By LatagiaCopelandTyronce
The Child Welfare System is Just as Important as the Criminal Justice System
With the recent release of the book Torn Apart by Prof. Dorothy Roberts, I finally felt the inspiration to write this. As a child welfare affected mother, longtime pro-Black child welfare reformer and abolitionist, I can say with certainty that too many of our families are being permanently split up and too few of us are pissed off about it. I understand why there are countless criminal injustice reform activists and more importantly why there are so many of us pissed off about the murdering of Black men, women and children by the white supremacist police including the recent killing of another Black man Patrick Lyoya and we should be. We should be taking to the streets about police brutality and the murdering of Black people by white police officers. However, that’s not the only wrath worthy issue that we should be up-in-arms about. The child “welfare” system is just as important to us as a people as the white supremacist criminal injustice system because it too is also a matter of life and death for countless Black families. This is an important issue because it deserves to be. Our families continue to be systematically targeted, our children removed en mass and our babies forcefully adopted out to mostly white strangers.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
- According to NSCL.org, in 2018 Black children were 13.71% of the population, yet 22.75% of children in foster care were Black. Moreover, Black children also make up a disproportionate number of children identified as victims by child protective services and children waiting to be adopted.
- White, Asian and Hispanic children are all underrepresented in the child welfare system.
- 58 percent of child welfare social workers are White, 24 percent are Black, 15 percent are Hispanic, and 4 percent are another race or ethnicity (Dolan et al., 2011).
- Prof Roberts states in Torn Apart that, “72 percent of Black children in Los Angeles County will endure a CPS investigation during the course of their childhoods” (Roberts. D, 2022).
- More than HALF of Black children are subjected to at least one CPS investigation at some point during their childhoods — almost twice the lifetime prevalence for White children.
- Per Casey.org, Black children are MORE likely to be reported for maltreatment, have their case investigated, substantiated and stay longer in foster care. Meanwhile, Black children are LESS likely to reunite quickly with their families.
I could go on forever about who, what, when and how this all happened policy wise but for now I’ll briefly concentrate on the Adoption and Safe Families Act (also known as ASFA). This blatantly racist and repugnant piece of legislation signed into law by Bill Clinton continues to destroy thousands of Black families annually and has created what I like to call mass removal of our children. ASFA is a federal law that promotes and removals and adoptions of Black children to mostly white strangers with financial rewards. The Adoption and Safe Families Act is the 94 Crime Bill of the child welfare system, it’s that detrimental to Black families. The negative affect to Black families has been and continues to be so devastating that I and many of my fellow child welfare reformers and abolitionists have accurately likened it and the system to which it belongs to as modern-day slavery and rightfully so.
The great teacher and prophet Malcom X (who along with his siblings was removed from his mother by a white social worker at 13 and placed into Michigan state care supposedly due to his mother experiencing a nervous breakdown after years of struggling with single parenthood after the murder of her husband Malcom’s father, Earl Little, by a white supremist group the Black Legion) also referred to the child welfare system as modern-day slavery. Too bad no one listened to him way back then, if enough people had, countless other Black families, including my own, would have been speared the same fate.
“I truly believe that if ever a state social agency destroyed a family, it destroyed ours” (Malcom/, Haley, pg. 26).
It’s Time to Abolish CPS
I have spent so many years speaking out against the racist as hell child welfare system, ASFA and the black cultural genocide that its created and it’s been a lonely fight. It’s time to punish CPS, their agents and the entire system itself for what it has and actively continues to do to us. We need to take it further than just policy change (although I will continue to push for the African American Child Welfare Act and repealing ASFA). There is a small be dedicated #AbolishCPS movement and we need your support. Our families, our children need to be protected from this insidious and white supremacist institution that has been structurally and systematically oppressing us for almost a century. During chattel slavery the white masters removed and sold our children and the American child welfare system is the same thing (even more so since ASFA). There is NO acceptable kind of chattel slavery therefore there is NO acceptable kind of CPS, at least not in its current form. For those interested in learning more, please check out my blog where I have written several articles that go into much greater detail about ASFA and the child welfare system, how it operates and why it’s so dangerous.
Last edited by a moderator:
