Former Juvenile Court Judge Len
Edwards, a favorite on the child welfare conference circuit, is upset
about a
column I wrote on
March 8. The column discussed an
article in the City University
of New York Law Review that calls that most sacred cow in child
welfare, Court-Appointed Special Advocates (CASA), “an exercise of white
supremacy.”
CASA is
the program in which minimally trained volunteers, overwhelmingly white and
middle-class, are assigned to families who are overwhelmingly poor and
disproportionately nonwhite. Then they tell judges if the children should be
taken from those families, sometimes forever. In more than 60 percent of cases,
according to a study discussed in more detail below, judges rubber-stamp every
single recommendation these amateurs make.
Edwards appears to be
most upset about two words in the Law Review article:
white supremacy. In a comment posted below the column,* he says that my
“highlighting a law review article that uses ‘white supremacy’ in the title
[sic] is regrettable.” He comes back to this theme at the end of his comment,
complaining that my “supporting the law review article with its inflammatory
language is harmful as it may simply discourage volunteers to participate in a
valuable program.”
In fact, the Law Review article does not use “white supremacy”
in the title. I used it in the headline for my column. The Law Review article does, however, use the term in
the text.
The
first use of the term comes in response to a comment by a judge who called
CASA “a gift, the gift of an important person in a child’s life.”
The authors respond by writing the following:
However kindly intentioned their work may be, this paper posits that CASAs essentially give voice to white supremacy — the same white supremacy that permeates the system as a whole and that allows us to so easily accept the idea that children in the child welfare system actually require the “gift” of a CASA, and do not already have an abundance of “important people” in their lives.
Perhaps
Edwards is so offended because the judge who called CASA a gift was – Len
Edwards.
Toward an Honest Discussion of Race
But the
offense he takes to this column is revealing on another level. How in the world
are we supposed to have an honest discussion of race in this country without
using the words “white supremacy”? How can anyone, especially a former judge,
dismiss a law review article out-of-hand just for using the term? How is it
that, in child welfare, “white supremacy” is the hate that dare not speak its
name?
This is
one more example of the extent to which, unlike almost any other field, much of
child welfare is “in denial” – to use a favorite phrase in the field – about
the role that racial bias plays in decision-making.
If a black man and a
while man try to hail a taxi, does anyone really doubt who is more likely to
get the cab? If a black man and a white man walk into a store, does anyone
doubt who is more likely to be followed around by store security? Even in the
hard sciences, where objectivity theoretically is at its height, black
scholars have
more trouble getting research grants.
And of course, there’s
law enforcement, where bias is so apparent that the president of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police apologized last year to the African-American
community for police treatment of people of color.
CASA and Child Welfare Exceptionalism
Yet in child welfare,
despite abundant evidence of racial bias over and above the class bias that
permeates the system, there is an entire coterie proclaiming that child welfare
is The Great Exception. The people in this one field supposedly are so
wonderful that racism magically ends at the child welfare agency door, a notion
eagerly lapped up by credulous journalists. And now, we have a
white, middle-class judge condemning lawyers for even using the phrase “white
supremacy” in a law review article.
Edwards also disputes
that great big study of CASA, which found that it
does nothing to improve child safety, prolongs foster care, and makes it less
likely children will be placed with relatives instead of strangers. But he
offers no data in rebuttal, only anecdotes.
That’s nothing new. CASA
never has been willing to face up to this study. As Youth Today explained when
the study became public, it was not commissioned in the interest of objective
scholarship. CASA commissioned it to prove how wonderful CASA is. When the
results didn’t confirm that, Youth Today reported,
National CASA has boasted about the parts of the study it liked, while saying the findings that could be considered critical are questionable and in need of further study. This might be a natural organizational reaction, but it can border on duplicity.
So CASA
is in denial about the study findings, just as the larger field of child
welfare is in denial about white supremacy. Sounds like the child welfare
field needs to get into “counseling” to face up to all that denial.
But there is one way
Edwards could help a lot. He could use his influence at National CASA to get
them to look into what’s going on in the Volunteer Guardian Ad Litem program in Snohomish County, Washington, a program
accredited by National CASA. I hope he considers behavior in the program that a
judge there termed “pervasive and egregious” misconduct to be at least as
offensive as seeing the words “white supremacy” in a law review.
