I get that people are tired of the, “whole black/white race thing,” especially as the country continues to trend toward an inevitable minority-majority state. But simply being tired of it doesn’t make the reality of an inherent privilege embedded in our social system any less real. Read more…
I was reading through a list of five simple things not to forget, and number one hit me hard. I think the reason why is that it’s so inanely simple that you’d think it would be self-evident, but unfortunately it’s not in way too many situations. Read more…
Turns out that when Attorney General Eric Holder stated that this nation was cowardly in its refusal to confront racism, he was at least implicitly including himself in that indictment. Read more…
I’ve been following the blog, I Was a Foster Kid, for a while now. It provides a strikingly honest, unvarnished view into the experiences of someone who was in the foster care system. Here’s a snippet from the latest post: Read more…
I have said before that the myriad issues surrounding child protective services are complex and not easily reduced to sound-bite ready statements or bullet points. Not that this has not prevented people from doing so. Read more…
So, Arizona. Where to start? Police in Arizona are now required to arrest someone if there is reasonable suspicion the person is an illegal immigrant (and anyone who doesn’t admit what that phrase actually means is lying) if that person cannot prove their status. Concerns that this would lead to arrests of Hispanic citizens were dismissed as hyperbole, but guess what? It’s already happened. Read more…
While looking into the child welfare and child abuse prevention resources for the previous post on April being Child Abuse Prevention month, I ran into several posts that declared the entire thing to be nothing more than propaganda or hysteria. Rather than passing them by, I looked into the posts, and in the interest of presenting dissenting and often unheard viewpoints offer this summary. Read more…
I admit the question of child welfare and the degree to which Child Protective Services serves the needs of children in an effective or meaningful way is a frustrating one. All I can say at this point is that I don’t think I’d want a job working for CPS. Read more…
Not long ago I wrote about a recent article in The Atlantic that discussed the fundamental problem our society has with sex offenders. We typically are not willing to lock them up for life sentences, but when sex offenders try to find a place to live after they are released from prison, it’s clear that we don’t believe they are safe to allow back into society.
I have been giving quite a bit of thought to the concept of the monkeysphere. If you haven’t heard of that term, let me explain it briefly. Read more…
