Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 4, 1994 TAG: 9410040079
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The measure would forbid child welfare agencies from discriminating against prospective parents solely on the basis of race, color or national origin. Agencies that violate the law risk being sued in court and losing federal money.
Although nothing is certain in the congressional session's final, fractious days, the ban on adoption discrimination is widely expected to win final approval in the Senate as part of the $11 billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Sponsored by Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, the Multiethnic Placement Act seeks to encourage more interracial adoptions at a time when a record 460,000 children are in foster care. Not all are candidates for adoption, but tens of thousands, many of them black, are waiting for a permanent home.
In addition to making adoption discrimination illegal, the measure calls on child welfare agencies to diligently recruit parents of all races and ethnic groups. However, it provides no extra money to help agencies find the families needed to take in abandoned, abused and neglected children.
Metzenbaum's plan arouses intense feelings all around: from those who believe all adoptions should be colorblind to others who say it would pressure states to place a child in the first available home, without sufficient attention to cultural and racial dynamics.
In an interview, Metzenbaum said it is an ``abomination to keep a child from being adopted by a family that can bring that child up, that wants to give that child a home, an education, loving care. I see thousands more kids being adopted as a consequence of this bill.''
The National Association of Black Social Workers has argued that interracial adoptions should be allowed only after exhaustive efforts to find a relative or black family have failed.
by CNB