Race, Ethnicity and Law by Mathieu Deflem

Author:Mathieu Deflem
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787149915
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Published: 2017-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

Our Black Children in Foster Care

A disproportionate number of Black children are languishing in the child welfare system. Many children, especially in cases of incarcerated mothers, were in single parent homes and then either placed in the care of a relative (grandmother or other kinship relative), or the foster care system (The Sentencing Project, 2009). This is prevalent, as it relates to incarcerated black mothers and their children; that while Black children represent only 15% of the nation’s children population, they account for 45% of the foster care population (Harp & Oser, 2016; Roberts, 2012), making them four times more likely to be placed in foster care than white children (Harp & Oser, 2016). Racial biases, decision-making and oppressive policies have contributed to the disproportionate number of Black children in the foster care system and that by 2000, black children represented the largest racial group of children in foster care (Roberts, 2012). However, before the Civil Rights Movement, black children were disproportionately excluded from openly segregated child welfare services that primarily provided for white families (Roberts, 2012).

Keeping in perspective with the welfare of the children of incarcerated parents, particularly black mothers and their children in the foster care system, the inclusion of the works of Roberts (2002, 2004, 2012) is pertinent for discussion. As an acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and law, Roberts has championed her research agenda that methodically examines pertinent social justice issues, especially as they impact the lives Black women and their children. Two scholarly works in particular that are worth noting that examined the effects and inadequacies of the child welfare system on Black women and their children are Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2002) and Prison, Foster Care, and the Systematic Punishment of Black Mothers (2012).

In her seminal publication Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (2002), Roberts detailed the overrepresentation of poor black children in the U.S. foster care system and its effect on black communities. Roberts thoroughly examined the issues of race, gender, and class in the child welfare system’s removal of a staggering number of black children from their families and communities, in which she described as a “racist institution” (p. 99), which “disrupts, restructures, and polices Black families” (viii). In Prison, Foster Care, and the Systematic Punishment of Black Mothers (2012), Roberts, analyzed the systemic intersection between the prison and foster care, how both systems operate to punish black mothers, and how both systems work together to perpetuate social injustices in America today. Roberts incorporated theoretical perspectives from Kimberle Crenshaw (“intersectionality”) and Hill Collins (“matrix of domination”) to formulate her platform based on the premise that “the analysis of the roles black mothers play in both the prison and foster care systems reveals that these systems intersect with each other jointly to perpetuate unjust hierarchies of race, class, and gender” (p. 1491). The research from Roberts brings to the forefront the racial injustices and oppression that plagues Black mothers and their children within the child welfare system. Both of

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