I quit a civil rights group because its policies will harm children.
Today, I resigned from a civil rights committee seeking to reform how child abuse and neglect is investigated in New York State. I resigned because I believe the committee’s pathological obsession with racial disparity will endanger the lives of our most vulnerable children, especially black children.
I was appointed to the New York State Advisory Committee (NYSAC) to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 2020. Two years later, I grew concerned when my fellow members decided to investigate what they called the disproportionate number of black families who enter the child welfare system. The result is a report that, among other things, seeks to make it harder for a child in long-term foster care to be adopted. I refuse to put my name to this report.
The committee also wants to make it easier for felons to become foster parents. They want to eliminate legal obligations for certain professionals, like pediatricians and schoolteachers, to report suspected child abuse and neglect. And they want to eliminate people’s ability to report such concerns anonymously.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Free Press
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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.
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