Processes of Racialization in New York City's Child Welfare System

Abstract

This paper argues that daily practices in the child welfare system in the urban United States contribute to the racialization—the process of creating and recreating racial groups, meanings, experiences, and inequalities—of African American communities. First, child welfare practices reinforce and legitimize views of poor women of color as irresponsible mothers and urban black communities and families as in need of state supervision. Second, the child welfare system plays an important role in the “prison pipeline,” the interrelated factors that converge to make minority boys more likely to end up in prison. Child welfare is thus a key, yet relatively unexamined, set of state practices that perpetuates inequalities and recreates race. [Race; Racialization; Child Welfare; Urban United States; Prison Pipeline].