Salvation or Last Resort? : Thousands of black children are waiting to be adopted. Do they belong only in black families? A few white parents say no and are fighting to change what they believe are restrictive adoption laws.

Dan Zeidman says he wanted only to help solve a major social problem and teach his own five children about tolerance. But when he and his wife, Mary, asked to adopt an African-American child, a San Diego County social worker told them it was against the agency’s policy. The Zeidmans are white.

The attorney investigated and learned that state laws backed the social workers. “I was absolutely dumbfounded that such a statute could be on the books in 1993,” he said.

Now the Zeidmans and at least two other California couples are part of a movement to modify state laws and county policies growing out of those laws, which they say delay, discourage or effectively ban transracial adoptions. Such requirements face court challenges in several other states and have recently been toned down by the Texas legislature. A bill to modify race-matching requirements is pending in the U.S. Senate.

“These poor kids could have loving homes,” Mary Zeidman said. “Instead, it’s foster care and more foster care. It’s a mess.”

California’s law regulating transracial adoptions--more detailed than those in most other states--requires a 90-day search for adoptive parents of the same racial and ethnic background as the child. “But the informal policy is forever,” said UC Berkeley adoption expert Joan Heifitz Hollinger.

Public adoptions are governed by state laws and are administered by county child-welfare agencies. In some cases, critics say, county-employed social workers wield too much power over how quickly transracial adoptions may occur.

Supporters of race matching--which in the past few decades has become widely accepted social policy--say the requirements help ensure that minority children learn about their cultural heritage and prepare them for the racism they will encounter. They say transracial adoptions should be allowed only when alternatives have been exhausted.

California is home to 79,000 foster children--up from 52,000 nine years ago--and 40% are African-American.

Despite recent gains in placing children with both black and white adoptive families, there are up to 1,200 more African-American children needing homes in California than African-American couples likely to adopt them, said UC Berkeley researcher Richard Barth, who based his findings on studies of race, population and adoption statistics.

“One of the concerns about racial matching is that it restricts the pool of parents (who) can choose,” Barth said. “There is good reason to try (race matching). But it should not delay the placement or deny a child adoption. Oftentimes adoption delayed is adoption denied.”

Early results from Barth’s recent study show that African-American children are three times as likely to remain in long-term foster care as Latino or Anglo children.

Race-matching policies grew from the philosophy of the Assn. of Black Social Workers, whose members argue today, as they did two decades ago, that transracial adoptees grow up confused about their racial identities. The nonprofit, Detroit-based social workers group also believes that the family should serve to train children how to cope in what they say is a racist world. “Transracial adoption should be a last resort,” said Leora Neal, executive director of the New York chapter of the social workers group. “Children want to know who they are.”

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Critics of strict race-matching requirements, noting that the number of children in foster care nationwide is nearing 500,000, say their cause has gained momentum from stories like that of Bill and Patricia Mandel of San Francisco. They had raised a black foster child from birth, only to have social workers try to remove her when the couple decided they wanted to adopt.

Robyn, a drug-addicted infant, was placed temporarily with Bill, a developer, and his wife, Patricia, a health administrator, two years ago. “No one visited her for a year,” Mandel said. “We were getting attached to her and she to us.”

When the Mandels told their social worker that they wanted to adopt Robyn, Mandel said, “All we got was, ‘We will take Robyn away from you in seven days and there will be a certified letter in the mail tomorrow.’ ”

The letter said that the Mandels violated the child’s “service plan” and that they are not a racial or ethnic match for the child. “We are required by (state law) to match children ethnically and racially for adoption,” the letter read.

“That was the justification for removing her,” Mandel said. Representatives of the San Francisco Department of Social Services did not return phone calls about the case.

Through their attorney, the Mandels obtained an injunction preventing local child-welfare workers from removing Robyn, now 2 1/2; she remains with them. They have also filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights.

As a result of several similar cases, a letter was sent last year from Loren D. Suter, deputy director of adult and family services for the state Department of Social Services, to all county welfare directors, stating: “There is no justification for agencies to remove a child from the home of foster parents where mutual emotional ties have developed and the family wishes to adopt, solely for purposes of placing the child in a same race home.”

The Mandels say that while they support ethnic and racial matching in theory, they believe that the state’s rules are enforced inconsistently, often depending on the mood of individual social workers.

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In San Jose, for instance, a couple who say they had already raised three adopted biracial children without ill effects, said a Santa Clara County social worker told them “absolutely not” when they asked recently to adopt two black siblings.

Judy Petronelli said the children, who had been placed in six homes over the past seven years, were eventually placed with a black single mother who had several other children. The girl ran away and was placed in a group home, she said. Petronelli said she is not sure what happened to the boy.

A Santa Clara County social worker said confidentiality regulations prevented her from commenting on the case. A letter dated Aug. 23 from Jim Brown, chief of the Adoptions Division of the state Department of Social Services, to Petronelli assured her that race was not a factor in deciding where the children would be placed, but a letter dated the same day from county social work supervisor Marcia Standley stated:”The Department’s policy requires that ethnic consideration must be paramount in placing minority children.”

The Petronellis have spent thousands of dollars on a class-action suit seeking to strike down the civil code and have placements be made in most cases without reference to race.

In San Diego meanwhile, Dan Zeidman complains that in order to proceed with his efforts to adopt a black child, he and his wife were required to undergo a “cultural competency” interview. “How can they judge us on something that’s defined or based on a political issue? . . . I feel this whole scheme of doing things is a violation of equal protection and unconstitutional on its face.” He plans to file his lawsuit in federal court.

Sharon Harrington, chief of San Diego County Adoptions, said the county is only attempting to follow the law and declined further comment on the Zeidman case. In San Diego, she said, there are enough black families to accommodate black children who need homes. Still, under the law, a white family such as the Zeidmans could adopt a black child without delay if the biological parents so specified, she said.

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Some of those who oppose transracial adoptions say black adoptive families are plentiful, but suggest that they are being screened out at high rates by white social workers using “European standards.”

“There’s nothing wrong with any of these families,” said Zena Oglesby, executive director of the Institute for Black Parenting, a private adoption agency in Inglewood that recruits black parents and matches them with black children. But because of the perceived lack of black foster parents, he said, black children are placed with white couples temporarily. Even if “the Huxtables” come forward to adopt, Oglesby said so much time has usually elapsed that the foster parents have become the de facto parents.

Race-matching policies never caused transracial adoptions to decrease, he said. “They only went underground” to more loosely regulated private agencies, he said. The couples’ complaints of reverse discrimination are “a put-up job. The numbers don’t justify the argument.

“I have a concern about white families,” Oglesby said. “We have a racist society. Many white families do deny the child’s African-American heritage. They say, ‘He’s a human being. It doesn’t matter.’ Any black person will tell you that’s laughable.”

He says he often sees in his office black adults in emotional pain because they were raised by well-meaning whites.

“Two ladies from UCLA came in telling me the same story. One of them cried in my office. She was raised in a white community and whites did not treat her as black. So she’s afraid of black people and thinks all black males are gang members. Being black was not enough. She didn’t know how to act black.”

Another black child was adopted in an all-white community where he was accepted as a baby. “Then he grew up and asked the girl next door to the prom. The parents said, ‘We’re sorry, you can’t take our daughter to the prom,’ ” Oglesby said.

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In response to such cases, lessons in transracial parenting have sprung up across the country. The Institute for Black Parenting will offer classes this fall for white families who have adopted black children. The classes will cover such practical matters as hair and skin care as well as how to cope with discrimination.

Anthony Petronelli, 23, the biracial son of the Petronellis, said he has grown used to people being surprised that he has an Italian name and asking, “How did that happen?” But he has also been shocked to encounter racism outside his circle of family and friends. A graduate of Pomona College who speaks four languages, Petronelli said he has been pulled over twice by police officers asking his white female companions if they were in the car willingly.

He said his father was equally upset but had no real advice to offer. “It wasn’t easy. We’d talk about it. He’d get really upset. What can he do? What can any parent do? Black or white? I have to cope with that stuff myself.”

Said Petronelli: “One hundred and twenty years ago, we fought to be integrated. Now the black social workers say, ‘No, no, we can’t have this.’

“I’m having a hard time figuring out if this culture wants to be integrated or segregated. . . .”

Policy-makers are wrestling with the same question.

Last month, Texas enacted a law requiring that race be given no greater weight than any other factor in deciding where to place children for adoption.

Similarly, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws is proposing a uniform adoption act that would prevent policies that require racial and ethnic matching.

At the federal level, a more moderate measure has been introduced by Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio). The bill would deny federal funds to agencies that make race the only consideration in adoption and foster-care placements or to those that hold children for an undue time period for race matching.