Child Protective Services throughout the country are significantly biased and more likely to target minority families.

According to the Edwards et al, in 2021 they state that “the risks of having a CPS investigation were highest for Black children (32.9 to 62.8%) (2021).”

The problem with this institution isn’t so much that they investigate – because children in abusive homes should have a system in place to protect them –the problem is that the system they work in was designed from the perspective of white culture.

Systemic racism is prevalent within CPS. People are aware of it, but stay complacent because it isn’t directly affecting them.

Challenge the Rhetoric

Families that are impoverished or otherwise not able to hire a lawyer to help them navigate the requirements, it is very easy to get stuck in an endless loop – and it has been shown that statistically black families are subject to significantly higher rates of ongoing random visits from CPS when compared to the duration and frequency of visitation for white families with similar accusations (Edwards et al. 2021).

References

Edwards, Frank, Sara Wakefield, Kieran Healy, and Christopher Wildeman. 2021. “Contact with Child Protective Services Is Pervasive but Unequally Distributed by Race and Ethnicity in Large US Counties.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 (30): e2106272118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2106272118.