Note: I've cut out most of the crap, it's an old article but I heard something similar on the radio today.
A disproportionate number of Toronto-area children in foster and group-home care are black. Advocates are blaming poverty, cultural misunderstanding and racism.
In the Toronto area, black children are being taken from their families and placed into foster and group-home care at much higher rates than white children.
Numbers obtained by the Star indicate that 41 per cent of the children and youth in the care of the Children's Aid Society of Toronto are black. Yet only 8.2 per cent of Toronto's population under the age of 18 is black.
Other figures obtained by the Star indicate the overrepresentation is province-wide.
"The gross overrepresentation of black kids in the CAS is like a modern-day residential schools system," says Margaret Parsons, executive director of the African Canadian Legal Clinic, which advocates on behalf of the province's 590,000 black residents.
"This is another form of racial profiling," she says. "They're profiling black parents in a very negative way."
Patricia knows first-hand how cultural misunderstandings can lead to black children being removed from their homes.
She was shocked when police and a Toronto children's aid worker came to her tidy bungalow two years ago to say her granddaughters were being taken into care.
They were living a comfortable life in Toronto. "For the little one, I was the only mother she ever knew," says the soft-spoken woman.
That all changed in 2012. Her teenage granddaughter, facing suspension at school, told the principal she would be beaten with a baseball bat if her grandmother found out.
"She told them I was going to kill her," says Patricia, who admits she disciplined her granddaughters with a slap now and then[.]
Patricia was charged with numerous counts of assault with a weapon, involving multiple incidents. A landed immigrant, she says she was advised by her legal aid lawyer to plead guilty to some charges to avoid possible deportation.
Of children in care in Toronto, 31 per cent were born to black parents. A further 9.8 per cent of children in care had one parent who is black.
The data also showed that many of the black children in care were of Jamaican heritage.
Lawyers, black community leaders and child advocates say the overrepresentation of black children is due to cultural misunderstandings and stress and neglect created by poverty. They also believe systemic racism in the child protection system, and within the police and schools, is at play.
Everton Gordon, executive director of the Jamaican Canadian Association, believes police go into black homes with the same bias that results in black youth being racially profiled on the street.
"These institutions have problems with black people to begin with," Gordon says, referring to police and schools. "The minute it's a black family it sets off alarm bells."
A recent provincial survey of about 7,000 Ontario children who have been in care for more than one year shows that about 12 per cent are of African or Caribbean descent. Meanwhile, only about 5 per cent of Ontario's children under age 18 are from those communities.
A 2012 report by a provincial commission into child welfare found that "the system was not responding effectively to the diversity of Ontario's population."
Paul Chapman, 23, who works in the provincial child advocate's office, was 9 years old when he and his six siblings were taken from their struggling single mother. He was placed with white foster parents. On Sundays, he missed big breakfasts with Caribbean dishes, and going to church.
He recalls one dinner when his foster parents served him perogies.
"I had no idea what the hell a perogy was. I said I'm not eating that," says Chapman.
"I think a lot of (black) youth struggle," he says.
"It's because they don't know who they are. They don't know what to do. They kind of lose themselves. They lose their identity."
I'd like everyone to know this article was published five years ago... since then the number of niggers in foster care has GROWN.
How did the blacks originally get into Canada? Through commonwealth immigration policy?
You know I always hated "BLT" that Jig that dated the white girl in the Canadian 1980's teen show "Degrassi jr high".
(https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQuMm1milMVl_LxkeUVS3lO8AMUauROMnRD5PeSw351W9-nmsu0Mw)
(https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ9Qdh4oRBBEKO2tt9CAmgBMRDMM7iG83N78wvWO9KSXgv6kdOBOw)
Quote from: Br.IanVonTurpie on Tue 25 Aug 2015
How did the blacks originally get into Canada? Through commonwealth immigration policy?
I think some were border jumpers from the US pre-Civil war. Most of them are new, first or second gen from Jamaica and Nigger muslims from Somalia.
Bad Parenting = You just lost your kids.
Blaming it on Poverty, Cultural Misunderstanding and Racism = A load of BS.
Eat the dammed Perogie it's delicious. ;D