The Ethics of Protection - by Lincoln Rice (Paperback)

About the Book

In the US, Black children are twice as likely as white children to be removed from their parents and adopted out to strangers. The Ethics of Protection responds to this dire reality with a liberationist approach to child welfare ethics. This book reframes child welfare by centering the stories, challenges, failures, and victories of Black families.

Book Synopsis

Gandhi famously argued that society's moral measure was its treatment of the vulnerable. Few members of society experience vulnerability more than children. When families fail their children, government and civil society have a moral and legal charge to intervene. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In the United States, there exists a fraught intersection between child welfare and anti-Black racism that has its roots in chattel slavery and the Black Codes that restricted African American freedoms following the Civil War. Today, Black children are twice as likely to be deemed victims of child maltreatment compared to white children, and even more likely to be removed from their parents and adopted out to strangers.

The Ethics of Protection responds to these dire realities with a liberationist approach to child welfare ethics. This approach differs from traditional ethics in two ways: It moves the "social location" of ethics from governing bodies, boardrooms, and institutions to the perspective of society's most vulnerable. And it critiques neoliberal politics and economics for their role in this injustice. Drawing on historical analysis, Catholic social teaching, Scripture, and the experience of the oppressed, The Ethics of Protection reframes the ethical issues surrounding child welfare by centering the stories, challenges, failures, and victories of Black families.

Authentic freedom will not be initiated by government officials. Change will only come from the coordinated direct actions of parents, children, and activists supporting systemic change grounded in racial justice. This book presents readers with an alternative story of the Black family to combat the anti-Black narratives that dominate US culture.

Review Quotes

"Through illuminating case studies, impressive theological insights and deep social analysis, this volume explores critical issues in this nation's child protection system. Consistently mindful of endemic structural racism and related systemic injustices, the author probes the boundaries between the conventionally adversarial claims of parental rights and the best interests of vulnerable children. The reader comes away with bold new perspectives on social policy, racial justice, and human moral agency itself--all informed by a liberationist perspective that generates valuable counter-narratives capable of challenging oppressive practices." --Thomas Massaro, S.J., professor of moral theology, Fordham University

"Western epistemology since the 1600s has had difficulty in addressing nature and social challenges with a holistic perspective. The Cartesian method of dividing to understand and control is the dominant way to approach not only the investigation of the natural sciences, but also societal structures and ethical challenges. This is visible in the CPS and its way of looking at a child's maltreatment and parental neglect of care. It focuses on the most visible fragment of the problem, dismissing the entirety of the societal issue, that includes structures of violence, history of systemic racism, and the reality of families who are failing to care for their children. Rice's book does not fall into this limitation. "From a liberating ethical perspective that includes narratives of families who have lost their children, as well as historical and sociological analyses of racism and oppressive structures, Rice offers a comprehensive account on child welfare in the US. The Ethics of Protection shows that a society cannot protect its vulnerable children if it does not look at families and the oppressive reality they experience. The author invites us to be sensitive to the stories of these families and attentive to the violent structures that make these families, and thus their children, suffer. Separating them does not address the problem, but only remediates a visible fragment, contributing to the maintenance of the existing violent structure." --Alexandre A. Martins, associate professor, Marquette University, and author of The Cry of the Poor: Liberation Ethics and Justice in Health Care

"Lincoln Rice gives a voice to families whose own voices are ignored due to their being poor and lacking resources, and who are persecuted in the court system. As Rice documents, CPS does not afford any funding to help individuals attain safety or stability to preserve the sanctity of family. Instead, it actually demolishes the family unit by means of federal adoption subsidies and legislative time limits that force adoption." --Amada Morales, family advocate