Maintaining that family deterioration leads to community disintegration, Roberts calls for raising the minimum wage in an effort to reduce poverty, the aggressive creation of jobs for the unemployed, a national health service, high-quality subsidized child care, preschool education, and paid parental leave for all families.
Even while asserting that institutionalized racism and classism are embedded within the child welfare system, Roberts notes that “severe violence toward children is more likely to occur in households with annual incomes below the poverty line.” Contrasting children of divorce with children in foster care, the author suggests that in the former, a child’s relationship with the non-custodial parent is usually protected, while in the latter, the goal is to sever parental ties so that a child may be adopted. The author concludes there is a two-tiered system in place: problems within affluent (white) families are treated as private matters, while foster care deals almost exclusively with poor (black) families. Roberts (Law/Northwestern Univ.) believes that the child welfare system is “a state-run program that disrupts, restructures, and polices Black families,” noting that while half of all children in foster care are black, African-American children represent only 17 percent of US youths. The author of Killing the Black Body (1997) looks at our national foster-care system, the disproportionate number of African-American children within that population, and the consequences for black families and communities.
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