by Memorie Knox

CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) �Adoption has been life�s most fulfilling and challenging experience for Richard and Jennifer Muhammad, who adopted male and female siblings just one year apart in age. The fulfilling moments include the joy in their hearts during their 6-year-old son�s recent piano recital and their 5-year-old daughter�s recent dance performance.

"It was exciting watching the performance of our little baby girl, along with 2,000 other parents and friends. To see our son play the piano perfectly upon demand at the recital was astonishing," Mr. Muhammad said.

As National Adoption Month closes out, the Muhammads said the challenges include the children�s health problems and not knowing their biological health history. Both children were born prematurely and their son had undergone open-heart surgery before they took custody.

Mr. Muhammad said he cried when he found out about his daughter�s vision disorder diagnosis.

"I was hurt that my little girl had a problem and I couldn�t do anything about it. I prayed on it and left it with Allah. He helped me to overcome my initial pain, dread and lack of faith. Over time, there has been much more joy than pain," Mr. Muhammad said.

Approximately five years ago, and inspired by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan�s call for adoptive parents through the Million Man March, the Muhammads began the process of becoming Illinois State licensed foster care providers.

The Muhammads said the normal 14-month adoption process took three long years, and more than six state case workers, with the possibility that the State�s foster care system could find the children�s birth parents emotionally and financially able to raise them.

"I couldn�t wait until the adoption process was final. It was a14 month pregnancy for us, which included consistent monitoring by the state. The process was difficult, but through the trials and tribulations, we knew that this was what Allah desired us to do. It�s wonderful seeing the beauty of their minds as we impart certain things into them. Our prayer is that Allah will bless us to help pull out of them what He has placed. We�ve been blessed with a much larger family because we have our community, which is a large support system," Mrs. Muhammad said.

The Muhammads describe the children as a perfect fit into their family and have had speaking engagements to spread the word about the beauty of adoption and the struggle and need for Black families to adopt Black children.

"Adoption is a conscious effort to bring other people into your life. All Black children are our children, and every time we make a decision to adopt our children, then we�re standing up to the powers that may be, that want to see the destruction of the Black family. With Allah�s help, we will overcome the challenges put in our way, " Mr. Muhammad told The Final Call.

According to the National Center on Permanency for African American Children, a Washington-based research and advocacy group housed within Howard University�s School of Social Work, statistics show that the majority of children waiting to be adopted are Black and rose each year since 1989: In March 2000, approximately 45 percent of children waiting to be adopted were Black, 32 percent white and 12 percent Hispanic. Interestingly, the Center said that single Black females adopt approximately 70 percent of Black children adopted from the foster care system.

Family values within the Black community have always included informal adoptions, said Jacquelyn Bailey Kidd, executive director of the Center, but keeping children within the community is essential to the survival of the strong Black family unit.

Black children are coming into the foster care system and are being put up for adoption by the hundreds, she said. Most Black youth who are never adopted are more likely to end up homeless or to enter the criminal justice system, she said. This is due to the unfortunate fact that the adoption and foster care process is built on middle class, European principles, and therefore continues to exclude Blacks who are willing, capable and qualified to take in Black children, she said.

Furthermore, white social workers are often frustrated when recruiting Black adoptive families, she explained.

"There�s still a lack of diversity in African American administrators and social workers," Ms. Kidd said.

Oronde Miller, research associate for the National Center on Permanency for African American Children, told The Final Call that he and his older brother were adopted by a Black family in the 1970s through Homes for Black Children, a Detroit, Mich.-based adoption care agency. He said race, ethnicity and culture are important when placing children in adoptive families.

"Black children should be raised in Black homes," he said. "There is an assumption that Black children can be raised better in homes headed by families other than Blacks. Most states offer cultural diversity and cultural sensitivity classes to white families who adopt Black children, so they can learn what Black children need to know in this hostile society�as if they could.

"Our children need models for a healthy Black family, and can�t get that in a white family. My brother and I were placed in a stable home, one that provided the images and messages of what it meant to be Black in this country," Mr. Miller said.