Wednesday, April 21, 1999
County delays transracial adoptions, suit says
BY ANNE MICHAUD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
If social workers are illegally preventing white parents from adopting African-American children, as a lawsuit claims, Mimi Chamberlin can't understand their thinking.
She and her husband, who are white, adopted two African-American children through a private agency, and the race arguments do not ring true to this Kennedy Heights family.
“This is not controversial to me,” she said as her children called for her in the background. “The children need to move as quickly as possible into a loving, permanent family. That's the main thing and everything else is secondary.”
ADOPTION FACTS
|
About 8 percent of adoptions in the nation are white families adopting children of color, according to the National Adoption Information Clearinghouse.
The Multiethnic Placement Act, enacted by Congress in 1994, was intended to encourage mixed-racial adoptions and redress the problem of too many minority children languishing in foster care. It prohibits denying or delaying the adoption of a ward of the state because of race. |
A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Monday alleges that is not happening. The Hamilton County Department of Human Services (DHS) is delaying and denying adoptions based on race, said one of two attorneys who filed it, civil rights lawyer Scott Greenwood.
The overwhelming majority of children awaiting homes, about 300 in total, is African-American and too few families of the same race are seeking to adopt, Mr. Greenwood said. DHS completes only about 100 to 110 adoptions each year.
“The reality is DHS stalls every transracial adoption,” Mr. Greenwood said.
DHS would not confirm his figures or comment on the allegations. Spokeswoman Mindy Good said neither the department nor its lawyers has received a copy of the lawsuit through official channels.
Ex-employee suing
Mr. Greenwood's information comes from a former social worker who claims he lost his job of eight years when he insisted DHS comply with federal law. The lawsuit did not name the social worker to keep the identities of the families and children private.
The complaint seeks at least $2 million for the social worker and a court order ending the alleged discrimination in transracial adoptions.
In one instance, the lawsuit said, an African-American child with a disability was not placed with two sets of white families who were especially well-qualified to deal with his disability. Mr. Greenwood said the adoption was delayed “for the better part of a year.”
In another case, a white foster family wanted to adopt the African-American child in their care, the lawsuit said, but DHS discouraged it and arranged for a same-race family to apply. The decision was overturned by court order.
One child died
For Cincinnati, this case raises a painful memory: Maurice “Reesie” West, a 2-year-old boy who was removed in 1989 from a Sharonville home where white parents wanted to adopt him. He was placed with an African-American family in Rochester, N.Y., and eight weeks later he was beaten to death by one of his new parents.
At the time, a reform committee recommended DHS change its policy to favor transracial adoption if it is in the best interest of the child.
The lawsuit alleges DHS has reverted to old practices. It once maintained separate departments for white and black adoptions, the lawsuit said; now the separation is informal but just as real.
A selection committee approves all matches, the lawsuit said, and “In many cases, race is the predominant — and sometimes only — factor even discussed in the context of a matching.”
DHS has altered records to remove racial references, the lawsuit alleges, and has “lost” whole case files to cover up.
Deb Harder, a spokeswoman for Adoptive Families of America, a St. Paul, Minn., advocacy group, said transracial adoptions are growing because of a push to reduce the time children spend in transitory care such as foster homes. She did not have specific figures.
For two decades, the National As sociation of Black Social Workers has discouraged transracial adoptions. The association maintains that children who are adopted by white families are unable to deal with society's prejudices when they get older.
Also, how families are judged as fit to adopt is oriented toward white families, the association has said.
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