Blog post #9, Option 1

Roberts’s book is constructed of strong claims. Roberts does a satisfying job at supporting her claim with numerous case studies and statistics. The facts come from credible sources, like the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and state studies. Roberts provides statistics of foster care to show that the child welfare system is designed to monitor, regulate and punish poor black families. She states that black children make up practically half of the foster care population, remain in foster care longer, receive fewer services and are less likely to be returned to their home or be adopted by families compared to white children (vi). Roberts is a believer that the child welfare system focuses on black children. She states that “Clearly, child welfare authorities consider foster care a last resort when it comes to white families” (9). Instead, child welfare services handle white family problems with less disruptive measures than foster care. I think that this is a valid statement, but Roberts fails to explain why this is so. Why is it that the child welfare system is designed for black families? She attempts to answer the question by saying that “government authorities appear to believe that maltreatment of Black children results from pathologies intrinsic to their homes and that helping them requires dislocating them front their families” (17).  But why is those so? Roberts does a good job showing HOW the welfare system is designed for black families. The story of a case in Iowa where a child was placed in foster care because the home was too filthy (37). Roberts points out that if it were a white family, the court would have provided the mom with services to help clean the house, rather than taking the child away. This case shows Roberts’s strongest evidence – that the child welfare system fails to solve the underlying causes that tend to face black families, which are poverty, housing problems and lack of child care (21). Instead, child welfare’s solution is to place the child in foster care, which is something that happens to white children far less often.