CNN’S Editor’s note: Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for policies to help children escape poverty, abuse and neglect and gain access to health care and education.
(CNN) — One of the most dangerous threats facing black America right now is quietly stealing our children at a young age.
Incarceration is becoming the new American apartheid, and poor children of color are the fodder.
So many poor black babies in rich America enter the world with multiple strikes against them: born without prenatal care, at low birthweight and to a poor, and poorly educated, teenage single mother and an absent father.
At crucial points in their development after birth through adolescence, more risks pile on, making a successful transition to productive adulthood significantly less likely and involvement in the criminal justice system significantly more likely.
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