Child abuse in native residential schools and racial inequality: a social conflict analysis

Child Abuse & Racial Inequality

This brief report focuses the social conflict perspective of sociology while focusing on the racial inequalities within the reporting and handling of child abuse cases, both with the children themselves as well as the parents that stand accused. Indeed, the reporting and handling of these cases is deemed by many to be disparate, unfair or non-existent as it pertains to racial minorities and their children. The trends of this subject matter will be explored over a series of years of American history.

Racial Disparities

Per the commonly held and accept facets of the conflict perspective, racial inequality is not what it is was prior to the Civil War or prior to the Civil Rights era that culminated in the 1960's in the United States, but problems still do certainly exist. Indeed, as recently as the 1980's, a survey that was conducted that asked the white respondents why blacks did not have the "finer things in life" with the same frequency as white people commonly responded that they did not try hard enough. However, the same article that cites this egregious thought pattern also notes that the nature of the problem and how it's perceived by different people has clearly evolved over time (Pride, 1999).

The aforementioned problem about a shift in opinion from racial inequality being the genesis of racial differences and trends to one that posits that blacks and other minorities simply are not trying hard enough is seemingly becoming more and more prevalent. However, this does explain a lot of fairly egregious statements and actions that are verifiably due to ignorance and/or bigotry and the review and handling of child abuse cases are certainly one of those things. It is true that blacks and other minorities tend to be much poorer and thus the chance of neglect being deemed to be the case is higher but that does not give social work professionals a green light to paint with too broad a brush (Pride, 1999).

Mental Health

One clear precursor to dysfunction and neglect in a home with children is mental health issues and it stands to reason that people that tend to be poorer, such as is the case with racial minorities, will also be less likely to use mental health avenues or to be able to afford the same. Indeed, one example that buttresses the above is that black people clearly have poorer overall health outcomes that white people. However, the results are not uniform across other minorities. Hispanics show good results in their early and later years but it's much more mixed in between. Asians do better than all others across the board, with the exception of Hawaiian natives (McGuire & Miranda, 2008).

As far as mental health functions, American Indians have a much higher rates of PTSD than other groups. Blacks have higher levels of schizophrenia than white people. As far as schizophrenia goes, it is clear that blacks are clearly over-represented in mental health hospitals. That being said, it was also found that the overall probability of blacks and Hispanics having a mental disorder was lower, not higher, than with white people. However, regardless of what the actual rates are, it is clear that some racial minorities are clearly mistreated when, or perhaps even because, mental illness is a precursor to abuse and this is seemingly much more pervasive than it is with whites (McGuire & Miranda, 2008).

Racial Minority Child Neglect over Time

If one were to rewind the clock 20 years to 1993, one would find a study that was conducted that compared blacks and whites in terms of frequency and severity of child abuse cases. It is noted that many feel that child abuse is more prevalent in the black community but one study noted that this is perhaps a mirage because so many more black people are economically disadvantaged than white people. Because the massive disparity in social outcomes for blacks, it is very complicated to assess the rates per white person or black person and unfairly labeling blacks as tending to be more abusive is not helpful because it may very well not be accurate to do so (Saunders, Nelson & Landsman, 1993).

The same study notes that earlier studies about child abuse rates and happenstances contained all-white people samples due to money and geographical limitations. A study in 1981 noted that low-income families that were black tended to be much more impoverished and had, on average, two more children per home than similar white families. A study in 1989 had a sample that was 72% minority and 28% non-minority, just to give some credence to the disparity given that non-minorities comprised a lot more than 28% of the United States at the time (Saunders, Nelson & Landsman, 1993).

It is then noted by the study itself that family structure, single mother rates, mental health status and support structures are entirely different when comparing black families (or even other minority families) to white families. In short, even if there is a clear trend of minorities having more neglect/abuse reporting than whites, there are some significant aggravating factors and trends that are feeding that proverbial beast. Some of those factors are perhaps within the control of the family but is also safe to say that a lot of them are not (Saunders, Nelson & Landsman, 1993).

When looking at a much more recent study, one from 2007 to be specific, it is clear that the social framework has changed in the United States across all races. The single mother rates are increasing across in many sectors and many couples are opting to raise their children as cohabiting couples rather than actually getting married, as has been the social norm and trend of the past. Just as with many of the things in this paper, a huge point of demarcation between couples that choose to get married and those that do not is money. Couples with higher amounts of resources are much more likely to get married than couples that do not and the latter's length of relationship can be quite short. It is also noteworthy that many of the trends and patterns becoming clear regarding cohabiting are not different between minorities and non-minorities. However, one big caveat to that is that black families and people are much more likely to have a complex family structure due to pre-marital children, absent fathers and earlier child-rearing in general (Osborne, 2007).