CRT and Family Regulation System: Toward Abolition

CRT2

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Images from Black Families Matter March in Brooklyn. (Photo Credit: Erik McGregor)

Child Welfare System – the term itself implies that the system’s purpose is to protect the welfare and best interests of children. But the reality of how the child welfare system functions – a system of surveillance, regulation, and family separation – makes this name a misnomer. As Professor Dorothy Roberts explains, a more apt description would be the “family regulation” or “family policing” system. In her seminal book, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, Professor Roberts points out, “If you came with no preconceptions about the purpose of the child welfare system, you would have to conclude that it is an institution designed to monitor, regulate, and punish poor Black families.”¹

Graph of racial disproportionality in foster care. — Image Credit: National Conference of State Legislatures

Today, the family regulation system disproportionately affects families of color – particularly Black and Indigenous communities. According to the 2018 data from Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center, Black children made up close to 23% of all kids in foster care, but only 13.7% of the child population, while Indigenous children made up more than 2% of the foster care population, but less than 1% of the overall child population.²

Poster that says, "They separate children at the border of Harlem too." — (Photo Credit: Anita Yandle)

These numbers are hardly surprising considering the fact that the roots of the family regulation system can be traced back to the forced separation of enslaved African American families as well as genocide against Indigenous communities.³ Moreover, family policing and the foster care industrial complex are closely linked with the mass incarceration system. They both “regulate millions of marginalized people through intrusive investigations, monitoring and forcible removal of children from their homes to be placed in foster care, group homes and “therapeutic” detention facilities.”⁴ The similarities of these systems have spurred a movement toward abolishing the family regulation system along with other punitive and oppressive systems.

In this episode of Columbia Race Talks / Critical Race Theory, guest Professor Anna Arons from NYU Law School speaks on her experiences as a public defender working in the family regulation system. We chat with her not only about the need for abolition, but also on how we can work toward a society that actually keeps children and families safe without relying on systematic violence. She shares insights from her recent COVID-19 related research which found that the withdrawal of New York City’s vast family regulation system during the pandemic did not lead to an increase in child abuse. Families found support elsewhere through community-based mutual aid and new government entitlements. In this way, as Professor Arons explains, the city’s shutdown became an unplanned experiment in abolition, “demonstrating a possible future absent the massive, oppressive apparatus of the family regulation system.”⁵

Anna Arons is an Acting Assistant Professor of Lawyering at NYU Law School.
Image Credit: NYU Law

The episode also includes the voices of Joyce McMillan (below left) and Professor Dorothy Roberts (below right). Joyce McMillan is a thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, and educator. Her mission is to remove systemic barriers in communities of color by bringing awareness to the racial disparities in systems where people of color are disproportionately affected.⁶

Professor Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her path breaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent social justice issues in policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics.⁷