Selective Outrage: Why Family Separation Only Shocks Us Sometimes

“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

The country is calling it terror now.

Black families have been living it for generations.

ICE raids.

Non-violent immigrants deported.

Families ripped apart.

A five-year-old used as bait to lure his parents out the door.

U.S. citizens killed in the chaos.

The stories are horrifying and they should be.

The public reaction is justified.

What we are witnessing is state-sanctioned family separation carried out through fear, force, and deception, fueled by a dangerous lie: that immigrants pose a threat to our safety.

That they are criminals wreaking havoc in our society.

This narrative has been repeated until cruelty feels necessary, until separation is framed as protection, and until violence can be justified as policy.

But for Black communities, this kind of terror is not new.

It has simply been renamed, rebranded, and made respectable.

Family Separation, Sanitized

In Black communities across this country, children are forcibly taken from their parents by the state every single day.

Not because of severe abuse.

But because of the lie.

The lie told generation after generation.

The lie that some families need surveillance and others do not.

The lie that certain parents are inherently dangerous.

The lie that poverty becomes neglect when it shows up in Black homes.

This lie stands in direct opposition to the truth that God created us all equal. We are made in His image. Equal in dignity, equal in worth.

And scripture is clear about where this lie comes from.

It is not from God.

It is from the devil, the father of lies.

Because of unstable housing.

Because a refrigerator was empty.

Because childcare fell through.

Because a caseworker “felt uneasy.”

Because an investigator projected their own fears or unresolved trauma onto a family.

Because Black families were denied the ability to build generational wealth even though their ancestors did the work that created it.

Because enslaved people labored to make white families rich, while being legally barred from owning land, accumulating assets, or passing anything down to their children.

Because redlining, segregation, and discriminatory policies systematically locked Black families out of homeownership, equity, and financial stability for generations.

And now, the very conditions history manufactured are treated as personal failure rather than the predictable outcome of historic theft.

If we believe God created us equal, then we must be willing to confront systems that punish families for inequities they were never allowed to escape.

Which brings us to the double standard at the heart of this system

Children are removed from parents who need financial support and then the state turns around and pays strangers to raise those same children.

Black parents are told there is no money.

No assistance.

No flexibility.

No grace.

Yet once a child is removed, funding suddenly appears.

Monthly stipends until the child turns 18.

Services.

Supports overwhelmingly flowing to white foster and adoptive parents.

The message is unmistakable: Black parents are denied the resources that could keep their families together, while white families are paid to raise their children.

This is not a failure of policy.

It is a design choice.

The outcome is the same: Children removed. Parents criminalized. Families fractured.

But instead of calling it terror, we call it child protection.

A Five-Year-Old With a Different Label

When a five-year-old is used as bait in an ICE operation, the nation recoils and rightly so.

But when a five-year-old is removed from a Black home and placed with strangers in the name of “child safety,” there is no breaking news. No national reckoning.

That child becomes a case number.

The parents become “non-compliant.”

And the trauma disappears behind paperwork.

This is what normalization looks like.

The Lie Has a Long Memory

This lie is not new.

It is the same lie used to justify slavery.

The lie white parents told their children when they innocently asked why Black people were in the fields while white families lived in the house.

The lie that said some people needed control for their own good.

That surveillance was protection.

That domination was moral.

That lie never disappeared.

It adapted.

Today, it wears the language of safety, risk assessments, and child protection. But its function remains the same: to rationalize separation, excuse punishment, and make the commodification of Black bodies feel necessary and normal.

This is the foundation of child welfare. And of every carceral system that continues to profit from Black family separation.

Selective Outrage Is Still Injustice

Let me be clear: the pain of immigrant families is real. Their suffering deserves protection, compassion, and justice.

But justice that only shows up when terror reaches certain communities is not justice at all.

If we are outraged now, we must be honest about where this playbook was perfected. If we are calling this terror now, we must confront the systems that made terror routine for Black families long before the news cameras arrived.

Because every system that separates families must first convince the public of the same lie: that the parents are the danger and that taking their children is an act of protection.

Holding the Banner

What is happening right now is not new.

What’s new is whose pain is finally being believed.

For generations, parents have lost their children at the hands of the state through child welfare policing, incarceration, institutionalization, and other carceral systems that decide who is fit to love and raise their own children.

Black parents.

Indigenous parents.

Parents experiencing poverty.

Disabled parents.

Parents living under constant surveillance.

Their children were taken quietly.

Their grief was kept quiet.

Their loss was framed as deserved.

I am standing with all of them.

I am holding up the banner for every parent who has lost a child to state power long before this moment, long before the news cameras, long before outrage felt safe.

This is not about diminishing the pain of immigrant families. Their suffering is real, and it deserves justice.

But justice that only responds when harm is visible is incomplete.

If we are truly awake, we must widen our lens.

We must confront ALL systems that separate families.

Because family separation is not just an immigration issue.

It is a state violence issue.

The Question We Cannot Avoid

Why is family separation seen as an emergency in one community and a policy solution in another?

Until we are willing to answer that question honestly, we are not dealing with isolated failures.

We are defending a pattern.

And patterns reveal the truth.

For Those Who Say, “I Didn’t Know”

What many Americans are witnessing now through immigration enforcement.

Raids, family separation, children used as leverage.

Has been happening to Black families and other marginalized communities for decades through child welfare and other carceral systems.

Children are overwhelmingly removed not because of abuse, but because of poverty, lack of resources, and subjective judgments made by authorities. These removals are framed as “protection,” which shields the public from seeing the harm.

While outrage erupts when family separation happens at the border, the same violence has been normalized elsewhere, quietly funded, and rarely questioned.

The issue isn’t isolated systems.

It’s a national willingness to tolerate family separation as long as it targets the same people over and over again.

Call to Action: A Broader Reckoning

If this moment has stirred something in you, don’t let it stop at one system.

Do not narrow your outrage to what is trending. Do not look away when the headlines move on.

Stand with ALL parents who have lost their children to the state: through ICE, through child welfare, through prisons, through courts that punish poverty and call it protection.

This is the work Micah 6:8 demands of us.

Act justly by naming every system that separates families.

Love mercy by listening to parents who have been grieving in silence for years.

Walk humbly by admitting that what we were told was “necessary” was often built on lies.

This is about collective reckoning.

If we truly believe in justice, then our outrage must be as broad as the harm, and our courage must extend beyond what is comfortable.

It is time to stand for ALL FAMILIES, not just the ones we are told to see.