Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 7, 1993                   TAG: 9401150015
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ellen Goodman
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

'GENOCIDE'?

But this time we are not talking about schools or jobs or seats on a bus. We are talking about families. We are talking about black or mixed-race children who need parents and white adults who want to adopt them.

It is not the oldfangled segregation created by whites who oppose racial mixing. It's the newfangled segregation supported by a small but powerful group of black Americans who support ``racial matching.''

In the early 20th century, legal adoption occurred largely in the white world. It wasn't until the civil-rights movement in the '50s and '60s that white parents began adopting children of color.

But in 1972, the old policy of matching found a new source of support. The National Association of Black Social Workers began to call transracial adoption a ``particular form of genocide.'' Since then, the NABSW has said, ``Black children should not be placed with white parents under any circumstances.'' Indeed, they and a few others have argued that it's better for black children to be in foster care or institutions than with white parents.

Be careful what you wish for.

Today, about 40 percent of the half million children in foster care are black. Out of 22,000 babies abandoned in hospitals, 74 percent are black. Tens of thousands of these children are waiting for adoption, and the median length of time they wait is nearly three years.

The black community has made heroic efforts to care for children and grandchildren who lose parents to drugs, AIDS and the side effects of poverty. But black Americans are only 12.5 percent of the population. The numbers simply don't ``match.''

This year, in belated recognition that the matching that matters most in a child's life is with a family, Ohio's Sen. Howard Metzenbaum sponsored the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, designed to eliminate the racial and ethnic bias that can keep children in foster-care limbo.

But the bill ran into the opponents of transracial adoption. The original bill said agencies should not delay placement of children in order to match them. The compromise version says agencies shouldn't ``unduly'' delay placement. The original bill said a transracial placement is better than long-term foster care. The compromise says that adoption ``may be'' (or, implicitly, may not be) a preferable alternative. A move that promised change instead authorizes and legitimizes the very racial matching that would keep foster children in place.

It's not hard to understand the visceral reaction of some African-Americans to transracial adoption. Some hear echoes of slave days when black children were bought and sold by white families. Others share anger about policies that help break up black families and now would award the offspring to white folks. Others genuinely worry about a black child's struggle for identity in a transracial family in a still-racist world.

All things being equal, given two sets of available parents, one white, one black, I would agree to place children with parents of the same race. But all things are not always equal.

Randall Kennedy, an African-American and Harvard law professor, argues against the notion that black children ``belong'' to the black community and are ``lost'' when adopted by whites. He calls this thinking an example of both ``naked racialism'' and ``the impulse to view children as property.''

There is something equally sorry in allowing children to languish in foster homes to protect and respect racial identity. Harming black children to ``save'' the black community is like destroying a village to save it.

If children belong anywhere, they belong in a family. If children need a sense of identity, they get it first of all and best of all as a son or a daughter.

\ The Boston Globe