First off I am AA and my dh CC so AA and Biracial children were what we were specifically looking for. Even with that we did experience bias coming from several SW. You see we were the wrong flavor of Biracial and therefore not "Black" enough. There are many SW who were influenced by that statement by the Assoc. of Black SW condeming transracial placement of AA children and it has set back SW several years. However one of the things I discovered is that for every familly there is an adoption professional who will work with you to find just the right child for you.
When we started our prcess the first time around we hit many road blocks and couldn't find and agency that would work with us. We were young (26) only married two years and as grad students we were PO(that is where you are so poor that you can't afford the last two letters). I was sure that we would have to sign up with an agency out of state. That is a great advantage to adopting in this country weather you choose to adopt domestically or internationally, you can choose professionals outside of you area or state if they "fit" your needs better. We found that adopting thru private agencies and independently worked better for us. That way we could choose the professionals we worked with and avoided SW with an agenda (beyond finding good homes for babies).
As for the 25% figure that came form Xena Oglesby the founder and executive director of the Institute for Black Parenting. He is amoung one of the first of many SW for a state agency who got fed up with the way they were not placing chidlren for adoption and founded his own private agency. There are now a network of such agencies around the country dedicated to placing chidlren of color. Many use federal grants to underwrite their costs so their adoptions are weither free or very inexpensive. That figure refers to chidlren whose birth parents wanted to make an adoption plan but could not find a family. in most cases thses kids end up being raised by birth family or adopted from fostercare. The problem I have is that with the current bureaucracy in the fostercare system most wait 2.9 years before they find a home. A good place to get info on chidlren of color in this country is PACT at
www.pactadopt.org. theya re a non profit dedicated to adoption education and advocacy. They also facilitate adoptions by eeping a list of professionals who are looking to place special needs (chidlren of color can be spcial needs just by virtue of their color). I know four families who went thru them to adopt 6 chidren total. Two hispanic boys for one family, two Biracial boys for two other families and a set of full AA g/b twins for the other family (same sex couple BTW) none waited more than a couple of months but their fees varied because each was matched thru a diferent agency or attorney.
AA males are at the bottom of the adoption desireability index. First more birth moms of any color place boys compared to girls. Second more families of any color looking to adopt want girls. When you throw in the racial componant you see AA boys waiting to be adopted while other children have several families lined up for them. Girls tend not be as hard to place but my dd was offered to five families before the agency gave up, placed her in fostercare and searched other agencies for families. Here was a perfectly healthy beautiful Biracial baby whose only problem was not being CC. We got her at nearly three months but it literally took that long for the agency to find someone.
If the tiny infant stage is not appealing to you and foster-adopt is not available to you (or poorly run in you county which many programs are) I think international adopion is the fastest route to toddler adoption. Most children don't travel until they are over 6 months and in some countries babies over 12 months are considered special needs (reduced fees). Most internationally adopted chidlren are actually toddlers not infants. We looked at adopting in Colombia and Brazil and found that toddlers were not in as high a demand and therfore the costs were greatly reduced. I don't know about now but 4 years ago when dh and I inquired the adoption of a preschooler in Brazil was free of charge, we would just have to pay for travel and translation of documents. Adoption form state run orpahanges in Columbia were only slightly more expensive. Now again we were looking for chidlren with African heritage so I don't know if that affected the fees but I don't think other countries do that.
lisa