THERE CAN BE NO REMEDY WHEN THE ISSUE IS IGNORED

In America there is a long standing practice of ignoring / avoiding discussion [ no matter how elevated the language ] about racism towards blacks. “Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty- five years of racist housing policy”. And still there is a resistance to honest dialogue about race. How can there be a remedy for healing in this country when American whites refuse to acknowledge the odious thing hanging in the air?

When a sentient human being looks critically at the Department of Children and Families / Connecticut Juvenile Training School ignoring racism allegations it defies comprehension. For years employees of color within DCF / CJTS have complained about white administrators dispensing disciplinary action unfairly [want to guess what group is singled out ]. In many instances DCF / CJTS administrators used every means possible to quell any uprising among the natives ( employees ), and then act as if nothing happened. At CJTS a group [  DCF Plantation 5 ] filed a lawsuit in 2010 against white administrators citing bias… racism… hostile work environment... and discrimination. Instead of addressing long standing complaints from their employees CJTS ignored the lawsuit. Recently a white female CJTS employee called male residents at that facility “ porch monkeys” but administrators never considered why she felt comfortable uttering a racial epithet. The climate within DCF plantation has been perpetuated by something called implicit bias which by definition “ refers to stereotypes or attitudes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner.”  I am sure below the level of cognition white management harbors primal angst against employees of color at the DCF plantation. However with some people there is a diabolical and methodical game plan when it comes to race relations in this country; just ask how 66% of DCF terminations focus on men of color. And inserting people of color into high profile positions recently at the plantation will not provide cover for foul discriminatory practices nor silence those voices of dissent.

While studying social work practice in college professors taught that during clinical sessions there can be no remedy when the issue is ignored [ by those participants in therapy ]. Ironically there are people running DCF / CJTS who are clinically trained but ignore that pain and suffering of their employees of color ; continuing to move about in a softly cushioned white atmosphere they believe is decent and above reproach. Mean while back at the ranch cries for justice goes up to the heavens unheard by tone deaf modern day plantation owners. Well, maybe what is accepted as normal in America is being emulated by counterparts in state run agencies.


Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are most convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise.

  Reinhold Niebuhr-- Moral Man and Immoral Society