Daphne Wiggins (Note), The Multi-Ethnic Placement Act of 1994, 20 Law & Psych. Rev. 275, 281-82 (1996)
. . . The policy of adoption agencies has been traditionally to match race. The agencies preserve this policy based on the “best interests of the child.” First, they contend that those interests are best served by matching physical appearance, so that the child will not feel ostracized. Second, this matching “corresponds with societal mores concerning race relations.” The legal policy as it stands allows racial matching even if it involves removing children from Caucasian foster families when an African American family becomes available. There are varied examples of the harm such a practice of removal and subsequent placement can cause. In the case of McLaughlin v. Pernsley, a two-year-old foster child was taken from his Caucasian foster parents and placed with an African American foster family. He immediately became clinically depressed and regressed in speech development. Three years later, the court ordered the return of the child to the foster family, but only after the damage had been done.
In the case of In re Davis, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed a trial court's decision to take a ten-year-old African American boy from his Caucasian foster parents so that he could be raised by an African American family. To the court's credit, it admitted that “Shane had already formed a strong psychological attachment to (his foster parents),” but such attachment was dismissed in favor of matching the race of the child.
In a related article, Jane Patterson Auld stated, “the removal of minority children from stable homes in order to make a same-race placement exposes a conflict between racial matching policies and the best interests of the child standard.” By being overly concerned with race matching, children of minority must wait longer to be permanently placed. Race matching is not only a detriment to their healthy development by depreciating their sense of security and adjustment, it diminishes their chances of ever being adopted because older children are not as desirable.