ON THIS DAY IN 1994, Congress passed the Howard Metzenbaum Multi-Ethnic Placement Act. Named for the Senate’s most leftist member at the time, the Act is a reminder that, not so long ago, there was a bipartisan consensus that race neutrality was usually the best policy.

At least during the 1980s and 1990s, African-American children tended to languish in state or foster care waiting for permanent adoptive parents much longer than white children. (I don’t have recent data.) Part of the problem was that organizations like the National Association of Black Social Workers vehemently opposed cross-racial adoptions. The president of that organization testified at a Senate hearing in 1985, “We view the placement of Black children in white homes as a hostile act against our community. It’s a blatant form of racial and cultural genocide.”

MEPA was built on the notion that African-American children shouldn’t have to wait for parents of the “right race” to adopt them. It prohibited federally-funded adoption agencies from refusing to place a child on account of the adoptive parents’ race. Alas, the statute didn’t work. It was not worded strongly enough and hence easy to circumvent. It was therefore replaced with the stronger language of the Inter-Ethnic Placement Provisions of the Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996. The second effort has worked … well … better.