She is also 63/64th caucasian. Using government logic she should be placed with a white family.

This isn't so cut and dry. The biological family has been trying to get her for 4 years if any blame is to be cast it's on this foster family who dragged it out at this little girls determent. Please check out the other side of the story. She's with her family, her biological siblings, and extended family. Where she belongs.

https://www.facebook.com/choctawnationofoklahoma/posts/1314047688622080

Yes, "M," what every child truly needs is to be with her neglectful blood relatives.

So she is to be confined with abusive parents, based on a supposed ethnic identity? How 17-century European. How racial-classification-board ("If you have one drop of Negro blood, you are Negro"). How Nazi ("We shall move them to their own homeland, where they will not be able to influence the population"). What if she doesn't self-identify as Choctaw?

If they were such a wonderful, caring, wholesome family for her, she wouldn't have gone into the foster system. Once she had, ripping her away from the family she had become a part of was abuse.

Another victory for ideology and racial politics over humanity and kindness.

@Jay: This, like most situations that get into the "Internet outrage machine", is undoubtedly much more complicated than any one-sided presentation of it is likely to make it. Still, it's not at all clear that bringing racial identity politics into the picture helps at all in clarifying the issue and bringing it to a reasonable resolution.

Amy: "If they were such a wonderful, caring, wholesome family for her, she wouldn't have gone into the foster system."

That's exactly how I feel - if they really, truly cared about her they never would have allowed the "system" to take over the way it did.

But, maybe, they were all too busy with their own problems to take care of the child? I do wonder how the other children have been. Were they in foster care too? If so, why didn't they try to place this child and her siblings together?

There is this from that facebook page:

"Placement with family is the gold-standard of any child-custody case"

Well, actually, No, I don't think placement with the [biological] family is the "gold standard." If the family is abusive, or neglectful, then they most certainly are NOT the gold standard or any other standard.

If only we could bring back Solomon's judgment - cut the child in half! Then we might see which family truly cares.

If they were such a wonderful, caring, wholesome family for her, she wouldn't have gone into the foster system.

I am only an occasional reader, but that is a good deal less skeptical of state authority than I normally perceive you to be.

@charles: Actually, let's offer to cut off 1.56% of her.

Our governments "blood" test is more stringent than the Nazi's test to determine if you were Jewish. Progress...

If only we could bring back Solomon's judgment - cut the child in half! Then we might see which family truly cares.

Have light sabre. Will travel. Besides, if she has talent, I can take her as my new apprentice.

I am only an occasional reader, but that is a good deal less skeptical of state authority than I normally perceive you to be.

Most states have a default position to place such children with immediate family members because the state does not have to pay them. The family either refused to take the child, were unaware of the circumstances (and thus not so immediate even if they're close kin by blood), or they were so bad that placing her with them would have been child abuse.

Remember, the state will always choose to protect its ass(ets).

She's not with her birth mother or birth father. She's with extended family who also have custody of her biological siblings. Let's just stop that mess right there because it's not true. This little girls biological family tried to get her back when she was still in diapers. This foster family who got attached to her attempted to use the system to stop that from happening. What followed was 5 years of this little girls life with an outcome that was never in question. The Pages are terrible people, it would have been much easier on this child if they'd have just let her go. Any suffering she has now as a result of being uprooted is their fault.

She's with her family, where she belongs. Where she always belonged.

Namedropping In Our Time
3/24/16 Edition:

I spoke to anthropololgist Sarah Hrdy a few years back at an ev psych conference, trying to figure out what goes missing for kids when their parents get divorced. It is my sense that a big part of the problem is the stability that's removed from them. No, that certainly isn't the only problem, but hearing Hrdy and reading on this leads me to believe that this may be the primary problem.

I'm with M. The dad's bio family has been trying to get her for almost the entire time she has been in the system. They live in Utah, Lexi was in California. There's interstate red tape that has to be dealt with. But make no mistake, the Page's could have done what they were supposed to do, i.e. foster a child in need, and once the hurdles had been cleared turned her over. Instead they made it about their wants and desires and dragged the process out for 4 years. The Page's knew that the bio dad's family was seeking custody of Lexi, and the Choctaw tribe made it clear to the Page's that Lexi would be ultimately be placed with the family in Utah, but the Page's have created an emotional uproar that should not have happened.

However, the Indian Child Welfare Act needs some updating and fast. I understand the purpose and why it was initially enacted, but to use the ICWA when the child in question virtually no ties to a tribe is questionable.

Read the statement by the Choctaw Nation that M posted. The Pages delayed the inevitable, and blame rests squarely on their shoulders.

I find both sides of this believable. From what we know, either side could be correct. Heck, they could both be correct, each from their unique viewpoint.

The regulations surrounding Indian tribes are a mess, and many of the tribes push every legal issue to the wildest extreme possible. That said, it doesn't sound like it had much to do with this case: neither the foster parents, nor the extended family are Choctaw, not even a little bit.

On the other hand, I am also very skeptical CPS, and the way they put kids into foster care. Anecdotes are not proof, but I know of cases where the apparently wonderful foster care was actually pretty horrible on the inside. Foster parents doing it for the money, or...other unpleasant reasons.

I think there is just not enough information for us to criticize. I trust the courts had more information, and made a rational decision.

"What amazing personage will Amy namecheck tomorrow?"

Crid, it ain't braggin' if you can do it.

"On the other hand, I am also very skeptical CPS, and the way they put kids into foster care. Anecdotes are not proof, but I know of cases where the apparently wonderful foster care was actually pretty horrible on the inside. Foster parents doing it for the money, or...other unpleasant reasons."

I would advise any potential middle class foster parents considering it for altruistic reasons to immediately consult their lawyer who would advise them against it.

In short no one sane would do it for anything but the money and they would have to be pretty damn desperate at that.

I would live in my travel trailer on wonder bread before I would even consider foster parenting.

"What amazing personage will Amy namecheck tomorrow?"

Crid, it ain't braggin' if you can do it.

Jay R at March 23, 2016 11:34 AM

I know the chattering classes confuse talking about things with actually *doing them* but I thought most of the readers of this board were a bit more down to earth.

Social science conferences in my experience resemble nothing more than a giant circle jerk.

You muse on this and that......then walk away congratulating each other that all the *right* *smart* *people* are at the Ev Psych conference.

Conferences= Places that people go to burnish up all those meaningless credentials.

By far the largest portion of all humanity is raised in less than ideal circumstances.

People going to war over a foster child is akin to a bloody divorce battle over the pets.

It stinks of self promotion mixed in with a little borderline personality disorder.

In what world is it better for a child to be raised in a poverty-stricken (and I don't men "poverty", I mean real, actual dirt-hovel poverty), addiction-rampant, defeated bunch of strangers, rather than in a place where she might actually have a chance at a real life? (Not likely, given her reactive attachment disorder diagnosis, but still).

CPS is rarely about what is best for the kid. I still cry over the boy whose court hearing I observed, while in nursing school. He'd been living with his mom, whose boyfriend was molesting him. So CPS took him and gave him to his father, who lived in a homeless shelter. Where the kids was repeatedly raped by others. Kid had no hope, but CPS wanted to place with family, even if it meant a damn homeless shelter.

SO the foster family may have been fighting the inevitable, but they were hopefully doing it because it would have been best for her.

Cousin Dave: How racial-classification-board ("If you have one drop of Negro blood, you are Negro").

As I understand it, in pre-Civil War America, the amount of African American blood you could have before being considered black varied by state. But I believe the most extreme was if you were 1/8 black, you were considered black.

> it ain't braggin' if you can do it.

She can't.

Excuse me, "cain't."

"She can't."

Can't what? And you can?

If only the Pages were gay. The State would never have moved her again, regardless of the heritage she knows nothing about... and I could have watched Crid pop blood vessels!

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, and I mean it in the best way possible, but Dear God, why aren't we shooting people?

Even if the bio family has been trying to get her, why rip her from only stable home she's ever known? if the bio family really loved her, they'd visit and let her grow up in peace.

"I am only an occasional reader, but that is a good deal less skeptical of state authority than I normally perceive you to be."

Fair enough. But note what's happening here: the state has said that the girl is being removed from her foster home, explicitly because the foster parents are of the wrong race.

Patrick: Some states had the notorious "one drop" rule, which means that if someone going back through your genealogy could fine one black or mixed-race ancestor anywhere, you could be classified as black. In some places, if you were challenged, you had to be able to go back at least as far as your great-grandparents and show that they were all white. How this actually worked in practice is not clear to me -- in 1860, a lot of people in the U.S. were only second- or third-generation immigrants and would have difficultly documenting their family tree back that far. There was a certain amount of DAR snobbishness to the process.

Plus, there were other rules concerning specific European ethnicities. We've noted here recently about how Irish were often discriminated against in some parts of the country. A lot of Southerners were of Scottish descent and didn't have a lot of use for the English, and many people looked askance at anyone of Eastern European descent. That would not get you enslaved, but there was a good chance it would get you ostracized.