This thesis addresses the issue of cultural matching in the area of mentoring in youth and social services and examines, within the context of current and future racial relations, the potential messages that cultural matching may be communicating to youth. The beginning chapters historically trace juvenile delinquency and child-saving services and the current status of youth. This is followed by chapters that define and provide various interpretations of mentoring and its history; its program structures, goals, and operations; research evaluating its effects; and other sociological and psychological research in support of its ideology. Next is a discussion on the two perspectives of how matching should be executed, their ideological bases, and how the opposing beliefs can be understood through the application of sociological literature pertaining to the nature of prejudice, intergroup relations, and ideologies of assimilation and multicultural societies. A brief chapter presents research on minority children's racial and ethnic identities, areas often mentioned in defense of cultural matching. Finally, two social-service cases are compared on the basis of their transracial-adoption and human-service relationships. Recommendations for the future of the field and directions for evaluation conclude the paper. An appendix presents study data. (Contains more than 250 references.) (GLR)