Many, many black fathers have prior criminal records. We live in a society with a mass incarceration problem. This mother made a poor choice that actively endangered her child, received a light punishment, and escaped public outrage and censure.Īdditionally, there has been a move to further demonize black parents by dredging up the criminal record of Gregg's son's father, who was also at the zoo that day. In fact the story was largely off the radar, with almost no national coverage of the incident. But you didn't see memes or petitions calling her a " bitch," comparing her to a gorilla, or speaking to how her negligence about her child endangered the cheetahs in the cage needlessly. Where, for instance, was the outrage in spring 2015 when Michelle Schwab, an Ohio mother, dangled her 2-year-old son over a cheetah cage at the Cleveland zoo? The boy fell and broke his leg, and she was arrested, charged, and ultimately given probation. The outrage stands in stark contrast to the treatment of white mothers in similar circumstances. Such stereotyping justifies forms of structural racism that disproportionately result in black children being removed from their homes and placed into foster care. Rutgers political theorist Shatema Threadcraft has argued that African American parents are subjected to "targeted racial bias in child removal policy and concentrated child welfare agency involvement in African American neighborhoods." The ways in which these policies and the agencies that enforce them interact with black communities effectively "place burdens on black parents not experienced by other parents in the wider society." In other words, demonizing a black mother and acting as though good parents don't have terrifying mishaps with their children every day reinforces stereotypes of neglectful and careless black mothers. It's one of the ways that race shows up in conversations that don't seem to be about race at all. But more than 400,000 people didn't have that reaction: Instead, they're calling for child protective services to show up at the home of Gregg, a response that, in a world where black mothers are stereotyped as having a bunch of unruly children that they don't take care of, amounts to the kind of dog-whistle politics around welfare policy and black mothering that typically makes black communities cringe. It's every parent's worst nightmare that your child can be with you one moment but nowhere to be found in another. The cascading outrage toward the boy's mother and her alleged neglectful parenting is hypocritical and disingenuous, but the public conversation about this story is also racist and sexist.Įyewitness accounts indicate that the mother was vigilant in watching her child, but that almost in a split second, he crawled away quickly through some brush and fell over an otherwise open enclosure. More than 400,000 people have now signed a petition on, calling for the young boy's parents, Michelle Gregg and Deonne Dickerson, to "be held accountable for lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life." The petition further states that the boy's parents should be investigated by the authorities, because the parents alleged negligence at the zoo is potentially "reflective of the child's home situation." Because Harambe was agitated and his actions unpredictable, zoo officials made the decision to shoot and kill him, in order to save the boy's life. A gorilla named Harambe who lived in the habitat acted aggressively toward his young intruder, ultimately dragging the boy by his feet through the water multiple times. On Saturday, a 3-year-old boy fell an estimated 15 feet into a gorilla enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo.
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