The best article I've read on race and economics in... well, ever

[PseudoSABR]

 

The crap of the issue - I have 5 foster children currently, all working toward adoption, all with varying degrees of Native blood coursing through their veins. My wife and I are about as white as white can get in our personal backgrounds and heritage, but certainly want to ensure their culture is taught to them and experienced.

 

However, when we reached out to their tribes of registry, the response has been a very mixed bag. One tribe was incredibly excited to work with us to welcome us for various things - meetings with elders, special holidays, education programs in home, etc. Other tribes treated the inquiry as if I was attempting to "steal" their children from them. Now, I've found out since that in the case of one particular tribe, I was not routed to the best person to talk with, but still, it's telling to me that in genuine desire to allow our children to understand, experience, and live out their cultural heritage, we're being blocked due to underlying mistrust of the entire "white" race.

The Indian Child Welfare Act gives tribes the first opportunity to find foster placement for dependent children; I'm sure you just reached the wrong the person who doesn't realize that their tribe was given an opportunity to foster that child.  

 

And to be fair, our race has earned a bit of mistrust.  Sorry that you're bearing the brunt of it, in act of solidarity no less. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

The crap of the issue - I have 5 foster children currently, all working toward adoption, all with varying degrees of Native blood coursing through their veins. My wife and I are about as white as white can get in our personal backgrounds and heritage, but certainly want to ensure their culture is taught to them and experienced.

 

However, when we reached out to their tribes of registry, the response has been a very mixed bag. One tribe was incredibly excited to work with us to welcome us for various things - meetings with elders, special holidays, education programs in home, etc. Other tribes treated the inquiry as if I was attempting to "steal" their children from them. Now, I've found out since that in the case of one particular tribe, I was not routed to the best person to talk with, but still, it's telling to me that in genuine desire to allow our children to understand, experience, and live out their cultural heritage, we're being blocked due to underlying mistrust of the entire "white" race.

Kudos to you for taking on that burden. When we began fostering, we had all of one rule: no ICWA children, not ever.

[Brock Beauchamp]

The Indian Child Welfare Act gives tribes the first opportunity to find foster placement for dependent children; I'm sure you just reached the wrong the person who doesn't realize that their tribe was given an opportunity to foster that child.

 

And to be fair, our race has earned a bit of mistrust. Sorry that you're bearing the brunt of it, in act of solidarity no less.

I understand the reason for ICWA but it’s a terrible policy in its current guise. Tons of kids sit in limbo and the tribes are fully aware of it. Just last week I was talking to parents who were *finally* giving up on an 11 year old who had serious behavioral issues. The family had either taken the child out of the hospital or shortly thereafter and badly wanted to adopt the child, which gives them all sorts of additional options that aren’t allowed while fostering.

 

A decade with the child and they’re giving up because ICWA.

[Squirrel]

I understand the reason for ICWA but it’s a terrible policy in its current guise. Tons of kids sit in limbo and the tribes are fully aware of it. Just last week I was talking to parents who were *finally* giving up on an 11 year old who had serious behavioral issues. The family had either taken the child out of the hospital or shortly thereafter and badly wanted to adopt the child, which gives them all sorts of additional options that aren’t allowed while fostering.

 

A decade with the child and they’re giving up because ICWA.

Omg. That is seriously really really sad. The poor kid. ☹️

[Craig Arko]

“The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities"--peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership.“

 

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Success-Americans-Minority-Politics-ebook/dp/B00F8MIJLM/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Omg. That is seriously really really sad. The poor kid. ☹️

Yeah, it was heart-breaking to hear the story but what really struck me was just how torn up the foster parents were about the situation. When we met them, they had run the gauntlet of foster classes (Hennepin county is pretty awesome, it has dozens of classes for all types of behavioral, birth defect, diagnoses, etc.) and they were at their wit's end. They had this child who was basically breaking their household, a child they had tried to adopt for years but were blocked from doing so.

 

And so they were just throwing up their hands in defeat. As much as all that sounds terrible to say, their look of defeat was worse.

 

As much as foster parenting sucks from within the system (and it's pretty brutal at times), the vast majority of us just want what's best for the child. Some of us are better at that than others (no judgment, just a fact) but we all try. And the government gets in the way of that happening sooooooo often. ICWA is one of the worst offenders of that idea. It exists for a purpose but its implementation is absolutely ****ing terrible. All it does is leave thousands of Native American children trapped in a system that is bad at everything. The state is not a parent. That state can barely manage to keep itself together, much less deal with the constant, ever-changing needs of a child.

[biggentleben]

 

Yeah, it was heart-breaking to hear the story but what really struck me was just how torn up the foster parents were about the situation. When we met them, they had run the gauntlet of foster classes (Hennepin county is pretty awesome, it has dozens of classes for all types of behavioral, birth defect, diagnoses, etc.) and they were at their wit's end. They had this child who was basically breaking their household, a child they had tried to adopt for years but were blocked from doing so.

 

And so they were just throwing up their hands in defeat. As much as all that sounds terrible to say, their look of defeat was worse.

 

As much as foster parenting sucks from within the system (and it's pretty brutal at times), the vast majority of us just want what's best for the child. Some of us are better at that than others (no judgment, just a fact) but we all try. And the government gets in the way of that happening sooooooo often. ICWA is one of the worst offenders of that idea. It exists for a purpose but its implementation is absolutely ****ing terrible. All it does is leave thousands of Native American children trapped in a system that is bad at everything. The state is not a parent. That state can barely manage to keep itself together, much less deal with the constant, ever-changing needs of a child.

 

We've heard of multiple similar situations.

 

One of the blessings is that we've been through the ICWA part of things. In one of our sibling groups, the ICWA trainee for the state for foster parents volunteered to testify on our behalf because ICWA couldn't get someone to show and he was highly impressed by our correspondence with him post-training on ways to connect our children (represented by three tribes in SD) to their home tribes. His push got things rolling.

[biggentleben]

 

Kudos to you for taking on that burden. When we began fostering, we had all of one rule: no ICWA children, not ever.

 

Sadly, that's the case for many people, and it's not out of bounds to say that by any means once you deal with it. Even the guy who trains foster parents on ICWA from the state and works in their department is not a fan of many of the actions taken by tribes.