The first Africans were brought to America in the 1500s against their will. They were kidnaped from their African villages and brought here to be slaves. Even after slavery was abolished, African Americans suffered because many laws discriminated against them. This made most African Americans mistrustful of the government and kept them from considering legal adoptions which had to be completed in a court of law. However, many families did adopt the children of relatives or neighbors informally.

Children who were not adopted through the courts or by relatives or neighbors went into foster care. They often stayed in foster care for a long time because the only families considered for them were African American . . . and there did not seem to be enough African American families identified to legally adopt them.

Transracial adoption, when parents of one race adopt a child from another, was opposed in 1972 by the National Association of Black Social Workers because it believed that it was better for a child to be raised by a family of the same race. But many black families were still not comfortable with the adoption process and there were not enough African American families coming forward to legally adopt waiting children.

Both black and white social workers have worked hard to encourage legal adoptions by African American families. At the same time, many social workers no longer insist that children and parents must always be the same race.

In 1994 the federal government passed the Multiethnic Placement Act. This law requires
. . . child welfare service agencies to provide for the serious search for possible foster and adoptive families that reflects the ethnic and racial diversity of children in the State for whom foster and adoptive homes are needed.

It also says they cannot decide to deny or delay placing a child in an adoptive family based on the child's or the family's race, color or national origin. This means that a child does not have to stay in foster care for years waiting for an African American family.

People who adopt children of a different race benefit from learning about the cultural richness of that community: the holidays, foods, dress, etc. For example, a family in which the parents are white and a child is black can benefit from living close to African American neighbors, classmates and mentors.