Racist System/Different Cultures

Becka, interesting that you brought up race as it plays out in the foster care system, because I’m reading a book right now called The Lost Children of Wilder. It traces the progress (or lack thereof) of a lawsuit filed against several foster care agencies in the 70’s that used purportedly racist and religion-biased criteria to accept children into their programs. I haven’t finished it yet, so I’m not sure exactly what the lawsuit evolved into in the end, and whether or not it had any impact on the NYC foster care system (I suppose not significant enough to fix the system). The book also looks at the child/woman Shirley Wilder who is the named plaintiff, and her child, also born into NYC’s foster care system. Their lives are filled with tragedies and more than once I have had to furrow my brow and take deep breaths to keep from crying. Perhaps because I relate; my feelings are a mix of sadness for anyone, including me, feeling unwanted and uncared for, grateful that my experience was very, very different, and guilty for living in a society where this happens so regularly.

I too noticed the disparity in foster, kinship, and adoption when I worked as a Kinship Case Manager for a practicum in undergrad. I think kinship appears more in nonwhite than white communities for a few reasons. For one, it could be an unnecessary surplus of black children in the foster/kinship care system. This is because the system not only reflects the racist or preferential attitudes of the ‘market,’ it is itself racist. I think poor black families, particularly poor black mothers, are more likely to be seen as inadequate, and therefore are more likely to have children removed from them. Think: poor woman addicted to crack vs. rich woman addicted to xanax. There is then an abundance of black children in the system, and so family steps in to care for them. Plus, since the prognosis of a black child in foster care is very grim, extended families are more likely to take custody of the child, rather than see them face the injustices of the system.

I also think that if kinship is indeed less common in white communities (in proportion to the # of children in foster/kinship care), then it could be because white communities view families in mother, father, children units. Perhaps there’s less of a “we need to stick together because all we have is each other” spirit and more of an “every man for himself” spirit in white communities? I say this with absolutely no evidence aside from general observations. We all have generations of culture related to our ethnic backgrounds and racial experiences, and this could be one way that our different histories play out.