Effects of Anti-Blackness on Black Populations
Over time, systemic racism in the United States has ruined the lives of Black people across multiple generations. Every part of the American system is a part of the dehumanization and trauma that Black people face — unfortunately, this includes Black children. A similar issue arises in the US foster care system that is infamous for its mistreatment of kids. Child welfare systems are not for Black kids. Let us remember that the work we do every day must go towards rebuilding social government policies to benefit Black youth.
In the foster care system…
By eighteen, 53% of Black children in the United States will be investigated for child abuse than the 37% for non-Black children. Black families are often not given adequate access to resources to raise children and drift into poverty as a result. Due to the lack of financial ability to provide children with necessities, white-majority child welfare services investigate those families for abuse. However, they don’t fix the root cause of the issue -- providing families with resources. Often, foster care systems purposely report child abuse just to split Black families up.
While Being Fostered
Before being placed with foster parents, Black children are usually placed in group homes where they face additional trauma and abuse. Once, staff members at a for-profit foster group home facility strangled and killed a 16-year-old Black boy while he yelled, “I can’t breathe”.
Black kids don’t get a breath of air after they’ve been with their foster parents. They are likely to languish in foster care until they age out of the system. They have a lesser rate of being reunited with their families. Foster parents ignore Black youth’s mental health, leasing to youth ending up in the criminal justice system.
The Pipeline
Black youth in foster care has a direct correlation with those entering the juvenile justice system. They are five times more likely than their white peers to end up in these facilities. Upon surveying 6,000 prisoners in multiple states, results found that 1 in 4 of the participants has been placed in foster care. Black youth in foster care don’t receive the loving, nurturing families or development they are supposed to, and this creates a foster care to juvenile justice pipeline.
How to Fix This
Simple legislative reform and policies won’t fix systemic issues. While that is a start, the real solution to racism in foster care is providing Black families with the resources they need to live, so they aren’t forced into neglecting their kids. We need to brainstorm legal strategies that end practices in the nation’s child neglect surveillance, remove systems reinforcing racism, and decriminalize poverty. Stop tearing apart families of color.
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