By Megan Conn and Michael Fitzgerald, Photo: Hiram Alejandro Durán, The Imprint, April 4, 2022
The bar association representing tens of thousands of New York attorneys has taken a first-ever stance against racism in the child welfare system, endorsing specific calls for change that include revising decades-old federal laws.
The New York State Bar Association resolution, approved Saturday, acknowledges the harms the American child welfare system has visited disproportionately on Black families, linking them to the ruthless family separation that occurred during more than 200 years of slavery.
In a section offering historical perspective, the bar association describes “the impact of the child welfare system on the ‘lives of people living in poverty and Black, American Indian and Latinx communities.’” The resolution goes on to state: “With regard to Black families in particular, the roots of the child welfare system’s threat to family integrity in the American institution of chattel slavery from colonial times onward is well documented. Enslavers did not respect or even acknowledge the family unit of the people they enslaved. They regularly and cruelly separated Black children from their families with no recognition of the family unit.”
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