"Best Interests of the Child" apparently means Mo' $$$

Here is a link to an article in today's NY Times regarding a very disturbing custody battle in Tennessee.   A poor immigrant mother who does not really speak English has been ordered by a county judge in Tenn. to learn English in a couple of months, to least a 4-th grade level, or risk permanently losing all legal and physical contact with her daughter.  The girl has been living with a white middle-class foster family after her school teacher alleged that the girl has been abused. 

I am not going to comment on whether she was really abused - I obviously have not seen the court file and don't have all the necessary information.  But a theme that seems to be running through the judge's comments (as reported by NY Times) is that money and ability to speak perfect English are sufficient to outweigh the value of a fundamental relationship between a child and a biological parent.  To make matters worse, as far as I could tell from the article, the child's biological mother is guilty of nothing more than not speaking English and having to earn an extremely hard living.   One would have to explain to me how these facts make her an unfit parent.

Sadly, this is not a new  phenomena.  Going back to my clerkship days at the Court of Appeal in So. Cal, I've seen a few custody cases, where family law judges were willing to sever a relationship between a child and a natural parent because the new foster family had more money and / or could provide a more moral / Evangelical upbringing.  Aside from the fact that these judges completely discount the value of the relationship between a child and a natural parent, many do not seem to realize that what seems like abuse to them is really just a different cultural reality. 

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