“The Coronavirus Could Cause a Child Abuse Epidemic”
—Headline on opinion column, New York Times
“We must not allow a public health pandemic to become an
abuse pandemic.”
—Globe & Mail columnist in Toronto
“We cannot let a health pandemic become a child abuse
pandemic!”
—Sheriff in Texas on Twitter
“I’ve read some
articles where it said this a coronavirus pandemic. I also read it could become
a child abuse pandemic.”
—Georgia director of a child advocacy center
Well, yes. By now, just about everyone must have read some
version of the hype and hysteria around the fact that, thanks to COVID-19,
fewer mostly white, middle-class “eyes” will be on children who are
overwhelmingly poor and disproportionately nonwhite.
What this kind of
hysteria really shows us is the extent to which racial and class biases
permeate child welfare and our perceptions of the families caught up in the
child welfare system. That claims of a “pandemic” of abuse are amplified in
news coverage with no thought to what people making those claims are really
saying should give us pause, too.
