Children grow up with permanent feelings of abandonment. The child tax credit will help, but, the government has to change the way we take children away from families. It is an industry now that is hopelessly lost to the best outcomes for children. States without grandparent rights need to be addressed.
By Bacardi Jackson
Florida Dept. of Children and Families (click here)
I have witnessed and survived much (click here) – from overtly racist threats at gunpoint to the everyday microaggressions by people who feel obliged to police Black bodies, words, actions and even our audacity. These assaults accumulate, at times stinging like the death of a thousand cuts, but, like most Black people living, growing and becoming in America, and especially those of us situated in the Deep South, these experiences have been so par for the course that we find ourselves often in a state of numbness. Nothing cuts deeper and stirs the soul more, however, than that moment when one witnesses the burdens and baggage of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, xenophobia or their many intersectionalities placed squarely on the shoulders of a child. The rage we learn to quell and hide is not easily contained when our children are under siege.
In my journey as a parent of Black children, I have had to work hard to shield them from, or at least shore them up to be prepared for, the ever-present dangers of living while Black. The adultification of Black children in particular means they often are not seen by others as worthy or in need of the same protections, leeway, nurturing or care afforded to their peers. As I have learned firsthand, there is no greater sense of helplessness than when someone with the power to shape and wield malleable laws supplants your parental authority and demands that you relinquish your power to protect. There is no greater indignity than the force of the state intentionally and with knowledge putting your child in a dangerous place – something I have suffered through and something parents of Florida children who have been “Baker Acted” know all too well.
Today, we released a report, Costly and Cruel: How Misuse of the Baker Act Harms 37,000 Florida Children Each Year, about the outrageously prolific use of Florida’s Baker Act to involuntary commit children to psychiatric facilities for examination....
In my journey as a parent of Black children, I have had to work hard to shield them from, or at least shore them up to be prepared for, the ever-present dangers of living while Black. The adultification of Black children in particular means they often are not seen by others as worthy or in need of the same protections, leeway, nurturing or care afforded to their peers. As I have learned firsthand, there is no greater sense of helplessness than when someone with the power to shape and wield malleable laws supplants your parental authority and demands that you relinquish your power to protect. There is no greater indignity than the force of the state intentionally and with knowledge putting your child in a dangerous place – something I have suffered through and something parents of Florida children who have been “Baker Acted” know all too well.
Today, we released a report, Costly and Cruel: How Misuse of the Baker Act Harms 37,000 Florida Children Each Year, about the outrageously prolific use of Florida’s Baker Act to involuntary commit children to psychiatric facilities for examination....
