Black Children Stay in Foster Care Longer
New studies reportedly show that Black children die and are mistreated by family members more often than other kids. The Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect released in 2011 found that children in Black families are mistreated at a rate about 1.7 times the national average. Social workers point to stats such as these to explain why more Black children wind up in foster care. But when researchers control for poverty, the child maltreatment differences between white and Black families disappear. So social workers are operating with a bias against poor, Black mothers. And once Black children go into foster care, they get stuck there 50 percent longer than children of other races. In Los Angeles County, the average foster care case lasts about a year and a half. But for Black children, it lasts more than two years.
Filing Complaints Against Battered Women
The practice of filing complaints against battered women for “allowing” their children to witness domestic violence against the mother is perhaps the most extreme form of scapegoating. In 2003, a federal court ordered New York City to stop filing cases against victims of domestic violence based on their children having been present when they were battered. The practice was not confined to New York. State intervention in battered women’s lives often replicates the terror they suffered at the hands of their intimate partner and may make it harder for them to take steps to counter it. More fundamentally, it is the public’s mistrust of poor women, especially women of color, that underlies the emphasis on coercive state intervention to address both violence against women and child maltreatment.
