[LisaCA]

from what I understand, blacks adopt at higher rates than whites, it's just not "formal" adoption thru an agency or atty. and one reason they don't do as much formal adoption is the feeling you get when you attend many adoption orientations. without going into a ton of detail (dd wants her yogurt NOW!) dh and I found ourselves appalled at what we saw and heard. we heard anecdotes about the "perfect blonde babies", encountered very little information about race at all, were told about time and expenses, which often do not apply to AA, etc. If i were wandering in to find out more about adoption, boy would I have heard enough. dh and I had read a ton before we showed up, so we weren't deterred. All of the social workers were white, all the adoption officials, etc. The idea that black pbmoms are turned away from some agencies is something that gets around. we went with a facilitator that places children of color and has a rep for recruiting same race placements (half of their matches are same race matches). so some agencies/facilitators managed to find people of color, but others "can't"

and the "baby that looks like them" argument is a bit suspect since there are many international adoptions from china and domestic latino/asian adoptions etc. Apparently for some, anything but black is fine by them (this is not to condemn all transracial international or domestic non black adoptions. This is to point out that many who list will request a number of diff. race/ethnicities, but will not list AA).

there is also a feeling that adoption and foster care are intertwined. since some AA suspect foster care admin. of using race to determine whether to pull a child, this baggage is carried over to the adoption arena. Since there's not much there to suggest they're incorrect, it becomes a problem.

yeah, its frustrated me for years and I doubt I'll change my feelings any time soon.

frustrated and angry baby, must feed...