Institutional racism severely limits the number of eligible black adoptive parents by judging the person's ability to be an adoptive parents on biased tests. Due to the few adoptive black parents and the large numbers of black children waiting for adoption, black children are more likely to be placed transracially. African-Americans believe that recruiting practices of predominantly white adoption agencies screen out African-Americans. "The underwritten criteria used by many adoptions agencies (such as household income, level of savings or home ownership) effectively screen out middle-class and poor blacks" (Meeer). Because the qualifications do not effectively or accurately evaluate average African-American families, African American parents are denied approval for adoption. The historical practice of using unfair forms of disqualifications to gauge African-Americans" ability to participate in an organization continues with transracial adoption approvals.
Steps have been made in the legal system supporting transracial adoption in the last few years. President Clinton passed the Multiethnic Placement Act (MEPA) in 1994, and its purposes were to decrease the length of time that children would wait to be adopted, to prevent discrimination in the placement of children on the basis of race, color, or national origin, and to facilitate the identification and recruitment of foster and adoptive parents who could meet these children's needs. Even after this was passed there were still signs that race matching continued due to opposing opinions of social workers. So the Interethnic Adoption Act (IEA) was passed in 1996 which strictly stated that race was not to be considered in any circumstance, and monetary penalties were put in place to help enforce it (Removal of Barriers to IEA Act, 1996).
In the United States, the first transracial adoption placements in substantial numbers were of Japanese and Chinese children following World War 11.