Note from the publisher.(Brief Article)

Last February a friend told me that black and brown folks in New York got a small break from the racist vagaries of the child welfare system right after September 11, since there weren't enough police officers to deal with the fall out and child removal at the same time. She expected that scrutiny and removals would rise again as already poor families of color suffered the subsequent economic downturn and social service cuts. In this issue, Dorothy Roberts, Marisa Castuera, and Akiba Solomon draw a straight line leading from institutional attitudes about money, color, and sex to the destruction of black and Latino childhoods. The disproportionate number of children of color in the child welfare system is clearly related to the shrinking safety net, expanding prisons and detention centers, and the privatization of key public functions. For some families, then, child welfare is another form of detention, ...