Mamdanis equity crusade blinds us to child abuse endangering NYCs kids

Give New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services credit for consistency.For years it has insisted that “systemic racism” is the real problem plaguing the agency — and with Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly released citywide Racial Equity Plan, ACS is doubling down.Too bad its leaders have no evidence for their diagnosis — and that the remedies they recommend will only put more children, of all races, in grave danger.According to the plan, issued Tuesday, “racism and biases” against black and Hispanic families “influence the reports made to the Statewide Central Register, with racial disparities established at the earliest stages of child welfare contact.”How do we know? Well, because last year black and Hispanic families “represented 36.1% and 46.2% of SCR intakes, respectively — compared with 6.3% of white and 3.6% of Asian” children.But the fact that black kids are reported at higher rates is not prima facie evidence of racism: Black children are more than twice as likely nationwide to be the victims of maltreatment as their white peers and 12 times as likely as Asian children.Nationwide, black children die as a result of abuse and neglect at more than three times the rate of white children.In other words, one would expect families to be reported for abuse and neglect at higher rates if they actually are abusing and neglecting (not to mention killing) their children at higher rates.In response to these disparities, ACS proposes to make race and ethnicity a central focus of its function, by classifying cases finely and releasing more data disaggregated by race.The one piece of information it doesn’t intend to disaggregate by race is data on child victims of abuse and neglect.Moreover, the agency’s extensive list of “Racial Equity Goals” includes not a single mention of lowering child maltreatment rates.Reducing racial inequity trumps reducing abuse and neglect every time.The plan says: “There are many instances where a fa...