RFK Jr.: Black Kids on ADHD Drugs Should be 'Re-parented'
The new HHS secretary has several controversial views on race and public health, including forcing Black kids to work on organic farms.
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RFK Jr.: Black Kids on ADHD Drugs Should be ‘Re-parented’
Last year he told an audience that “every Black kid” is prescribed SSRI medications, “which are known to induce violence.”
by Jennifer Porter Gore February 20, 2025
As a Democratic presidetial candidate in 2024, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy told an audience that Black children are "put on Adderall, on SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence." He suggested they could be treated by working on organic farms.
As a Democratic presidetial candidate in 2024, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy told an audience that Black children are "put on Adderall, on SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence." He suggested they could be treated by working on organic farms. Credit: Getty Images
Overview:
The new Health and Human Services secretary — a vaccine skeptic with troubling views on race — will oversee a White House-directed study of medications commonly prescribed for depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions.
It’s been a busy and controversial first week for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official.
Along with investigating the childhood vaccine schedule and reneging on his promise not to purge staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kennedy will be overseeing a White House study of “SSRI and other psychiatric drugs” — medications commonly prescribed for people struggling with depression, anxiety or ADHD.
The latter statement is bringing attention to an alarming vision he first spoke about last July when he was running for president: government-run farms where Black youth would be “reparented” away from their families.
Black stories matter
“Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence,” Kennedy said on the 19Keys online show last year. “And those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented — to live in a community where there’ll be no cellphones, no screens. You’ll actually have to talk to people.”
YouTube video
Sending Black children away to work on a “farm,” simply because they are taking prescription medication for common mental health conditions, bears haunting similarities to other instances of forced family separations in America, including slavery.
The concept, which isn’t backed by science, also raises troubling questions about how Kennedy views the intersection of race, medicine, and state power.
Black children are already disproportionately removed from their parents.
Dorothy Roberts, University of Pennsylvania
Kennedy’s comments “reinforce harmful racist stereotypes about Black children and communities while disregarding Black family bonds and autonomy,” says Dorothy Roberts, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist, law professor, and author.
“Black children are already disproportionately removed from their parents and placed in a foster system that exposes them to trauma and overmedication,” Roberts, author of “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World,” tells Word In Black. “Instead of promoting policies that devalue Black families, we should be working to keep them together and end these unjust separations.”
While Kennedy’s remarks didn’t get widespread coverage, it is yet another piece of evidence about his views on race.
During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat and a Black woman, challenged Kennedy about his quoted belief that Black people should be on a different immunization schedule than whites “‘because their immune system is better than ours.’”
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, told her there are a “series of studies” showing that “to particular antigens, Blacks have a much stronger reaction.”
The hearing also touched on a film Kennedy produced several years ago that raised a similar issue, suggesting that vaccines could be disproportionately harming people of color. And Kennedy once posited that “African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS.”
A Sordid History
His views on sending Black children to farms, however, resurrect the long, sordid history of the government separating people of color from their families.
Plantation owners, for example, often sold enslaved Black people from the same families to different plantations. For decades, Native American children were hauled away from their homes and sent to government-sponsored boarding schools.
And present-day data shows the child welfare system is far more likely to terminate parental control of Black, Latino, or Native American children and place them in a foster home.
“The system’s disproportionate impact on Black and Indigenous families and people living in poverty, and the sheer number of children removed unjustly, make this a national crisis warranting immediate attention and action,” says a 2022 report from the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch.
In her book, Roberts writes that governments “brandish a terrifying weapon” by threatening family separation rather than addressing food insecurity and unstable housing, as well as inadequate medical and mental health care.
Surveillance of Entire Families
These tactics even include surveillance of entire families, even if only one family member runs afoul of the law or is merely accused of wrongdoing.
Such was the case with a supervision order that allowed New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services to surveil a family in cases when one parent had been accused of a crime. The orders had allowed ACS to repeatedly search parents’ homes unannounced, and in some cases, children were strip-searched.
“For too long, Children’s Services has violated families’ rights in the name of protecting children when its illegal surveillance and home intrusions are actually quite harmful to the children the city is supposed to serve,” said Christine Gottlieb, director of the NYU Law Family Defense Clinic. Last week, a new appellate ruling in response to a class action suit stated ACS must end this practice.
“We do not allow routine violations of the constitutional rights of families who live in more privileged neighborhoods, and we should not have a different system of justice for the low-income families of color who are policed by ACS,” Gottlieb said in a statement.
Ironically, Kennedy’s suggestions would be a departure from a bill Donald Trump signed in his previous term as president.
The 2018 law is intended to provide services to help prevent children from being placed in foster care. The law allows for federal reimbursement for mental health services, substance use treatment, and in-home parenting skill training.
This post has been updated with video of RFK, Jr.’s comments on the 19Keys show.
