When we started looking into adoption, we had no notion of going abroad. Then we went to a couple of informational meetings held by adoption agencies. We were told that the waiting period in the U.S. for a healthy infant was 5-7 years with no guarantees at the end of the period, and that if you were over 35 (that would be us), you were too old to have much of a chance unless you went the private adoption route and shelled out really big bucks.
We replied that race didn't matter. To which the response was that the agencies would be glad to help, but that we should know that we were walking into a minefield. The National Association of Black Social Workers, in particular, was on a crusade to ensure that black kids were raised "culturally black," whatever that is supposed to mean. If we went that route, we should count on foot-dragging, resistance, and backlash at various points down the road from people whose thinking is dominated by melanin.
My wife also called the city agency here in DC that works with adoptions. The lady who answered the phone said, "You sound white." When my wife acknowledged that yes, that was indeed the case, the adoption lady said straight out that "we don't like for black kids to be adopted by white families." We didn't pursue it further.
We ended up with two wonderful girls from China.
We know several white couples who have adopted black and Hispanic kids. From abroad.
Black kids who get adopted have little further need of supervision by black social workers.
Black kids who stay in the foster-care system provide work for black social workers, and income for black foster parents.
I think that was a big issue 20 years ago, but has changed. There was a large local controversy back then when a white family tried to adopt two black children.
Thankfully I think it is no longer an issue. I have three adopted “black” (2 biracial) who were adopted recently without any issues.
You experience is very close to mine. In our case, since we already had adopted 2 kids for the Philippines, we simply gave up. We were told (in the 90s) that we could forget about getting permission to adopt a black kid.