In her recent interview with Time magazine, Hillary Clinton boasted that she had supported legislation facilitating interracial adoption. Maybe Mrs. Clinton does, now that she supposedly wants to adopt a child; but where was she a couple of years ago?
While President Clinton did recently declare his support for Rep. Jim Bunning’s bill easing restrictions on interfacial adoption, his administration is a late convert to the cause. When themsenator Howard Metzenbaum introduced legislation in 1993 to lift race-based barriers, the bill received a very cool reception from the Clinton administration, particularly from Health and Human Services secretary Donna Shalala. Opposed to the legislation altogether were Shalala allies such as Marian Wright Edelman, head of the Children’s Defense Fund, and the National Association of Black Social Workers, a Detroit outfit that has declared interracial adoption tantamount to “cultural genocide.” In 1994, the Clinton administration tried but failed to prevent a vote on Metzenbaum’s bill, but succeeded in inserting amendments making it permissible for adoption agencies to take account of race when placing children. Metzenbaum and adoption groups have pointed out that these amendments–which in private negotiations Shalala said had the support of the first lady and Edelman–gutted the intent of the bill. The president and the first lady can me-too this issue all they like, but the truth is the truth.
