by Mohammed Lodhi Hussain
The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care by Nina Bernstein, All My Sons by Arthur Miller, and Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens serves as a reminder of the struggles endured by minorities in society. Minorities encompass a broad class of groups including children, African Americans, political dissidents. Minorities are ostracized, silenced or repressed due to their convictions. Society has been motivated to limit the amount of influence of the minority classes. Societal oppression of the underprivileged class is through political, social, and economic policies. Societal pressures place tremendous burden on the advancements of minority classes to achieve Independence. In doing so, the majority class can represent a smaller, more influential electorate with ease.
The Child Welfare System is a bi-product of political innovation to offer minimal social support without the lure of widespread appeal. Those children entering the Child Welfare system become disenfranchised and marginalized by their community. In the Lost Children of Wilder, Nina Bernstein chronicles Shirley Wilder’s bouts with the Child Welfare Intuition. Arthur Miller, the playwright, employs morality as the vessel for Joe Keller, the man who places his narrow responsibility to his immediate family above his wider responsibility to the men who rely on the integrity of his work. Dickens illustrates the struggles of Oliver Twist in a mesh of bureaucratic dealings. In pursuit for an individual identity in society, these characters employ various tactics to deal with the pressures of society. They were began into a society that seeks to eliminate them.
Throughout history, Minority groups have been limited in the amount of influence they can achieve. Pioneers such as Marcus Garvey, a Black Nationalist and Shirley Wilder.
In the Lost Children of Wilder by Nina Bernstein the protagonist, the Child Welfare System is marginalizing Shirley Wilder due to the fact that she is a Black orphan girl in a system that seeks to primarily benefit only white children. Institutionalizing class divisions integrate Shirley Wilder into the Child Welfare System, which seeks to limit her from making personal decisions. Thus constricting Shirley from her inalienable rights for independence. By institutionalizing racial divisions and encouraging domestic disputes individual’s are occupied addressing minuscule issues, we observe how societal ideologies can affect the rights of the under recognized. “Shirley was not able to give an account for the two episodes of truancy… She was disoriented for some time, lacking insight and judgment. She was irrelevant, ambivalent, bizarre, showed magical thinking… She had nightmares in which her parents were killed… Did not go to school, slowly moved to addresses closer to home…had her father come and get her”(Bernstein pg70)[i] the ambiguity of psychoanalytical claims independently do not do serious damage, however the compilation purported that Shirley Wilder is ill. This is another attempt of a societal decay in urban foster children.
In the intention to guard children like Shirley and Lamont[ii] Wilder from abuse and neglect January 31st, 1974, President Nixon signed Public Law 93-247 and passed the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA). The Act states that “child abuse and neglect means, at a minimum, any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker, which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation, or an act or failure to act which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.”[iii] This act supposedly addressed a growing awareness of the problem of child abuse. CAPTA allowed for the formation of a definition to better distinguish a positive or negative response by caregivers.
The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) brought in significant changes to the Childcare system. The law states that the system’s “paramount concern is for children’s health and safety”[iv] Firstly, It stated that if a child was in serious danger, and the guardian is sponsoring malice then the child can be removed. Secondly, states must file a Termination of Parental Rights (TPR) Petition to cease the claim from the parents. Finally, federal funding has been appropriated for states that successfully removal of children in troubled homes. These new policies have caused an ideological shift in the nation, placing children at the forefront, and some would argue politicizing the children for the electorate. The Precedence of CAPTA helped form this legislation, resulting in ideally better services for children in government-funded initiatives.
It was not until the 1990s that the federal government set up the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) and started collecting data from states about the children in foster care systems. Data shows that in 2000, Total number of reports to child protective agencies was 2.8 million, Percentage of those reports that met the standards for an investigation and/or assessment 62 percent, the number of substantiated cases of abuse and/or neglect was Approximately 500,000, and the number of children placed in foster care was 291,000.[v] These values are staggering, so many children are placed into this system with any way of navigating on their own. Many of this children suffer abuse and maltreatment inside state agencies, and more evidence is released daily to the mistreatment from state officials towards this children.
Our society does not believe it necessary to invest too heavily in social services; this seems to be a lucrative area for policy makers to cut funding. “Budget cuts are forcing one of the city’s largest and most respected social services agencies to drop a counseling and case management program for 300 troubled families in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx…Safe Horizon have decided to eliminate $2.5 million in preventive services programs funded by the Administration for Children’s Services after the city proposed slashing 18.5 percent of the programs’ budget..”[vi] It is clear that minorities and children continue to carry the burden in terms of government funding representation. They have become political outcasts, struggling to discover their rights and fighting for limited benefit.
It is clear from the graph that a majority of children in foster care for 2000 were black and white children. This graph indicates that a majority of non-whites represents the population of children in foster care. However services are not proportionally distributed to needy children. The racial polarity that has remained prevalent from the inception of the childcare system is alive today. If we are to address the shortcomings of our system, in the ambition to enable these children to live productive lives within the community. We will have to invest financial resources for them. Opponents argue that the white children are favored in home placement whereas the minority children are not. We must dissolve baggage during instances where a child’s life in endangered. Inadequate facilities, understaffed social workers, and budget cuts seems to leave the individuals we are seeking to assist with no place to go.
RACE OF CHILDREN IN FOSTER CARE (2000):[vii]
| Percentage of total population in foster care | Total | |
| American Indian/Alaskan Native | 2.0% | 10,994 |
| Black | 39.7% | 220,660 |
| Asian/Pacific Islander | 1.1% | 5,978 |
| Hispanic | 14.7% | 81,890 |
| Other | 5.0% | 27,846 |
| White | 37.5% | 208,632 |
“Full repeal of CAPTA would be a terrible mistake: it would deprive truly abused children of the protection they sorely need, resulting in massive political upheaval as the mental health and legal communities, the public, and the media struggle with the fallout from this decision.” [viii]
In All My Sons by Arthur Miller we observe Joe Keller, the distraught father, who struggles with his duties for his family and his responsibility for the nation. “…Every man does have a star. The star of one’s honesty. And you spend your life groping for it, but once it’s out it never lights again…He probably just wanted to be alone to watch his star go out.” (Miller p.70) Miller contrasts national ambition and duty with the rights of the individual. Critics may argue that Joe Keller was insincere to his community, however he was slighted by the idea of Individualism. His community might have ostracized him if he was incapable of producing the weaponry, quickly. We are a nation that demands everything prepared and organized an hour before we need it. Joe was propelled by that patriotism, and in doing so furthered the national objective. The author wants the audience to comprehend the morality of individualism. When individuals in a society do what is in their best interest, the community moral convictions are challenged. Joe’s persona is indicative of the climate of the nation. He is capitalizing on the death of others. That seems to be the role of capitalism in our social framework. Individual wealth supercedes the rights of others. “There’s nothin’ he could do that I wouldn’t forgive. Because he’s my son …I’m his father and he’s my son, and if there’s something bigger than that I’ll put a bullet in my head!”[ix] Here we see a father who is willing to remove all accepted societal constraints for the benefit of his children. At face value it might be considered a profound characteristic, however on closer inspection we see that he is promoting nationalistic ideals that seek to deny safety and rights of the community on the grounds of individuals pursuit.
In Victorian England, we observe the universal minority the poor, struggle with the political climate that seeks to limit the sphere of influence for Oliver Twist and abandoned children. To maximize the utility of an untapped labor force such as abandoned children, the society would need to break the spirit of the children. By establishing workhouses children such as Oliver were exposed to inhuman conditions that would cripple a young child.
So they established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they) of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. With this view, they contracted with the waterworks to lay on an unlimited supply of water, and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal, and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week and half a roll on Sundays. They made a great many other wise and humane regulations . . . kindly undertook to divorce poor married people . . . instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor! There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty. The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel, and that frightened people..”(Dickens,
The objective is to form an obedient lower class that will be grateful for living. Breaking from class boundaries would be impossible, thereby disabling anyone from attaining personal independence. Without freedom, minorities are destined to remain encapsulated in their societal enclosure.
The struggles of families and children in American society are all related to self-determination. Many families, explicitly minority families struggle with their identity.
Whether it is children in the foster care system, African Americans, or political outcasts their commonalities are profound, they all struggle with a notion of acceptance and identity. We have created an interwoven network of dependency, limiting the potential personal growth of the individual. Established policies have sought to hinder individual progression and created an era of drones that are capable of manual labor. They become content with their disabilities in society and eventually cannot even recognize their inabilities. We see a gradual degradation of moral constructs, leaving only fiscal foundations for individuals to aspire towards. It seems perplexing that people would accept a system that seeks to undervalue them at all costs. In evaluating the child welfare system we observe that children are passengers on a societal tsunami, ill prepared for the hurdles that are forthcoming.
[i] Shirley Wilder has become another of the misrepresented and understood black troubled youth in the child welfare system.
[ii] Shirley Wilders son, who is handicapped by the Child Services in dealing with social environments.
[iii] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/fostercare/inside/welfarefaq.html (2003)
[iv] http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/laws/public_law/pl105_89.htm (November 5, 2002)
[v] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Child Maltreatment 2000 (2002); AFCARS, interim FY2000 estimates as of August 2002; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Child Welfare Outcomes 1999: Annual Report (2002); U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, Green Book 2000; Casey Family Programs, “Assessing Foster Care Alumni Outcomes: A Short-Term Follow Up Study.”
[vi] Glenn Thrush “More Social Service Cuts Coming, May 14, 2003, 8:44 PM EDT
[vii] Refer to endnote iii
[viii] Richard A. Gardner, M.D. “RE: HR3588 – Proposed Revision of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) (Public Law 93-247 [referred to as “The Mondale Act”]) (2000)
[ix] All MY Sons “(p.163; Penguin Classics ed.)