my thoughts of class and education, let me show you them

When my son was a little under a year old, me and my mom forgot him in the car for five entire seconds, or to translate this into motion, three steps from the car and the length of time it took to recognize that we could hear the sounds of nature around us and not the glorious descant of his unhappiness.

For those who know me, I considered leaving him there because of the effort required to retrieve him, but as he survived with only a few nightmares about being abandoned to die in a van, I'm pretty sure he's gotten over it, and what time does not cure, I daresay a therapist can fix. This brings me to the question that hits me every summer when children are left in cars and die. As this is not even uncommon, which in a variety of ways freaks me out and I can't talk about in any sensible fashion.

This is why I am thinking about this.

Raise your hand if you did not see that verdict coming.



Now granted, people who do social work for long periods of time tend to go either extremist or go numb; there's middle ground, but at least at the casework level, I've met very few of them. Anyone who reads here knows my virulent loathing of classism (and my own part in perpetuating it) isn't something I'm hot to hide.

So my bias is showing; my first reaction on any case is to check the job and class when something in the general family of child negligence occurs, because fairly often I can make a decent prediction based on that how the case will be handled. I usually don't need to dig for race--if they aren't white, the article will mention it, and you'd be amazed at the sudden intersection of race and class how accurate the prediction gets.

This bothered me because denying the racial aspect is kind of like denying Ike is coming down the Gulf. And it bothered me because I'm looking thoughtfully at the Dr before her name and wondering about bias when she faces her social and class peers--two lawyers, one judge, all of whom share that level of higher education. It's not like this is new--we've been not-talking about class bias forever, but I'm not sure anyone's gotten around to a crosscheck on education bias; they look a lot alike. And yet I don't think they are the same thing. And I could be convinced that they look a lot less alike than we think, simply because class and education can overlap so heavily that we can be looking at one and mistake it for the other.

Also:

In the past, Deters has said that he would have to prove that Edwards left her daughter in the minivan purposefully and that truly forgetting is not a crime.

You have got to be fucking with me.



I feel--well, I don't feel better. But I have more coffee.

Comments

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It is a punishment, yes, and a horrific one, but this happens every summer and so often, and it's always people forgetting. I feel horrible for them, but it's still a form of negligence.

I mean, you can forget a kid in the bathtub, too, and it drowns. Or forget your child by the pool. It's not that I can't see why it happened, or see it happen to myself--that's why, to me, it's so important that it *is* acknowledged as negligence.

[drlense.livejournal.com]

But let me ask you this- when you (or any other parent) hear about stories like this, and you say to yourself "oh, my God I have to remember this! And never do this to my child!" is it because the woman was found criminally negligent? Or because the kid died?

Or are we debating two separate points?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Maybe both? I think the stakes are higher with children, too.

The thing is--a child is a person of their very own, separate to and equal in right to existence as a human being. A person with total control over their lives, including whether they can leave a dangerous situation, left them in a guaranteed dangerous situation with no way to free themselves either physically or mentally. I do think there's huge room for maneuvering in this kind of grey area, but I can't wash it across the board by saying forgetting will always equal non-culpability.

Again, it's grey area, but that doesn't change the loss of existence of a living human being whose existence depended on this person. That's where I end up. A lot of punishments by law don't necessarily stop or even slow down certain types of crime nor act as deterrent.

[drlense.livejournal.com]

100% right on that count- the fact is that children are completely dependant on adults and cannot take care of themselves, I agree absolutely.

And I don't think forgetting equals non-culpability. I don't agree with the prosecutor's reasoning behind why he didn't bring charges, but I don't agree that charges should have been brought- but I have a funky view of the legal system and the corrections system, too. :D