiences, South African weather, AIDS and politics. But this doesn''t count as maintaining an awareness of her background in the SW''s eyes because they are white.Basically, I feel that in this day and age when everyone is so mixed and we are surrounded by so many different cultures and embrace the wonderful diversity and richness that this brings, there should not be such a big emphasis on the need to meet the cultural needs of a child. This is especially true when the culture we are being asked to integrate our AD into is not actually her culture of origin.We have chatted about this issue with various black friends and acquaintances and are still trying to grasp if our SW has some wisdom behind what she is saying which we are missing. Any thoughts would be appreciated. We are wondering if it might just be easier to adopt a white child rather than face more grief at a matching panel.