Parenting White Vs Black

Parenting when White vs when Black

Header Photo: Moral, Ambar Del. "4 Ways White Parents Can Support Black Parents in Times of Injustice."

If you are white, and a parent, how often do you go out in public, and fear one slipup could cost you your child? Do you feel the need to teach your kid that they may be discriminated against due to the color of their skin? Do you fear that your child may or may not come home due to the result of police or extrajudicial violence ("What is White Privilege?")?

This does not mean those who are white do not struggle themselves, but it does mean they do not struggle because of their skin color. A skin color that has been built into systematic racism.

In Torn Apart, a book by Dorothy Roberts, an American sociologist, law professor, and social justice advocate writes about the child welfare system and how it isn't designed to protect children but rather to punish Black families. Roberts writes about how the system is largely made up of color and it is hard to ignore. She claims throughout her book that we must abolish the system to help liberate Black communities and she makes this claim by interviewing Black families that have had contact with the system or have had their children taken away from them. In these cases, these mistakes made that lead them to have their children taken away or for them to be put on the radar is a mistake that any parent could easily make, but if they were say white, would not have been questioned.

Roberts opens her book with a story about Jornell, who had told her: "my life is an ongoing battle to hold on to my child" (Roberts, pg. 8). Jornell had lost custody of her son David due to trying to get him medical health. How this had started was when Jornell was pregnant with David, she had joined a program that helps with alcohol and drug assessments for pregnant women as she wanted to be better for her unborn son, "I didn't want the drugs, I didn't want the alcohol, I didn't want to be menta" (Roberts, pg. 5). By trying to get better and heal from what Jornell had considered an illness, she was put in the eyes of the hospital the program was affiliated with and social workers. Jornell already in the eyes of CPS had found herself getting her child taken away from her when she had taken him to the hospital for digestive problems, due to her frantic state they had believed abuse was taking place (Roberts, pg. 5-6).

As Roberts had stated at the end of Jornell's story; '"they were targeted for state intrusion not because their parenting was egregiously lacking or harmful but because their bonds with their children weren't valued enough" (Roberts, pg. 8).

The second tale Roberts shares is about Vanessa. Vanessa is a mother of two who one day when at the park had asked her cousin to watch one of her sons. In the process of doing so her son had wandered off for just a second and a bystander had caught him before Vanessa could reach him. This bystander had called the police for child neglect putting Vanessa on the CPS radar (Roberts, pg. 14).

A month after the first encounter, the police and social workers had shown up at her house to do an inspection. When they had shown up, Vanessa was bathing both her children downstairs, and was unable to hear that they were at the door (Roberts, pg. 14). When giving her children a bath the officers and social workers that came to her house mistaken for her children being naked by the window as neglect when she was bathing two kids at once and lost track of the other while bathing the other one (Roberts, pg. 14) . The officers broke into her house and knocked her to the ground. When she screamed in pain "you are breaking my arm" their only argument was "nothing is broken, probably pulled out of its socket" (Roberts, pg. 17). The police had charged her that day with child abuse even though the house was in good condition and wanted to charge the grandma, so they did not have to leave the kids with her (Roberts, pg. 18). Her children were scared after that, "whenever they see a police officer they ask me 'mom, are they coming to take you away from us" (Roberts, pg. 20). She struggled to get a job and even a house due to the charge and now she can't provide for her children anymore (Roberts, pg. 21). Vanessa's momentary maternal lapse in the park had set in motion the gears of a giant state machine with the power to destroy her family (Roberts, pg. 21).

Roberts, in her book Torn Apart, shows how even in a system built to protect children, there is systematic racism that alludes to those who are white being at less risk of losing their children than those who are Black.

Photo One: Bucataru, Gabriel. Torn Apart How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.