Facing the Color Barrier

LEXINGTON, Texas — The low point in Scott and Lou Ann Mullen’s long battle to adopt their two youngest sons came one evening as they watched the local news. There, in a segment on children in search of loving homes, flashed the sweet, familiar faces of Joseph and Matthew. The boys were hoping, the announcer said, that a nice family would want to adopt them.

It was almost more than the Mullens could bear. They wanted to adopt the young brothers. They felt that Joseph and Matthew already were their children, ripped away from them by a state agency because of the color of their skin.

Scott Mullen is white; Lou Ann is Native American; and Joseph and Matthew, now 7 and 4, are black. After more than two heart-wrenching years, the Mullens have finally been allowed to adopt the brothers, but the adoption was approved only after they filed suit charging the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services with racial discrimination in its adoption practices.

Under a recent settlement, the agency agreed to turn over adoption statistics for the next two years to the Institute of Justice, the Washington D.C.-based conservative advocacy group that assisted the Mullens, but department officials deny that race played a part in their decisions.

Lou Ann Mullen says she knows better. “Several caseworkers, the adoption supervisor, they all said, ‘No, it would be in the kids’ best interest to place them in an African American home,’ ” said the 31-year-old mother of eight, including seven adopted children, and a longtime foster parent. “Those words will stick with me for the rest of my life--what about love?”

The Mullens’ case is the latest salvo in a highly charged debate in which all sides argue from both emotion and experience about what is best for children. It is, simply put, an argument about whether white families, who are often anxious to adopt any healthy child, should be allowed to raise black children, who represent a disproportionate share of those available for adoption.

At the opposite end of this debate is David Watts, a biracial social worker in New York who was raised by an adoptive white family. “It’s a bad idea to put a black child in a white home. . . . I think it’s impossible for someone of one culture to teach another culture,” he said. “You have to live it in order to absorb it.”

The Texas case, along with similar court challenges in Tennessee and Maryland, is forcing a closer look at the controversial issue of “race matching” in adoptions. The issue is already on the federal agenda. In August, Congress enacted legislation that could deny states a percentage of federal funds for foster care if race is used to delay or deny adoptions. The measure was based on studies showing that African American children are spending twice as much time in foster homes as white children.

In California, 42% of the 8,098 children awaiting adoption are white, 32% are black, 23% Latino and less than 2% are Asian. Like most other states, California once had ethnic preference policies but changed them last year to comply with new federal guidelines. The state’s so-called 3-D policy forbids discrimination, denial of adoptions due to ethnicity and delays in placing children due to ethnicity.

Jim Brown, chief of adoptions in the state Social Services Department, said no similar lawsuits had been brought here since the changes. Still, he added, social workers and local agencies will receive special training this year to ensure that adoption practices follow the new policies.

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Race matching is supported by those who believe that ethnic identity and pride can be best preserved if, for example, an African American child grows up in an African American family. Since 1972, the influential National Assn. of Black Social Workers has taken this stance, suggesting that interracial adoption is a form of genocide and that “black children in white homes are cut off from the healthy development of themselves as black people.”

“Same race makes sense because it is what the child is accustomed to, what causes the least disruption in the child’s life,” said Toni Oliver, a representative for the organization. “Oftentimes when people are looking at ‘love is all it takes,’ they seem to overlook the impact race has on our society. Somehow, when it’s a case of adoption, race suddenly doesn’t seem to matter anymore.”

The North American Council on Adoptable Children also has serious reservations. “It is probably optimal if children are placed in same-race, same-culture placements, but we do not condone delaying placement and preventing children from finding homes just to meet that optimal placement,” said spokeswoman Diane Riggs.

Black families who want to adopt are often at a disadvantage because of the expenses involved in a public adoption, including a minimum of $1,500 for court costs, Riggs said. Another barrier is that “in the African American culture, there is a belief that it should be a family-to-family thing, a community effort, that a child is not something you should pay for,” she said.

Until World War II, which left thousands of children looking for homes, it was extremely rare for white couples to adopt black children. Well into the 1960s, the guiding policy was that every effort should be made to match a child with the skin color and religion of the adoptive family.

During the civil rights movement, interracial adoptions in the United States increased dramatically, more than tripling from 733 cases in 1968 to 2,574 cases in 1971. (There are now about 6,500 cases a year.) But a backlash followed the NABSW’s condemnation, and a debate has raged ever since about the benefits and hazards of placing children with parents of different races. The few available academic studies have shown that the adopted children grow up well adjusted and comfortable with their ethnic identity.

Opponents of race matching contend that the numbers now seem stacked against the possibility of same-race adoptions. Of the estimated 500,000 children in the U.S. foster home system, more than half are minorities. Of those available for adoption, 40% are black, although blacks represent only about 13% of the general population. What is more, according to the National Adoption Center, which keeps track of so-called hard-to-place children, about 67% of such children are black and 26% are white, while 67% of the waiting families are white and 31% are black.

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But all the talk of race leaves Lou Ann Mullen cold. That was the only consideration, she believes, that prompted social workers to take little Matthew, who had been in her foster care since he came home from the hospital--addicted to cocaine and suffering from syphilis--away from their home while the search continued for a “more suitable” adoptive family. She cannot bear to think how he must have suffered.

“It’s going to take him a long time to trust anybody,” she said.

State officials have always given the Mullens excellent ratings as foster parents. It was only when they wanted to adopt, the Mullens believe, that the doors slammed shut.

A small, youthful woman with long dark hair, Mullen speaks with quiet anger about the ordeal. Deeply religious, she believes her life’s work is to care for children who need a home, feelings shared by Scott, 35, who also has a state job working with youths convicted of violent crimes.

The high school sweethearts came to their marriage with an instant family--Lou Ann’s younger brother, Juan, now 20, and sister, Gloria, 18, whom the couple adopted after their mother was unable to care for them. The family also includes Mary, 12, the Mullens’ only biological child; Rachel, 9, who is biracial and was adopted privately; and a brother and sister, 12 and 10, who are black and have lived with them in foster care for nearly six years. The Mullens are trying to adopt them as well.

Their home, in this small central Texas town of 1,000, is a cozy maze constructed from the connection of three mobile homes. Each child has a room crammed full of toys and collections. Matthew came to the family in November 1992 when he was only a few days old. They quickly grew to love him and immediately told his social workers that they wanted to adopt him. But they were told “no way,” Lou Ann Mullen said, that Matthew needed a black home.

When the child was 2, the state agency removed him from the Mullens to place him with his older brother, Joseph, who was being adopted by a black family. That plan soon fell apart, however, and the boys were placed in a black foster home while the social workers, who were white, searched for another black family to adopt them.

According to the Mullens, one of the supervisors said that she was prepared to spend six months searching for a same-race family and that she would place the boys in a group home before she would let the Mullens adopt them. Only after Lou Ann contacted the Institute of Justice and the couple filed suit in April 1995 did social workers give them an official adoption application.

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Ironically, since 1993 Texas has had what is considered one of the strongest laws on the subject, saying that a state or county agency “may not deny or delay placement of a child for adoption or otherwise discriminate on the basis of the race or ethnicity of the child or prospective parents.”

Linda Edwards, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Regulatory and Protective Services, denies that the agency did anything wrong. Refusing to comment specifically on the Mullens’ case, she said the department “supports interracial adoptions. That is evidenced by the fact that 45% of our adoptions are interracial. . . . We can’t have any policies or practices that interfere with children having a loving home as soon as possible.”

But Elizabeth Bartholet, a Harvard University law professor who has studied public adoptions for a dozen years, said that difficulties such as those experienced by the Mullens often reflect the mind-set of the agency staff. Bartholet refers to race matching as “the unwritten and generally invisible rules” that guide adoption policies.

Some researchers say interracial adoptions are more complicated than many prospective parents believe. Robert T. Carter, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University, has found that many adoptees as young adults begin struggling with issues of identity and culture. David Watts, who is part of Carter’s research team, said he realized only after he left his white adoptive family in Cleveland how isolated and different he had sometimes felt as a child.

Rita Simon, an American University professor who has conducted the only long-term study on the subject, said she found that the children had healthy attitudes toward their racial identities. After tracking black children adopted by white families over a 20-year period, Simon concluded that “the best interests of the child” would be met if state agencies would move “without regard to race.”

That is Lou Ann Mullen’s hope, that skin color will no longer be a factor in adoption. “I don’t want any other family to suffer what we suffered,” she said.