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“In disproportionately high numbers, Native American and African American children find themselves in the American foster care system. Empirical data establish that these children are removed from their families at greater rates than other races and stay in foster care longer, where they are often abused, neglected, and then severed from their families forever. For the past few decades, a vigorous debate has raged regarding whether these children are actually at greater risk for maltreatment if left at home or are just targets of discrimination in a hegemonic institution.” [Tanya A. Cooper, Racial Bias in American Foster Care: The National Debate, 97 Marq. L. Rev. 215 (2013)]

I am continuing in the systemic racism series here on the Broadening the Narrative blog. To learn more about this series, you can read the first eight posts on the BtN blog. Today’s post addresses systemic racism in the foster care system. I will include the data and history behind the current disparities, provide action steps, and link recommended resources for further exploration and education.

Data

Let’s look at data for children and youth in the United States and in the foster care system.

According to Kids Count Data Center “Child Population by Race in the United States” table, in 2017 children and youth who are:

- Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaskan Native alone were 1% of the child population.

- Non-Hispanic Asian alone were 5% of the child population.

- Non-Hispanic Black alone were 14% of the child population.

- Hispanic or Latino were 25% of the child population.

- Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone were <.5% of the child population.

- Non-Hispanic White alone were 51% of the child population.

- Non-Hispanic Two or More Race Groups were 4% of the child population.

The “Foster Care Statistics 2017” factsheet from the Children’s Bureau Child Welfare Information Gateway contains data “obtained from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS).” “The following are the races and ethnicities of the estimated 269,690 children who entered foster care during [fiscal year] 2017:

- 47 percent were White.

- 21 percent were Black or African-American.

- 20 percent were Hispanic.

- 10 percent were other races or multiracial.

- 2 percent were unknown or unable to be determined.”

I made a table for the 2017 data to compare the statistics.

Race/Ethnicity	% of Child Population	% who entered foster care
Non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaskan Native alone	1%	2.4%*
Non-Hispanic Asian alone	5%
Non-Hispanic Black alone	14%	21%
Hispanic or Latino	25%	20%
Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone	<.5%
Non-Hispanic White alone	51%	47%
Non-Hispanic Two or More Race Groups	4%
Other races or multiracial		10%
Unknown or unable to be determined		2%

*This percentage is from the Nov. 2014 Issue Brief titled “Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Child Welfare” from the Children’s Bureau Child Welfare Information Gateway and can be accessed here. Therefore, the total does not equal 100% in the third column as two separate reports were combined.

Ronald Hall wrote an article titled “The US Adoption System Discriminates Against Darker-Skinned Children,” and he reported facts surrounding adoption regarding race. “Children who are white are slightly more likely to be adopted out of foster care. Of the more than 400,000 children in foster care awaiting adoption in 2017, about 44 percent were white, while the majority were children of color. However, of those who were adopted with public agency involvement, 49 percent were white.” As part of NPR's Special Series The Race Card Project: Six-Word Essays, the hosts of Morning Edition examined “Six Words: 'Black Babies Cost Less To Adopt’” in the June 27, 2013 episode. “Non-white children, and black children, in particular, are harder to place in adoptive homes, [NPR Host/Special Correspondent Michele] Norris says. So the cost is adjusted to provide an incentive for families that might otherwise be locked out of adoption due to cost, as well as ‘for families who really have to, maybe have a little bit of prodding to think about adopting across racial lines.’ In other words, Norris explains, there are often altruistic reasons for the discrepancy — ‘but people who work in adoption say there's one more reason, quite simply: It's supply and demand.’...The cost to adopt the Caucasian child was approximately $35,000, plus some legal expenses. ‘Versus when we got the first phone call about a little girl, a full African-American girl, it was about $18,000,’ [Caryn] Lantz says. The cost for adoption of a biracial child was between $24,000 and $26,000.” Ronald Hall also wrote, “These prices, which are set internally at adoption agencies based on a number of factors, suggest that white children have a higher market value in the adoption marketplace and are more highly sought after by adoptive parents.”

History

In the report Racial Bias in American Foster Care: The National Debate, Tanya A. Cooper wrote, “Unconscious racism is embedded in our civic institutions; and the foster care system is vulnerable as one such institution controlled and influenced by those in power. Those in power in turn may unwittingly discriminate against people of color, which history demonstrates.” Separating families of color is nothing new in the United States. White people here have been engaging in this cruelty for centuries. Black families were torn apart during the days of chattel slavery through the era of mass incarceration. Indigenous families were destroyed as children were forced to to be traumatized in boarding schools for more than a century. Japanese Americans were uprooted from their communities and put into concentration camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and there were instances where family members were separated. Brown families were legally separated at the southern border under the Trump Administration’s Zero Tolerance policy. In The Washington Post article “‘Barbaric’: America’s Cruel History of Separating Children from Their Parents,” DeNeen L. Brown wrote, “Each of these U.S. policies, Fernandez said, begins with the assumption ‘that the idea of family is simply less important to people of color and that the people involved are less than human. To justify ripping families apart, the government must first engage in dehumanizing the targeted group, whether it is Native Americans, African Americans or immigrants from Central America fleeing murder, rape, extortion and kidnapping.’ Trump, he noted, dehumanized immigrant children by saying, ‘“They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.” There is no question these children are innocent,’ Fernandez said, ‘but Trump associates them with the idea that these are not like your children and thus less than human.’”

Regarding Black children in foster care, Tanya A. Cooper expounded, “A century ago foster care in America was a White-only institution. In order to save the children, then-progressive reformers like Jane Adams sought to take European immigrant children from their impoverished homes and send them to rural areas to be cared for by strangers. African American children were ignored by this segregated system, and they were either left to fend for themselves or left for their communities to handle. Once African American children entered foster care during the 1950s, their numbers soared. According to some, it was no coincidence that foster care policies became more punitive precisely when African American children entered the system. As the number of White children in the child welfare system fell and the child welfare system became increasingly populated by African Americans, state governments ‘spent more money on out-of-home [foster] care and less on in-home [family] services.’”

Historian and antiracism educator Lettie Shumate shared the “Examples of Jim Crow Laws - Oct. 1960 - Civil Rights” from the Ferris State University site. The second code listed under South Carolina is “Child Custody: It shall be unlawful for any parent, relative, or other white person in this State, having the control or custody of any white child, by right of guardianship, natural or acquired, or otherwise, to dispose of, give or surrender such white child permanently into the custody, control, maintenance, or support, of a negro.” This law prohibited Black adults from having custody of white children but did not prohibit the reverse.

Regarding Indigenous children in foster care, Tanya A. Cooper explained, “This country has long persecuted Native Americans, and our history of destroying these families remains a terrible blight. Heralded as the Boarding School era that lasted over 100 years, many Native American children were involuntarily rounded up, removed from their families, and sent hundreds of miles away to boarding schools. As part of the federal government’s assimilation policy, the children were forbidden from speaking their own languages, wearing their own traditional clothing, and practicing their own religions. Their parents were either not allowed to visit them or were too poor to travel the long distances. In order to ‘Christianize and civilize’ Native American children, the rationale for the Boarding School movement was to strip children of their Native American identity. ‘Kill the Indian, Save the Man’ was the reigning motto. But these boarding schools failed to save these children and instead mistreated them, studies showed. After Congress investigated the Boarding School era, the Meriam Report found these boarded Native American children were malnourished, overworked, poorly educated, and harshly punished in military-style institutions. Trained to become maids or farm laborers, these boarding schools offered no semblance of home life. During this era, thousands of Native American children were also adopted through the Native American Adoption Project, funded by the Children’s Bureau, which placed these children in non-Native American families.”

Later in the report, Tanya A. Cooper wrote, “Recognizing the historical evils inflicted on tribal nations, Congress enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) : [ICWA] was the product of rising concern in the mid-1970’s over the consequences to Indian children, Indian families, and Indian tribes of abusive child welfare practices that resulted in the separation of large numbers of Indian children from their families and tribes through adoption or foster care placement, usually in non-Indian homes. ICWA specifically defines Native American children’s best interests vis-à-vis their own family and tribes. The best interests of Native American children are inherently tied to the concept of belonging. Despite such recognition and even protection for Native American families under law, these laws are not applied. Native American children are still removed and severed from their families at great rates. Some jurisdictions utterly disregard the federal law’s protection for the sanctity of these families, while others apply biased practices to find Native American parents unfit, and still others offer stock services to a family that do not meet its needs. For all these reasons and others, compliance under ICWA remains a problem that contributes to the disproportionality and disparity that Native Americans in foster care experience.”

On the website for the Lakota People’s Law Project, it is detailed that “[i]n 2004, a group of grandmothers in Lakota country—an area comprised of nine Indian reservations in North and South Dakota—asked [Lakota People’s Law Project] to investigate and help them prevent South Dakota's Department of Social Services from removing their grandchildren from their families. The investigation uncovered that drugging and routine patterns of physical and mental abuse of Native children in foster care were leading to high levels of youth suicide. These atrocities, a direct violation of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) — a federal law enacted in 1978 — inspired the formation of the Lakota People’s Law Project (LPLP). It was time to put a stop to the cycles of injustice leading to the slow genocide of the Lakota. Our first program, the ongoing Lakota Child Rescue Project, launched in 2005 to assist the return of Lakota children to their families, tribes, and communities. The goal broadened to include a tribal foster care program funded with direct Title IV-E funds from the federal government, bypassing the state of South Dakota.”

Tanya A. Cooper further illuminated the shortcomings of the current system. “Ever since 1961 when Congress allowed welfare assistance to follow poor children from their homes into their foster care placements, foster care became much cheaper for the states and foster care grew. In the 1970s, as Professor Martin Guggenheim notes, federal laws and policies called on foster care officials to ‘rely on foster care as a first, rather than a last, alternative.’ These federal programs provided unlimited reimbursements for out-of-home placements and only limited funding for family preservation programs. Although Congress in the 1980s and 1990s attempted to remedy states’ tendencies to resort to foster care as a solution to helping at-risk children and reducing their lengths of stay in foster care through legislation, the effect has been, instead, an increase in the number of children in foster care with practices that encourage them to be adopted and not reunified with their families. Because the financial incentives favoring foster care have not changed, despite changes to the laws themselves, the foster care system in America remains its own priority. Indeed, both law and economics would predict the same thing—social welfare bureaucracies will inevitably find ways to justify their consumption of resources and will always seek more to support their mission.”

Action Steps

Complete additional research on the topic of systemic racism in the foster care system. Read the full report Racial Bias in American Foster Care: The National Debate by Tanya Cooper. [Citation: Tanya A. Cooper, Racial Bias in American Foster Care: The National Debate, 97 Marq. L. Rev. 215 (2013).] Read the full “Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Child Welfare” issue brief from Child Welfare Information Gateway. [Citation: Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2016). Racial disproportionality and disparity in child welfare. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau.] I will also link additional resources at the end of the post.

Have action that follows your research and reflection.

-Support policies at every level of government that will bring reform to the foster care system.

Tanya A. Cooper explained, “Financial incentives in federal laws and policies perpetuate state practices to place children in government-subsidized foster care rather than leaving the children in their own homes and providing their families with aid, which is much cheaper...Part of the reason for the problem of racial disproportionality and disparity that is manifested in foster care is the overarching legal standard, the ‘best interests of the child,’ which is at best vague. Indeed, the best interests of the child legal standard in foster care is so indeterminate as to render it unhelpful. Its indeterminacy ‘allows foster care professionals and even judges to substitute their own judgment about what is in a child’s best interest and allows unintended biases to permeate decision-making.’ ...Meaningful change is accomplished in self-perpetuating systems with strategic advocacy designed to effect change to the system’s underlying purpose. Many successful approaches already do just that: they aim to switch the system’s priority of foster care over family care through in-home services to families that avoid foster care altogether. In-home service programs have empirically demonstrated their success with families of color. Other family preservation and support services, including kinship care, are offered as examples of how to address racial disproportionality, especially if children never enter the system. To be more effective, ultimately the way this system is funded to favor foster care must change. According to Davidson, ‘Congress must change the formula for state matching funds to child welfare agencies, so that services to preserve and strengthen families and address family crises are federally supported at equal or higher rates than for out-of-home child placement.’ Once the incentives that reinforce the actions of the system change or are re-prioritized, the entire system is different. Many believe foster care ultimately belongs to communities, not federal and state government agencies. Not only is that approach much cheaper in our current economic climate, advocates insist, but it actually empowers families while addressing the risk factors that threaten to destroy them. Foster care belongs to communities because children belong to those communities. ‘It takes a village to raise a child,’ according to the proverb.”

According to the “Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Child Welfare” from the Child Welfare Information Gateway Nov. 2016 Issue Brief, “Services that promote family reunification include many of the same services needed for prevention: family strengthening, parent education, substance abuse services for parents, and concrete supports such as housing and transportation. The speed with which these services can be put into place has a great impact on the success of reunification due to the enforcement of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which terminates parental rights for children who have been in out-of-home care for 15 of 22 months. Thus, most families must meet their goals in this timeframe in order to have hopes of reunification. Targeting appropriate services for families of color includes a strengths-based cultural competence component in terms of the service provider, accessibility, and coordination with other demands, such as employment and childcare. In addition, placement of children with kin or with foster families that are in or near the children’s own neighborhoods may enable parents to visit more easily—a necessity for achieving reunification goals...To view State legislative initiatives regarding disproportionality and disparity, visit the National Conference of State Legislatures at http://www.ncsl. org/research/human-services/disproportionality-anddisparity-in-child-welfare.aspx.

-Write, email, call, and tag representatives and others in local, state, and federal political positions.

Also in the “Racial Disproportionality and Disparity in Child Welfare” from the Child Welfare Information Gateway Nov. 2016 Issue Brief, the writers report, “When measuring racial disproportionality and disparity, it is possible that higher-level (e.g., national) data obscure differences that occur at lower levels. For example, at the national level in 2013, Hispanic children were slightly underrepresented in foster care (Summers, 2015). However, they were overrepresented in 14 States. Additionally, one national study found that there were higher rates of maltreatment disparity for Black and Hispanic children in the most urban and most rural counties (Maguire-Jack et al., 2015). Agencies, policymakers, and others may be more successful in their efforts to address disproportionality and disparities when they use data regarding the differences present in their jurisdictions rather than relying solely on national data.”

-Donate to the Lakota People’s Law Project campaign to support Standing Rock’s New Foster Home. “You can ensure kinship care for Lakota children! Growing up with Native guardians aids the preservation of families, culture, and tradition.”

-Advocate for Family Group Conferencing and other restorative justice solutions.

Tanya A. Cooper explained, “[Family Group Conferencing] is part of the broader restorative justice concept, which offers an alternative way of perceiving and responding to crime and other conflict. Restorative justice is ‘a process to involve, to the extent possible, those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations, in order to heal and put things as right as possible.’ Some of the themes underlying restorative justice and FGC in particular are shared responsibility for solutions, shared leadership and power, cultural competency, and community partnerships.”

Vote, show up, and engage in meaningful ways to dismantle systems of oppression. Do all of this under the leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, and Pacific Islander People of Color.

What to Expect in Future Posts

At this time, I plan to address systemic racism as seen in healthcare, the environment, media, military, politics, and the Christian church in future posts. I will give action steps for myself and readers and provide additional resources.

As I look at the Equal Justice Initiative calendar and read it to my kids, I see that every single day conveys at least one injustice, usually based on race. These are past and present injustices, spanning hundreds of years, demonstrating that racism in this country is not simply an individual problem. Rather, racism is a systemic problem, infecting institutions and structures. Further, this problem centers around justice, therefore it's a problem Godde is concerned about, which means I must be concerned. In my opinion, systemic racism is not solely a political issue but also a spiritual issue. I am called to love my neighbor, and one way I can do this is by joining the fight to dismantle systems of oppression so that all people can flourish.

(Resources are linked below.)

Videos to View

“Racial Disproportionality in Child Welfare” with Marian Harris on C-SPAN

"WHATUPRG - 4AM (Music Video Visualizer)"

13th

Race Forward “What is Systemic Racism” Videos

Race - The Power of an Illusion

The Next Question Video Web Series (Hosted and produced by Austin Channing Brown, Jenny Booth Potter, and Chi Chi Okwu)

Podcasts (for your listening pleasure and discomfort)

Justice in America “Criminalizing Mothers”

Almost Heretical “Mark Charles - The Truth of Our History”

Sincerely, Lettie