Hospital Staff More Likely to Screen Minority Mothers
Nearly 90 percent of all children in Los Angeles County’s foster-care system are minorities, drawing growing concern that hospitals and child welfare agencies are performing the vast majority of drug screening tests on low-income, minority pregnant women who seek public health care.
While only 10 percent of the county’s general population is African-American, African-American children make up nearly 36 percent of all children in the county’s foster-care system.
The county trend mirrors state and national figures that show children of ethnic minorities in foster care—especially African-Americans, Latinos and American Indians—outpace the number in the general population.
Statewide, 75 percent of foster children are minorities, including 27 percent who are black while African-Americans make up just 7 percent of the state’s population.
Nationwide, 58 percent of the 513,000 kids in foster care are children of color, although they represent only 42 percent of the child population in the United States.
“There is very strong evidence that hospital staff are more likely to suspect drug use on the part of black mothers and these mothers are more likely to have their children removed and put in foster care,” said Dorothy Roberts, the Kirkland & Ellis professor at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago and author of “Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare.”
Local, state and national child welfare officials agree that a disproportionate percentage of minority children—especially blacks and American Indians—are in foster care. But they say maternal drug testing is just one of the factors.
“(Hospital drug testing is) one aspect we’ll be looking at to see why there are these disparities, but it seems the problem is multifold,” Department of Children and Family Services Director Trish Ploehn said.
{snip}
While abuse and neglect rates are actually lower among African-American families than in white families, studies have found race to be an important factor in reports to child protective service hotlines, according to a recent Casey Family Programs report.
Additionally, many public and private hospitals have overreported abuse and neglect among blacks while they underreport maltreatment among Caucasians, according to the Casey report.
A study published in the Journal of Women’s Health found black women and their newborns were 1.5 times more likely to be tested for illicit drugs as others.
“There is a strong stereotype that black mothers are irresponsible,” Roberts said. “And the entire image of the ‘crack baby’ is that of a black child. So people who have to identify substance-abusing mothers and make decisions about it are influenced by these stereotypes.”
{snip}
(Posted on June 30, 2008)
Comments
Show me an instance where blacks are “disproportionally” represented (what the heck does that mean?) in some negative category, and I’ll show you a hundred bleeding heart reporters who’ll try to build a story around alleging that it’s the result of “bias” and “stereotyping” on the part of White officialdom.
For example, who says that abuse and neglect is “actually lower” among black families than among White ones? Could it be that White relatives and the neighbors in White neighborhoods are more concerned about children and thus more apt to report what they believe to be abuse and/or neglect on the part of parents? If the reporter’s bald assertion of that is based on some study, then that should be clearly stated.
And if there are other criteria used besides drug testing to determine which children should be placed in foster care, why wasn’t the story more specific about what they were? Could it be that this might have diluted the ideological point the reporter was trying to ram down our throats: That black children are “the victims of racism”? Never mind the use of words like “minorities” when such a pseudo-investigative story is written — we know they always mean “blacks.”
Posted by Wayne Engle at 6:38 PM on June 30
Nothing will please them. If you don’t take care of their babies and they kill them, you will be accused of indifference to black children. If you follow your educated suspicions and catch more black junkie moms you will be guilty of stereotyping.
Similarly, if you put more police patrols out in black neighborhoods because their is more murder, robbery and rape of blacks by blacks, you will be accused of profiling and blamed for putting black men behind bars. If you don’t send out more police patrols and blacks naturally keep killing each other, you will be accused of indifference to black suffering.
Reread the Time article from 1958 that Jared posted a few days ago. The same thing was true back then: the white police were blamed for arresting blacks and also blamed for their indifference when they DIDN’T arrest blacks.
Nothing ever changes. Blacks will whine and p!ss and moan no matter what you do for them. You just have to ignore them. Really. Just ignore them.
Posted by Big Bill at 6:46 PM on June 30
I believe how you parent is the best reflection of you as a person. This propaganda, fluff article aside, it is the children of minority mothers that are committing the majority of crimes, and make up the majority of prisoners in the penal system. So, Troy Anderson, explain that when you want to state that minority women are stereotyped as irresponsible.
Posted by Kellie at 6:56 PM on June 30
I am a white, middle class female. I was married when I had all of my children. I have never had a substance abuse problem. I have never tried any type of illegal drug, yet I was drug tested twice during each of my pregnancies. I was tested early in my pregnancy when standard blood tests are done, and I was tested after I delivered my children. I had all of my children at a small community hospital, and I just thought the tests were normal procedure.
Posted by at 7:04 PM on June 30
I have a solution. Cut off “Public Health Care” (paid for by white taxpayers) and none of these profiled mothers will be tested for drugs and none of their children will end up in foster care, also funded by white taxpayers.
Posted by Nordic at 7:42 PM on June 30
That is because minority newborns are more likely to be shaking and crying in a distinctive weak manner, twitching, having seizures and other symptoms of being born to drug user mothers.
This story is about Los Angeles. There are very few poor,working class and lower middle class whites in Los Angeles. They all were chased out by the blacks 30 years ago.
The white mothers of Los Angeles are either immigrants or wealthy women who have no need to go to public hospitals.
Posted by at 7:47 PM on June 30
At one time the LA Daily News was the conservative alternative to the decidedly left-leaning LA Times. This is no longer true. Recently, the Daily News hired a ‘woman of color’ as its new editor-in-chief and now the paper is one more White-bashing, multicultural, Soviet-style propaganda outlet for Obama-type leftists. Every day the ‘new’ front page is filled with non-White sob stories, long, drawn-out puff pieces about Democratic politics and ‘expert’ commentary from Earl Ofari Hutchinson.
Recently, bitter old 60s hippie Robert Sheer and White-hating Ruben Navarrette have joined the columnists on the editorial page.
Vdare.com describes Navarrette thusly:
“…most of his syndicated columns, radio show commentaries, and speeches contain some form of racist-baiting. Navarrette routinely labels anyone who wants to stop illegal immigration a racist, and he is an infamous practitioner of using the ‘racist’ label on anyone he disagrees with on immigration issues…”
http://www.vdare.com/sanchez/070716_racism.htm
And darn it all—I just renewed my subscription (for the last time, the thought of paying to read now-typical White-hating articles such as the poorly written and researched one above just grates me).
For example, from the above article, this typical un-cited gem:
“…While abuse and neglect rates are actually lower among African-American families than in white families…”
Not True.
Richard Lynn writes:
“… The American Association for Protecting Children has found that black children constitute approximately 15 percent of the child population and about 22 percent of cases of child abuse and neglect… It found that 1.2 percent of white parents and 2.1 percent of blacks inflict this kind of severe violence on their children…”
Data published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services for 1996 showed that maltreatment was about three times more common among blacks and about one-and-a-half times more common among Hispanics, than among whites.
[The] study found that 2,776 of these [children] had been murdered…the rate of infant homicides for blacks and Native Americans was 2 per 10,000, compared with 0.6 per 10,000 for whites…”
http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2004/10/race_and_psycho.php
And then there’s this depressing tidbit:
“…although they [non-White children] represent only 42 percent of the child population in the United States…”
I’ve not only lost my newspaper, I’ve lost my country as well.
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 9:03 PM on June 30
Nothing can change within all of these government organizations. Just think of how many people would lose their jobs(gov/media jobs….overpopulation). Then the federal government would really be reaping what they sowed. (Nothing’s going to happen with the border situation.)
The U.S. and these times thrive on chaos.
Posted by at 10:22 PM on June 30
I am an attorney in a large metropolitan area and I have either dealt with or observed many hundred, perhaps thousands of cases in court dealing with dependency. As noted in the article, there is a large minority component of those who go before the courts. Even in my area where there are always some racial rabble rousers, there has not really been any outcry at the large numbers of minority children removed from their parent(s). As a practical matter, many, if not most, of the social workers and protective investigators are minorities (most that I have seen are qualified- remember, I have to try to discredit their testimony). In the criminal courts it looks like African Americans are vastly overrepresented in the system.
Posted by at 10:50 PM on June 30
Just because you can do something, like have a baby, doesn’t mean you should. Unless you are in a position to care for that life for the rest of yours, don’t even entertain the idea. Why is this message, that I grew up with not being communicated to the young people today?
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 12:01 AM on July 1
It is hardly plausible that a demographic group that has a homicide rate 11 times that of Whites will have a lower rate of child abuse. Garbage, and they know it’s garbage.
BonBon: Good eye. This is the first time I’ve noticed the MSM admit that minorities are so large a proportion of the young. I understand that they are already a majority of newborns.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 12:41 AM on July 1
If a woman has illegal drugs in her system or in the system of her newborn baby she should be involuntarily sterilized before she leaves the birthing center. This won’t do a lot to stop the incidence of first babies with drug problems (since people using drugs are incapable of looking ahead) but it will stop the repeat abuses. Society can no longer afford hordes of damaged children with massive medical costs, unable to learn or become law-abiding, productive citizens.
Posted by at 9:16 AM on July 1
While abuse and neglect rates are actually lower among African-American families than in white families, studies have found race to be an important factor in reports to child protective service hotlines, according to a recent Casey Family Programs report.
That is a big fat lie if ever I heard one in my entire life. I’d like to see some evidence to support this assertion, but we know there isn’t any.
Posted by sofita at 9:20 AM on July 1
“There is very strong evidence that hospital staff are more likely to suspect drug use on the part of black mothers and these mothers are more likely to have their children removed and put in foster care”
Maybe, just maybe, their first hand experience with black mothers have caused them to see more black mothers who are drug users.
What others call racism, I call experience.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 10:46 AM on July 1
You just can’t win. Black drug use is lower? Is that why our prisons and drug treatment centers are full of black drug addicts?
Posted by Dumbo at 1:43 PM on July 1
Reason #499485211 for allowing the races to separate.
Posted by Svigor at 3:51 PM on July 1
“Additionally, many public and private hospitals have overreported abuse and neglect among blacks while they underreport maltreatment among Caucasians, according to the Casey report.”
So mistreated white children are being under-served? It appears that white children are being neglected by public and private hospitals while maltreated black children are receiving more attention. Where’s the Caucasian Caucus?
Posted by at 7:41 PM on July 4
The Department of Justice statistics show that the rate of black infanticide is much higher than whites:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/kidsratestab.htm
If infanticide isn’t abuse, what is?
Posted by at 8:11 PM on July 4