Bestselling author and social critic Demico Boothe shares his personal story of being wrongfully convicted of a crime, being sent to federal prison, and coming out of prison only to have to immediately deal with a hostile child support system that seemed intent on sending him back to prison over money he didn't have. Boothe shares how the current child support system poorly served him and his family and identifies and analyzes many areas within the system that need fixing. Boothe identifies racism, emotionalism, anti-male feminism, and profit motive as the main driving forces of the U.S. child support system, not the bettering of the welfare of children. Upon finding that unemployed and underemployed black fathers are disproportionately the recipients of the worst punitive actions that the system has to offer due to economic and racial reasons, Boothe decided to pen a book about it, hoping to shed some much-needed light on this issue.
IMPORTANT FACTS AND IN-BOOK POINTS OF DISCUSSION ABOUT
THE U.S. CHILD SUPPORT SYSTEM AND THE BLACK FAMILY:
- Over 115 billion dollars is currently owed to the government in back child support and associated fees, mostly by poor black fathers
- The U.S. Child Support System began formation in the early 1800's and was originally designated for white women only, and has since only been updated to incorporate more punitive enforcement actions that are now levied disproportionately against poor black fathers
- The Child Support System has been instrumental in the much-talked-about breakdown and dwindling of the two-parent black family household since the late 1970's
- The Child Support System prioritizes payments over parentage when it comes to fathers, while nearly 70% of all black children in the U.S. are raised in households headed by single women
- The U.S. Child Support System actively serves as a form of probationary surveillance on poor fathers
- The U.S. Child Support System is openly anti-family and anti-male
- The American Feminist Movement - which started in the early 1800's as a white-women-only movement that sought to create more economic parity and equity between white men and women - is largely responsible for the anti-male slant within the U.S. Child Support System.
- The U.S. Child Support System helped create the false "Deadbeat Dad" stereotype that the mainstream media often only relegates to black men
- The U.S. Child Support System helped create the "Bitter Baby Mama" syndrome in the black community
- Federal and state governments reap multilevel economic profits via the U.S. Child Support System