Science isn't the problem, morality is

[ljwrites]

What separation from parents does to children

“The effect [of forcibly separating children from their families] is catastrophic,” said Charles Nelson, a pediatrics professor at Harvard Medical School. “There’s so much research on this that if people paid attention at all to the science, they would never do this.”

(via redrikki)

This is an informative article but I think Dr. Nelson is dead wrong that people would never tear children away from their parents if they knew the level of harm it does to the children. Many don't care, and for still others that's the whole damned point.

Nelson himself as a pediatrician, and one in a cushy position at that focused solely on research and facts, would never recommend such separation. But what if he were a doctor consulting with an embattled and overworked, and also heavily racist and classist, child protective services and family court system? If he were a doctor cooperating with the immigration authorities? If he were an immigration official? A high-ranking government official formulating policy?

Did all these other professionals really act out of ignorance of the harm they were doing to children? Or did they simply not care, or did they lead themselves to believe the harm was not so great? Or was the lifelong wounding of children a feature, not a bug, in not just last year's but decades and centuries of systematic family separation policies?

Pleading ignorance of the science instead of apathy and cruelty (which come down to the same thing as far as the recipient is concerned) is a misstatement of the problem, and is one of the ways scientists can give moral cover to atrocities. Nelson has, as it were, misdiagnosed the problem: It's not that people don't know the science. In the U.S. context, it's that a lot of professionals and policymakers don't think brown, Black, and poor children hurt like their own children do. Or, too often, they want to hurt children in order to terrorize and traumatize them and their communities. The true evil here are the empathy gap and the desire to dominate by hurting those most vulnerable, not simple ignorance.

Comments

[burendasan4]

"In the U.S. context, it's that a lot of professionals and policymakers don't think brown, Black, and poor children hurt like their own children do."
THIS

Child abuse, murder and suicide mention

[ljwrites]

During this post I was also thinking about the Hart case, where two white moms adopted and kept six Black children despite multiple allegations of beating and starving them, and killed them all in an apparent murder-suicide last year. Three of the children had an aunt who wanted them badly but had her rights terminated for letting their mom (who was ordered to have no contact with the children due to drug problems) babysit them due to having to work an extra shift on short notice. I can't wrap my mind around it--to take children from a loving relative who made an ill-considered choice in a tight spot, rush their adoption to white parents, then to ignore multiple allegations of abuse while these children were being systematically terrorized and starved... it just doesn't bear thinking about. Devonte, Jeremiah, and Ciera would be alive and happy today if the Texas officials hadn't dealt so unreasonably and so abruptly with their aunt. Their family had the children stolen from them by a racist child welfare system, and these children had their well-being and their very lives stolen by a system that constantly believed their white abusers over them. None of this was done out of scientific ignorance of the psychological effects on children. It is systematic and deliberate cruelty, and it's marginalized families and their children who pay the price.

[minoanmiss]

?This was really educational reading. And I so agree with your caveat/disagreement: Dr. NElson reminds me of the actually decent men who are afraid to "accidentally" sexually assault a woman because they believe the bullshit the rapey men spout about not being able to "understand body language", etc. Just like the rapey men can TOTALLY understand body language and just choose to ignore it (along with ignoring more direct statements) and/or actively delight in violating consent, so too do many people choose cruelly ripping children from parents deliberately and with various kinds of malice.

[ljwrites]

Yeah, and I'm so ??? at this logick that posits that there is kind of impossible difficulty in finding out whether you're causing harm, or indeed in refraining from the action. If you're not sure a woman is consenting, like... ask her, or--and here's a revolutionary thought--leave her alone? If you're unsure (for some reason) that it'll harm children to separate them from parents they are attached to... like.. maybe... don't?? These actions are not some forces of gravity one has to fight against. They don't happen against the will of the person doing them. It's at times like this that I think it's a good idea to heed the Tao Te Ching and Lao Tzu's warning against action for the sake of action. Sometimes not doing is so much better than doing.

[minoanmiss]

Word. "Sometimes not doing is better than doing" is what conservatism is supposed to be, instead of the "enshrining bigotry in law and policy" movement it is.