The Community Impact of Racial Disproportionality: The Racial Geography of Child Welfare

Abstract

An understudied aspect of racial disproportionality is its community impact. Although alarming, national and state statistics do not reveal the spatial dynamics of the child welfare system’s racial disparities. In the nation’s cities, child protection cases tend to be concentrated in communities of color. Many poor black neighborhoods, in particular, have extremely high rates of involvement by public child welfare agencies, especially placement in foster care. Thus, state custody of children has a racial geography. The overrepresentation of black children in the foster care population represents massive state supervision and dissolution of families concentrated in their neighborhoods. This chapter addresses the social impact of this concentration of child welfare agency involvement on the residents who live in these neighborhoods.