re-cast from private property in a chattel slave economy to alleged perpetrators of “abuse and neglect” (vaguely and amorphously defined), monetized and cycled as currency through the multi-billion dollar per year foster industry. 18 As with chattel slavery, the family policing system is designed for maximum intergenerational effect. It is no accident that over half of all U.S. Black children (53 percent) will be investigated by “child protective services/CPS” at least once by the time they reach the age of 18. Once investigated, children of color are more likely to be removed from their families; spend longer in foster care than white children, are less likely to reunify with their families, and more likely to be discarded by the system (“age out”) into homelessness, the criminal injustice system, unemployment, poor health, and other life negative experiences and outcomes. 19 Reparations are essential not only to ending the multi-generational state-sponsored violence against Black families by the family policing system but also to advance justice for Black people in the United States as autonomous, self-determining individuals fully capable of providing loving care to their children. Although fraught with improprieties in its implementation, a recent example of reparations for government and private child- taking is the recent Indian Residential School Settlement (IRSSA). 20 In operation until the final federal residential school closed in 1997, Canada’s Indian residential school system, “was profoundly negative and had a lasting impact on the children, on their families, and on their culture.” 21 The settlement, (IRSSA) is the culmination of litigation combined with fierce, sustained, collective advocacy and agitation by survivor groups, other interested organizations, and individuals calling attention to the “legal, moral, and spiritual wrongs” inflicted by government and private entities on generations of Indigenous children. IRSSA is seen as a key step on the path toward “recognizing and healing the past.” Similarly, reparations are needed to redress the damage inflicted by the American CPS system on generations of Black children and their families. While there are numerous expositions theorizing “why” and “how” reparations for Black enslavement in the United States should be provided, 22 for our purposes, international
human rights standards provide a helpful frame of reference for considering the nature and scope of reparations, including: • Restitution: measures to restore the situation that existed before the wrongful act(s) were committed, such as restoration of liberty, employment and return to the place of residence and return of property. • Compensation: monetary payment for “economically assessable damage” arising from the violation, including physical or mental harm, material losses, and lost opportunities. • Rehabilitation: provision of “medical and psychological care as well as legal and social services.” • Satisfaction: includes a range of measures involving truth-telling, statements aimed at ending ongoing abuses, commemorations or tributes to the victims, preservation of historical memory, and expressions of regret or formal apology for wrong doing. • Guarantees of non-repetition: includes institutional and legal reform as well as reforms to government practices to end the abuse. 23 ______________ 18 Burton and Montauban. 19 See, e.g. Elisa Minoff and Alexandra Citrin, Systematically Neglected:HowRacismStructuresPublicSystemstoProduce Child Neglect , Center for the Study of Social Policy, March 2022, https://cssp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ Systemically-Neglected-How-Racism-Structures- Public-Systems-to-Produce-Child-Neglect.pdf. 20 Garnet Angeconeb, Enough already: It’s time for an inquiry into the Indian Residential Schools settlement agreement , October 19, 2021, https://www.thestar.com/ opinion/contributors/2021/10/18/enough-already- its-time-for-an-inquiry-into-the-indian-residential- schools-settlement-agreement.html. 21 INDEP. ASSESSMENT PROCESS OVERSIGHT COMM., INDEPENDENT ASSESSMENT PROCESS FINAL REPORT, 8, 22 (2021), http://www.iap-pei.ca/media/information/ publication/pdf/FinalReport/IAP-FR-2021-03-11-eng. pdf [https://perma.cc/DE52-RQV4]. 22 See, e.g., Olufemi O. Taiwo, Reconsidering Reparations (2022); Boris Bittker, The Case for Black Reparations (1973). 23 Dreisen Heath, H.R. 40: Exploring the Path to Reparative Justice in America: Written Testimony of Dreisen Heath Submitted to the US House Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties , Feb. 17, 2021, https://www.hrw.org/ news/2021/02/17/hr-40-exploring-path-reparative- justice-america#
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