In the first ten pages of Shattered Bonds by
Dorothy Roberts, you are given some very disturbing images about the foster
care system and its effects on black society.
Roberts gives her readers some amazing statistics on the number of black
children encompassed in the foster care system and how much easier it is for a
black child to be taken away from their home.
In this post I will be talking about the racial disparities that Roberts’s
points out that could factor into number of black children living within the
foster care system.
On page 14 Robert says “They understood that children’s
welfare was tied to social conditions that could only be improved by
societywide reforms”. In this one sentence
she is pointing out one of the biggest reasons that this population is plagued
with this problem, a large population of them live in poverty. She points out in earlier pages that the largest
numbers of black children that are in foster care are from big inner cities. These are the places in our nation that are
on the news every night due to gangs, violence, and guns. There is hardly any “good news” that comes
out of inner cities. But, Roberts points
out on page 14 that these problems are caused by societal norms and the only
way to change the problems that these people face is to help them get out of
poverty and into the parts of society that white people find acceptable.
I put the quote from Roberts on page 14 into
this blog because I agree with her statement.
We as a white society have done all that we can do to suppress the
blacks in this nations. They started out
as slaves for the early American settlers and ever since America has granted
their freedom this society has done little to provide the resources necessary to
help blacks succeed in this country. They
started out with nothing and as a society we continue to discriminate and keep
them in positions that force many to find means to survive that white society
would find unacceptable. I think that is
the main reason why this population has such great numbers within the foster
care system. Most people that make the
decisions to take children out of their home are white and if that person doesn’t
find a black’s lifestyle acceptable by their standards, that black person is
doomed to try and live up to that white person’s standards. Black Americans are forced to live up to the
standards we has white’s put in place to try and prevent the backlash that
might happen if they do not.
Lisa R
Paula K.'s Graded Reply #10 -- 4/17/13
ReplyDeleteGreat points, Lisa. We Americans have this ideology that if you just work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you set your mind to; the idea that anyone can go from rags to riches if only he applies himself. I this we have this preconceived notion that if someone is in poverty, he or she is simply not working hard enough. But in many cases, this just isn’t true. One of the issues that Robert brought up is that the biggest reason that children are taken away from their home is neglect. Now of course neglect can take many different forms. But say a single mother leaves her child at home for several hours each day while she is at work, and consequently her child is taken away from her on the grounds of neglect. Clearly, this mother is trying to do something good for her child by trying to earn money to support herself and her child, and yet she is being severely punished for this. Childcare can be very expensive, and the mother might not be able to afford this, so leaving her child alone is the only option she has. Yet despite her good intentions, the state strips her (among many other mothers) of her children. I can’t imagine a more messed up system.
Paula K.