The New Jane Crow PDF

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Running Head: THE NEW JANE CROW

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The New Jane Crow Taylar Kelly Rutgers University

The New Jane Crow

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The New Jane Crow is a New York Times article written by Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg. Clifford and Greenberg (2017) tell the story of Maisha Joefield, a single mother from Brooklyn whose relaxing bath after an exhausting day became a legal matter. After putting her daughter Deja to bed, Ms. Joefield decided to take a bath and listen to music. When Deja couldn’t find her mother, she left their home to walk across the street to her Grandmothers home. Quite frankly, based on my employment in the legal field, my reaction to this story is that details are missing. I am confused as to why Deja couldn’t find her mother in a small apartment. Additionally I am confused about why Ms. Joefield wouldn’t check her Grandmothers home for her daughter before calling the police if this was such a common thing. Nonetheless, if there is no more to this story (and for the sake of this assignment), it is unfathomable that someone’s child would be taken away over something so trivial. It is important to note that had this occurred in a neighborhood not considered to be poor or lowincome, this situation would have been a simple scare or story to tell and everyone involved would have moved on quickly from it. This story shows a very real view of inequality amongst class. Based on the different screen casts and readings, it appears as though children from lowincome families are always treated differently. In the Module 7 screen cast, we see that children were to be protected by adults, however, it was poor and immigrant children that were working and thus became a platform for social change (Curran, 2020). It appears today, however, that the work done to save children has a latent function. Poor families with poor children are not being helped or given any type of leniency, but instead they are being punished at alarmingly high rates. Parents are being punished and children

The New Jane Crow are being taken into foster care which is traumatizing. I don’t feel that this is fair at all and not every situation is black and white. There are grey areas and some situations do not require this excessive level of state involvement. In fact, I think wasting time on these meniscal mistakes truly is partially to blame for the deaths of children in the foster care system and the deaths of children whose cases are severe but are being overlooked by overworked social workers. This one of the reasons I feel we are asked to read these articles and cases. As social workers, we will be overworked and the responsibility for the safety of children will be in our hands somewhere along the line throughout our careers. I do think history has a place in the way we respond to certain situations. More than anything else, history is helpful in learning from past mistakes. To repeat bad history is foolish, in my opinion. The historical theme in the stories of women who have had children taken away from them in poor neighborhoods is the theme of inequality. Single and poor mothers are treated as though they cannot care for their children or live up to the expectations of the state (Clifford and Silver-Greenberg, 2017). The thought that a woman who had just walked eight blocks while in labor could give birth and three days later be in court because her daughter was left alone in an apartment awaiting emergency services, is nothing short of despicable. It is dehumanizing to shackle a woman who has just had a baby and then take that baby away as well. I am, in fact, infuriated as I write this assignment just thinking about this woman’s reality. Gender roles and racism are two more themes within this social issue. It appears that mother’s are the ones being mistreated and doubted by the system. Historically, African Americans make up the majority of Americas poor. Both of the women mentioned in the New Jane Crow (2017) were living in poor conditions and had a lack of child care options.

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The New Jane Crow In conclusion, the United States government likes to be responsible for protecting the welfare of Americans and American children. Unfortunately, as we see through real life scenarios, their efforts to do so are not always the best. Removing children from their homes and caregivers when they are not truly endangered or abused is horrific and has long lasting effects on the child, as explained by Kristin Bernard, an assistant professor of psychology at Stony Brook University (Clifford and Silver-Greenberg, 2017). To disrupt their lives and home is honestly just cruel. It is my belief that intervention by the state should be conducted on a needsbased criteria. The state should intervene in ways that help families and provide education and resources to families, not by disrupting their lives. (Curran, 2020)

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The New Jane Crow

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References Clifford, S., & Silver-Greenberg, J. (2017 , July 21). Foster Care as Punishment: The New Reality of ‘Jane Crow’. The New York Times. Curran, L. (2020). Module 7: The Progressive Era: Emerging Concepts of Social Work and Social Welfare from 1900 to1930 - Assignment...