Tracing the Roots of Systemic Racism in the US Early Childhood System
An in-depth 2021 supplement to the Early Learning and Care (ELC), “Supporting the Essential Workers of the Essential Workers,” Blog Series on AdvancementProjectCA.org
This supplement highlights the root causes of racial inequity set in the early design of the ELC system and how it will continue to play out in today’s system until we take courageous and intentional steps to lead with racial equity as we reimagine California’s ELC system.
By Emma Watson & Vickie Ramos Harris
In 2020, we witnessed the disproportionate health and economic burdens of COVID-19 on communities of color and the persistent violence of police brutality against Black Americans. These simultaneous crises call on us to examine how systemic racism impacts communities.
Early learning and care (ELC) programs play a vital role in promoting healthy child development, setting children on a path toward success. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored that early learning and care is an indispensable part of supporting families and the economy. A thriving ELC field is essential to the state’s recovery.
A hidden facet of United States’ history is that early childhood is rooted in a history of systemic racism, starting with the practice of forced caregiving during slavery.¹ The pandemic deepened the inequities children, families, and early childhood providers and professionals of color face, raising the stakes for policymakers to act swiftly to address racial inequities in the early learning and care system — this requires a look back at the roots of systemic racism.
Undervaluing the Early Learning and Care Professionals from the Start
Black women historically bore the burden of domestic work, including early childhood, first as forced labor while enslaved, and then as an underpaid labor force.² After abolishing slavery, women of color, including Black women, continued to make up most of the domestic workforce, as one of their only economic opportunities.³
In 1938, federal lawmakers enacted exclusionary rules in policies like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that ensured second-class treatment. Blatantly racist advocacy from Southern Congressional members excluded predominantly Black workforces from FLSA protections (for agricultural laborers and domestic workers like child care providers).⁴
Early learning and care professionals have never received fair pay reflective of their value and expertise or access to training and support that could lead to upward mobility. Nationwide in 2018, the ELC workforce made approximately only $14.38 per hour, with women of color making even less: Black women made $12.98 and Latinas $10.61 per hour.⁵ Training is often on their own time and their own dime, and rarely leads to meaningful wage increases. The poverty rate of early childhood educators was twice the poverty rate for workers overall, and poverty rates among AAPI, Black, Latina, and immigrant educators were even higher.⁶ Less than one in three early learning and care educators have access to employer-sponsored health insurance and few have paid sick time or family and medical leave.⁷
Unjust ELC Beginnings
The first local, state, and federal policies formulizing ELC programs were deeply rooted in a white supremacy mindset, dictating who was deemed eligible for high-quality programs or family supports and creating systemic barriers based on the economic, nativity, and racial designations.
The mid-1800s brought a palpable divide between the nation’s first programs. Parent-funded kindergarten programs intended to “enrich and educate middle- and upper-class children,” predominantly from white families, with child development and school readiness focus.⁸ In contrast, free kindergarten and day nursery programs for low-income families and immigrant children were “focused on teaching ‘moral habits’ based on the view that their families were incapable of properly socializing their children”⁹ in the same way as middle and upper-class white families.
In the 1900s, states created mothers’ pensions to enable women to stay home with their children due to a widely held perspective that day nurseries were seen as “makeshift” or a “necessary evil” and “the mother was the best caretaker.”¹⁰ To qualify for financial support, “mothers had to be widowed, divorced, deserted, separated, unmarried, or married to imprisoned, ill, or handicapped husbands.”¹¹ Mothers were evaluated based on if they were physically, mentally, and morally fit to educate their children.¹² Many counties and even entire Southern states entirely barred Black families from eligibility. In other states, only 3 percent of Black families received access.¹³ Mothers deemed ineligible remained in the workforce, and their children stayed at day nurseries — places stigmatized for the “unworthy” poor, institutionalizing a white supremacy approach of determining who was worthy of choosing what is best for their children.¹⁴
During the Great Depression, the federal government expanded direct financial assistance to support low-income mothers through the Aid to Dependent Children provision of the Social Security Act. Despite the original intention to provide aid to all low-income families, a provision authorized assistance only to “suitable homes,” interpreted to restrict eligibility or make it more difficult for “minority” mothers or “illegitimate children.”¹⁵ The New Deal also brought about greater federal investment in nursery schools to create work for unemployed teachers and also to “safeguard the ‘physical and mental well-being’ of preschool children from needy, underprivileged families.”¹⁶
World War II brought economic recovery and a need to shift federal efforts toward supporting the war. In 1940, the Lanham Act allocated federal grants to local communities to offer early learning and care for mothers working in the defense industry.
In the 1960s, emerging research documented the importance of the earliest years. Simultaneously, women continued to enter the workforce. This set the stage for greater support for early learning and care programs and expansion of private and publicly funded programs. But even with the creation of Head Start in 1964, as a cornerstone piece of the War on Poverty, this program was still founded upon a deficit perspective of children of color, their families, and those persevering through poverty.¹⁷ While more recent efforts have begun to focus on providing holistic support for low-income children, 60 years later, we have yet to realize a fully-funded early learning and care system or fully invest in the early childhood workforce to ensure it is thriving. We continue to see the impact of eligibility barriers on families seeking supports. Despite a greater understanding of the careful and critical work of early learning professionals, we continue to see the impact of undervaluing the role of early learning programs.
Today, families continue to face eligibility barriers to enrolling in early learning and support services, perpetuating a deficit-based and dehumanizing mindset of who deserves care.
From Understanding History to Changing It
To eradicate the inequities in our ELC system, exacerbated by the tremendous pressure of COVID-19, our state leaders must take intentional steps to understand how current structures perpetuate this history: restrictive eligibility requirements, inadequate compensation and benefits, training and professional development that does not support upward mobility, and compliance-based monitoring. Early learning and care families and educators must be at the center of all conversations of how California reimagines an ELC system that serves all California families and places racial equity and economic justice at the center.
We call on California’s leadership to scrutinize the impact of our current and proposed policies and ask:
- How will our ELC system lift up women of color educators? How will policy proposals intentionally address the roots of systemic racism that remain reflected in the treatment of early educators today? How will we eliminate the racial wage gaps?
- How will we ensure California is allocating resources and ELC programs to reach families in greatest need who are farthest from opportunity?
- How will the ELC system ensure all families and children feel welcome, encouraged to participate, and valued for their assets, language, race, culture, and ethnicity?
California can respond to these questions by ensuring that the implementation of the state Master Plan for Early Learning and Care leads with a racial equity approach. We can and must begin to address the foundations of systemic racism by leading with policies, practices, and investments that advance racial equity and economic justice for our children and take care of their earliest teachers.
Advancement Project California launched our “Supporting the Essential Workers of the Essential Workers,” Blog Series to tell the stories of women of color serving as child care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic to uplift their dedication and challenges, to highlight the essential role they plan for our families, community and our state, and to call on California to take bold steps to build an early learning and care system that addresses the foundations of systemic racism, racial equity, and economic justice. Read more below, or visit our Blog Series page.
Tracing the Roots of Systemic Racism in the US Early Childhood System
Saving What Is Left of Early Childhood
Daily Reality of Home-based Child Care Providers During COVID-19
Quality Learning and Care that Women of Color Providers Bring Amidst COVID-19
Serving Infants, Toddlers, and School-aged Children During COVID-19
Jumping Hoops and New Ways to Show Love
The Necessity of Staying Open During COVID-19
Navigating an Uncertain Reality
State and Local Resources to Support Early Learning and Care
BLOG SERIES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHORS
Jessenia Reyes, Associate Director, Educational Equity, Policy
Ernesto Saldaña, Associate Director, Educational Equity, Programs
Emma Watson, former Senior Policy Analyst
Esther Nguyen, Policy and Research Analyst
JunHee Doh, Senior Policy Analyst
STORY DEVELOPMENT & EDITING
Vickie Ramos Harris, Director of Educational Equity
Katie Smith, Director of Communications
Amy Sausser, Director of Development
Jennifer Arceneaux, Associate Director of Development, Foundation Relations
COMMUNICATIONS
Katie Smith, Director of Communications
Ronald Simms, Jr., Communications Manager
The Supporting the Essential Workers of the Essential Workers blog series was made possible through the generous funding and support from First 5 Los Angeles, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Sobrato Family Foundation.
We offer our gratitude to the dedicated early learning and care (ELC) providers who shared their stories with us and serve on the front lines to support children and families through the global pandemic:
- Sue Carrera
- Crystal Jones
- Esperanza Melo
- Tameka Runnels-Gibson
- Renaldo Sanders
- Sharon Sar
- Catherine Scott
We also want to thank our invaluable partners who helped us connect to ELC providers, supported our research, and provided their incredible insight on the state of early childhood in California that was woven into the context of these stories, including:
- Linda Asato, California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
- Lea Austin, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
- Jen Baca, SEIU Local 99
- Ofelia Carrillo, SEIU Local 99
- Domenica Benitez, California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
- Gemma DiMatteo, California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
- Kelly Graesch, California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
- Jessica Guerra, Child Care Alliance of Los Angeles
- September Hill, formerly with Crystal Stairs, Inc.
- Ritu Mahajan, Public Counsel
- Melissa Noriega , SEIU Local 99
- Keisha Nzewi, California Child Care Resource & Referral Network
- Michele Sartell, Office for the Advancement of Early Care and Education
- Jerri Stewart, Child Care Resource Center
- Julie Taren, Infant Development Association of California
- Ashley C. Williams, Center for the Study of Child Care Employment
- Cindy Young, Long Beach Unified School District, Child Development Center
Endnotes
1 Alicia Hardy and Katherine Gallagher Robins. “Standing With Black Communities by Standing Against White Supremacy in Child Care and Early Education Spaces,” The Center for Las and Social Policy., (June 23, 2020). https://www.clasp.org/blog/standing-black-communities-standing-against-white-supremacy-child-care-and-early-education
2 Shiva Sethi, Christine Johnson-Staub, and Katherine Gallagher Robbins, “An Anti-Racist Approach to Supporting Child Care Through COVID-19 and Beyond,” The Center for Law and Social Policy., (July 14, 2020), https://www.clasp.org/blog/standing-black-communities-standing-against-white-supremacy-child-care-and-early-education
3 Sethi, Johnson-Staub, and Robbins, “An Anti-Racist Approach.”
4 Juan F. Perea, “The Echoes of Slavery: Recognizing the Racist Origins of the Agricultural and Domestic Worker Exclusion from the National Labor Relations Act,” (Loyola University Chicago, School of Law, 2011): 4, https://lawecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1150&context=facpubs.
v Claire Ewing-Nelson, “One in Five Child Care Jobs Have Been Lost Since February, and Women Are Paying the Price,” National Women’s Law Center, (August 2020), https://nwlc-ciw49tixgw5lbab.stackpathdns.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/ChildCareWorkersFS.pdf.
vi Ewing-Nelson, “One in Five Child Care Jobs.”
vii Ewing-Nelson, “One in Five Child Care Jobs.”
viii “Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education,” (The National Academies of Sciences Engineering Medicine), 46, https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24984/transforming-the-financing-of-early-care-and-education.
ix “Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education,” 46.
x “Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education,” 46.
xi Emily Cahan, “Past Caring. A History of U.S. Preschool Car and Education for the Poor, 1820–1965,”(National Center for Children in Poverty, 1989), 20, https://www.researchconnections.org/childcare/resources/2088/pdf.
xii Cahan, “Past Caring.”
xiii M. Leff, “Consensus for reform: The mothers’-pension movement in the progressive era,” Social Service Review 47, (1973): 414.
xiv Cahan, “Past Caring,” 21.
