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.
About 10 years ago we began looking into adoption and went through the foster to adopt program. we were told that If we wanted a single child we had a better chance with a minority, but if we would take a sibling group we could have our choice.