Black women are dying, and the world is looking the other way.

To be a Black woman in America is to live at the intersection of hyper-visibility and complete erasure. We are the culture-makers, the backbone of movements, the most reliable voting bloc, and the caretakers of everyone else’s pain. Yet, when we go missing, when we are brutalized, when our lives are violently stolen from us, the silence is deafening. Femicide in the Black community is a raging epidemic. But what is even less talked about is the devastating, immediate aftermath of this violence: the direct pipeline it creates from a mother’s murder to her children’s placement in the foster care system.

When a Black mother is taken by intimate partner violence or community violence, the tragedy does not end with her last breath. It is only the beginning of a new nightmare for the children she leaves behind. In an instant, a child loses their anchor, their protector, and their home. And because our communities are already over-policed and under-resourced, these children are rarely given the grace of a soft landing. Instead, they are swept up by the state.

Read More