Who adopts black children?

Really?  "Mostly white people" adopt black children?  I would hazard to guess that  more African-American parents have adopted African-American children than white parents have. Consider, for example, kinship placements and step-parent adoption which already account for the vast majority of adoptions in the U.S. And then think of the relatively small number of transracial adoptions -- according to the 2000 census, only 17% of adopted children are transracially adopted. That makes the VAST majority of adopted children in same-race placements.  And according to this report, African-American women were more likely to be seeking to adopt than white women.

Looks to me like Bruce Tinsley, the cartoonist, is operating under some mistaken assumptions. I wouldn't necessarily expect Charles Schulz to fact-check before having Lucy offer Charlie Brown advice, but for a political cartoon like Mallard Fillmore, I'd like to think the facts would be important. Instead, we seem to be operating under some negative impressions about African-Americans being somehow unable to care for African-American children.

And I wonder if the cartoonist is aware of the history of discrimination against African-American adoption in the U.S.  Consider this from the invaluable Adoption History Project:

For a good part of the twentieth century, African-American birth parents and children were simply denied adoption services by agencies because of their religion, race, or both. In some states with large African-American populations, such as Florida and Louisiana, not a single African-American child was placed for adoption by an agency for many years running as late as the 1940s. Discriminated against and reluctant to establish racially-exclusive organizations when integration was synonymous with equality, African Americans relied instead on traditions of informal adoption to take care of their own.

By midcentury, estimates were that up to 50,000 African-American children were in need of adoption, but would probably never find permanent homes. The U.S. Children's Bureau began including race in its reporting system in 1948 and during the 1950s, a number of innovative programs around the country began recruiting non-white parents. From New York to Chicago and Los Angeles to Washington, DC, child welfare professionals and civil rights activists came together to promote culturally sensitive policies, integrate agency staff, and do community outreach. “You don't have to be a Joe Louis or a Jackie Robinson to adopt children,” declared one encouraging radio spot created by the Citizens' Committee on Negro Adoptions of Lake County, Indiana.

So what do you think?  Why include "people who adopt black children" in this cartoon?  What message about transracial adoption do you think the cartoonist is trying to convey?