The Danger of Limiting Transracial Adoption

Over the weekend, The Dispatch’s David French wrote about the new report from Bethany Christian Services dealing with transracial adoption. As part of what it describes as its “long journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization,” Bethany is calling for changes to the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act to allow race to be a factor in determining adoption placements. Such a change would make it harder for white families to adopt non-white children. In his column, David  made a passing reference to my objections to this change that I wrote about in Newsweek last week. Unfortunately, he did not engage with the substance of my argument.

It is not simply that I think wokeness or critical race theory is bad. That is a subject for another column on another day. It is that I think overturning the Multi-Ethnic Placement Act, which is what Bethany proposes, will result in fewer black children finding loving and permanent homes. 

As I wrote last week: 

Since MEPA and the Adoption and Safe Families Act (which reduced the allowable time for kids to remain in care and which racial activists also want to overturn) were passed in the mid-90s, adoptions “have increased from about thirty thousand to fifty thousand per year,” according to a 2020 article by the Brookings Institution’s Ron Haskins. “Moreover, the average time states took to complete adoption of children from foster care was reduced by about one year.” What this means in practice is clear, writes Haskins: “More kids adopted; faster adoptions. A double victory.”