"We tried to assess what was working and what wasn't, and came to the conclusion that preparing parents who adopt transracially benefits everyone, especially the children," said Adam Pertman, the Donaldson Institute's executive director.

"The view that we can be colorblind is a wonderful, idealistic perspective, but we don't live there," Pertman said. "If we want to do the best for the kids, we have to look at their realities."

At the heart of the debate is the fact that the foster care system has a disproportionately high number of black children, and on average they languish there nine months longer than white children before moving to permanent homes. The latest federal figures showed 32 percent of the 510,000 children in foster care were black in 2006, compared to 15 percent of all U.S. children.

It's a dangerous argument, that these children are better off in a system that delays adoptions in order to ensure that prospective parents "respect [the child's] cultural heritage."

Something tells me that even foster parents and adopters that are "unprepared" for the "cultural heritage" of their new child (what does that mean, anyway?) are better than a childhood spent waiting for a properly prepared family to come along, especially when so few minority families are financially able to adopt and the orphan population is disporportionately composed of minorities.