Child welfare systems have long harmed Black children like Ma’Khia Bryant

The Washington Post ^ | April 30, 2021 | Crystal Webster

[CheshireTheCat]

Last week, a police officer fatally shot a Black child. Sixteen-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant was shot outside her foster home while she was engaged in a fight and holding a knife. The officer who shot her did not attempt to de-escalate the conflict, but instead fatally fired upon arrival. The event has stirred debates about her behavior, with some justifying her death. But these debates miss a key perspective: Ma’Khia was a child who deserved protection. Rather than scrutinizing her behavior, we need to understand the systems that failed her and factored strongly in her death.

And it isn’t just about policing, and the disproportionate violence targeting Black and Latino children by law enforcement officers, as was the case in the recent killings of Adam Toledo, 13, and Anthony J. Thompson Jr., 17. Bryant’s situation was also greatly shaped by her experience in foster care. In the United States, systems of care and protection of children have been racialized at their inception, something that has only intensified between the 20th century and today.

The first orphanages in the United States were established in the antebellum North in cities with growing free Black populations. Yet, these institutions refused to admit Black children. The New York Orphan Asylum, founded in 1809, did not have any Black children and in Philadelphia, the Orphan Society explicitly identified Whiteness as a requirement for admission. In both cities, White Quaker women established private, segregated orphanages for Black children — the Philadelphia Shelter for Coloured Orphans (1822) and the New York Colored Orphan Asylum (1836). And yet these Black orphanages were fundamentally different: Rather than caring for Black children, they sent them out to complete indenture contracts at age 8....

[Chode]

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