[angeluv]

LisaCa is right......all stats indicate that AA's do adopt at a higher rate but through informal means. The number of agency adoptions by AA is very small. The fact that there are often no non-white faces in agency ads "seems" to support what a number of AA's believe. Culturally we believe that AA's don't make adoption plans for their infants. As a 45 year old woman, I have not known one person on a personal level who placed their child for adoption. I've known very few who adopted children that weren't through family or community connections. I can't speak for other cities but the agencies in my city are located in obscure parts of town and they're no-where near the AA community. Even if an AA couple wanted to locate an agency.....they'd have to find it through the yellow pages and that too is very scary...especially with the negative stories you see/read about unscrupulous agencies and facilitators. AA's see tons of ads about "waiting children" who're older and yes those children need adoptive families. But for those who want infants....they don't know they're available. For those of you who saw the 60 minutes story involving an agency in Georgia who is placing a number of AA infants with Canadian families who are Caucasian, I cringed when the director of the Agency said they can't find AA adoptive families and when asked if they had made a concerted effort by maybe contacting AA churches, he said they hadn't thought about that as an option. (I had a really hard time believing that) If your target is AA's or for that matter anyone wishing or willing to adopt a non-white infant, agencies have got to let their target audiences know these babies are available. Sorry for the soap box but this issue is very disturbing to me. By all means, please make the affiliates of Adoption.com or any other agency who is failing to include non-white faces is their ads know....there's a tremendous need to improve their communications with "all races/ethnic backgrounds and for the infants they place who are all from various ethnic backgrounds. Angeluv