Word: adopter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Should White Parents Adopt Black Children...
Social workers should take race into account in adoptions, according to a new report from the nonprofit Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute--despite a 1994 law that prohibits doing so. While supporters of the Multiethnic Placement Act say attempting to match black children with black parents lengthens the time kids spend in foster care, the report argues that white parents are often ill-prepared to handle race-specific identity issues. It recommends race-related training for white parents as well as a drive to get more black parents to adopt...
...roughly 440,000 children who currently languish in America's foster-care system, 20,000 are available for adoption, most of them older children between the ages of 6 and 12. Among the adoptable children, 44% are white and 43% are black. But 67% of all families waiting to adopt are white, and many of them are eager to take a black child. The hurdles, however, are often formidable. Though only three states--Arkansas, California and Minnesota--have laws promoting race matching in adoptions, 40 others favor the practice...
Meanwhile, the real-life consequences of the same-race requirements have emerged in a number of court battles. Most prominent has been the case of Lou Ann and Scott Mullen of Lexington, Texas, who filed suit in April to adopt two black brothers, ages 2 and 6, whom they have raised since infancy. Though Texas law bars race from being the determining factor in adoption, the Mullens charge that caseworkers delayed the adoption in order to seek an African-American home. Their case is bolstered by a separate class action against the state of Texas, filed jointly by lawyers...
...more. In 1991 he and his wife became foster parents of Robyn, a three-day-old, crack-addicted black infant who had been abandoned on San Francisco's Mission Street. For more than a year, the Mandels were never contacted by county social workers. But when they tried to adopt Robyn at age 14 months, the county sought to remove the child from their care, citing the lack of a racial match. The Mandels obtained a restraining order, then in May 1994 won the right to adopt. Mandel has little patience for those who worry about the child's sense...