The racial dimension.

The issue of racial matching in adoption was extremely controversial in the 1980s, and remains somewhat so. Experts differ on the extent to which it is beneficial for children to placed with adoptive parents of their same race, culture and religion. Sometimes this involves a tradeoff between placing a child with a same-race family and placing him or her with a family that has more educational or economic advantages. The issue arises especially when healthy infants are being placed for adoption; they are wanted by many couples, and choices often have to made. Older children who have been in foster care for a while are likely to have been scarred by their experiences, to be needy in many ways and to be less attractive to prospective adoptive parents. Under current law, prospective adoptive parents cannot be excluded simply on the basis of race, a practice which was relatively common in the 1980s. Nonetheless, because of the presumed advantages to children of placement in families culturally similar to their own, adoption agencies still make serious efforts to recruit adoptive parents from minority communities.

But an issue arises for DCFS in this case that students may wish to discuss: should the black ministers be encouraged or required to expand their alliance to include white and suburban churches? If not, how can the racial preferences be justified?