In the United States, ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the foster care system and underrepresented among potential adoptive parents. The need to find permanent homes for foster children has led to an increase in the controversial practice of transracial adoption (TRA), wherein ethnic minority children are placed in adoptive homes with Caucasian parents. While many child welfare scholars and dependency stakeholders support TRA as a positive alternative to foster care, others are concerned that such adoptions may inhibit the ethnic identity development of transracially adopted children. This article documents the large number of ethnic minority children who are adopted through TRA prior to the onset of ethnic identification and how age influences which children are adopted out of foster care. The findings indicate that young ethnic minorities are significantly more likely to be adopted through TRA compared to older children, an effect especially prominent among African Americans. Implications for the child welfare system are discussed.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans witnessed an emerging conflict between the residents who survived the storm and the rescuers charged with assisting them. This particular type of inter‐group conflict has not been documented before, as it uniquely entails survivors acting against their very self‐interest, and rescuers subverting their helping roles. We argue that Drury and Reicher's Elaborated Social Identity Model explains the nature of the inter‐group aggression. Drawing on published first‐person accounts, we document how the power differential between rescuers and survivors shaped inter‐group perceptions and eventually rendered inter‐group aggression acceptable. While inter‐group aggression reflects only one facet of the aftermath of Katrina, we conclude that it must be interpreted as meaningful social action commensurate with the groups' emerging collective identities.

Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States, yet research examining the impact this will have on the American legal system is limited. The first purpose of this article was to synthesize the studies that have been conducted, which have found that Hispanics have a perspective toward the police, the courts and the law, and jury decision making that is unique from those of Caucasians and other ethnic groups. The second purpose of this article was to analyze whether psychology and law research has been conducted in a manner conducive to identifying this unique Hispanic perspective. An analysis of 800 articles published in five psychology and law journals revealed that, while Hispanics were typically conceptualized properly, the proportion of articles devoted to the Hispanic perspective is disturbingly low. To increase understanding of the Hispanic perspective, psychology and law researchers must increase the amount of empirical attention given to Hispanics.