Systemic racism lightened the manslaughter sentence of a Jamaican-Canadian mother who left 15-month-old in the bath by himself

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When a Jamaican-Canadian woman was tried for manslaughter — specifically, for leaving her 15-month-old son alone in a full bathtub for 10 minutes, causing him to drown — her judge had to ponder a question now standard in our country’s courtrooms: did systemic racism play a role in the crime?

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Justice Jane Kelly of Ontario’s superior court answered “yes.” In her Jan. 8 decision, she included that as a mitigating factor that lightened, to some extent, mother Tajah Henry’s prison sentence of three years.

On a high level, this sent a message that it wasn’t just Henry who was at fault for drowning her toddler — it was all Canadians and their collective racist existence.

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But society didn’t drown Henry’s child. Society didn’t tell Henry to fill the bathtub to the overflow drain, place her son in water 10 inches deep, exit the room, leave the door open a crack, put headphones on, clean her apartment, and check on the tub five to 10 minutes later. If society is to be blamed, it should be for allowing Henry to care for the child in the first place. He had been apprehended at birth and returned two months later — which Henry felt was unfair and “framed”........

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