Really excellent piece and as an autistic person I sympathize with your childhood. My first wife was a POC and while we didn't have kids, we had some discussions that touched on everything you mention here.

I'm sure you don't watch a lot of HGTV or reality shows but there is a weird thing going on among White Trumpublican Evangelicals lately. Successful families always have 5 or 6 White kids and an adopted Black kid. Usually from an orphanage in Africa.

The messaging is very direct. It's a statement of "see, we're not racists we adopted a Black child". Plus there is this subtext of "fixing Black culture".

This belief that Black family culture has become toxic and that children raised in it will be criminal, lazy, or irresponsible is clearly pervasive. They are open about how raising a Black child in a White family will "gift" them with solid "family values".

You get the feeling that they expect these children to grow up and be "emissaries" or "missionaries" carrying "White Culture" to the benighted Black people of America.