The system that breaks us, cannot be the one that heals us

As a community, we have been conditioned to live under a microscope, and the latest data from the sources confirms what our grandmothers whispered: the child welfare system isn’t a safety net for us.

Drawing on the intelligence of Dr. Amos Wilson, we must understand that the protection of African Caribbean children by the state is often a masquerade for social control. Wilson argued that the psychological destabilization of the African Caribbean family is a requirement for maintaining power dynamics. When we look at the 2019 Canadian Incident Study (CIS) data, we see this power dynamic in cold, hard numbers. African Caribbean children are investigated at 2.27 times the rate of White children. Here is the most jagged pill to swallow: even when the clinical and economic profiles are identical (meaning the money in the bank and the risk factors are the same) African Caribbean children are still snatched from their homes at twice the rate of their White peers.

We have to stop letting them use our socioeconomic struggles as a scapegoat for their bias. The sources are clear: these disparities cannot be explained by economic hardship alone. This is the institutionalized hunting of the African Caribbean family unit.

Let’s talk about the eyes of this system. The sources reveal a terrifying pipeline: 42% of referrals for African Caribbean children come from schools, compared to only 28% for White children.

Our children are being educated in environments where their teachers are functioning as unpaid surveillance agents. These mandated reporters are seeing physical abuse where none exists. In fact, African Caribbean families are reported for physical abuse at significantly higher rates, despite the data showing no significant differences in actual physical harm compared to White children. They are criminalizing our culture and our parenting styles, labeling cultural discipline as abuse to justify the trauma of removal.

We are told this system is positive, because it protects children. As Professor Alicia Boatswain-Kyte points out, for African Caribbean families, this protection translates into heightened scrutiny and trauma. The system itself is invasive and a source of trauma. It is a machine that consumes African Caribbean childhood and spits out fragmented identities.

As Dr. Wilson would remind us, power is never surrendered voluntarily; it must be challenged through self-definition. We have to stop looking to the system that breaks us to be the one that heals us. If the child welfare system were truly about safety, it would address the systemic racism and structural inequities that create the risk in the first place. Instead, it uses risk assessment tools that fail to account for our cultural reality and relies on the biased decision-making of caseworkers who see an African Caribbeans father’s frustration as a threat and a White father’s frustration as a functioning issue to be coached.

Your next step is a shift in perspective. Stop seeing the knock on the door as a moral failing of our community. It is a structural assault. We must demand comprehensive provincial-level data to hold these institutions accountable, but more importantly, we must build our own community-based support systems that make their interventions obsolete.

We are not unscathed by this system. It is time to stop being the subjects of their investigations and start being the guardians of our own protection. Your power lies in the refusal to let them define your family’s worth through their biased lens. Our children belong to us, not the state.