Zenayda Bonilla
and Brown communities in child welfare systems and the clear failure of child welfare policy and interventions to end these trends, we have come to the conclusion that it is not useful to ask the question: what reforms or activities within the child welfare system could reverse these trends? Instead, we believe that we should trouble the frame and ask the more relevant, if paradoxical question: How does it serve the larger social organization to develop systems to manage the bodies, behavior and relationships of literally tens of thousands of individual children and families of color
when these systems appear to have had no meaningful impact on the likelihood that the neighborhoods in which children and families live will escape continued disproportionate engagement? Actions that continue without interruption and with great consistency and predictability must, we believe, serve a purpose. In this essay, we explore what we believe that purpose to be and how we might interrogate that purpose. In Navigating Racism in the Child Welfare System: The Impact on Black Children,
FIJ Quarterly | Summer 2022 | 47
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