FEATURED
BOOKS
How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families- and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
Most of us who have never encountered the child welfare system assume it does what the name implies: protects children. But after twenty-five years of research, service, and advocacy, Professor Dorothy Roberts exposes the reality of the system’s destructive regulation of Black families—and sets us on a new path, away from surveillance, punishment, and coercion, toward a reimagined meaning of safety that centers the needs of children and their families.
In TORN APART: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World we meet Black mothers like Vanessa, a 25-year-old nursing student whose family trip to the local park led to a brutal assault by police officers in her home, followed by months of state intrusion that left her children traumatized and her career at risk. Or Angeline, whose desperate call to a domestic violence hotline triggered a multi- year legal battle to be reunited with her son, after he was forced into foster care. Roberts shows that these are not isolated incidents, but the system working as designed: to control Black communities and criminalize Black children. As the nation grapples with police violence and mass incarceration, TORN APART explains why a focus on what she calls “family policing” must be part of the growing abolitionist movement.
If we really want to protect children, Roberts argues, we should replace the current system, steeped in foundational racism, with a radical new vision that actually meets their needs. We can start by diverting the billions of taxpayer dollars currently spent on investigating, regulating, and separating families toward providing concrete resources directly to family caregivers, building voluntary community-based supports for families, and engaging in transformative justice practices. Roberts points to grass-roots campaigns that are pushing for legislation that guarantees parents Miranda rights and legal representation, ends mandatory and anonymous reporting, and repeals the federal timeline for termination of parental rights.
Written with the passion of an activist at the forefront of an emerging movement, backed by the research of a top scholar in her field, TORN APART will forever change the way we think about “child welfare” in this country.
“Compassionate...
clear... compelling.”
—Kirkus
“Roberts buttresses her impassioned call for dismantling the child welfare system by skillfully situating it within a larger web of institutions intended to surveil, control, and punish Black Americans. This illuminating and alarming study shatters the “facade of benevolence” surrounding foster care. ”
—Publishers Weekly
“Dorothy Roberts has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades. Her new book on America's punitive child welfare system is a bold and critically important reimagining of how to better protect children. Her thesis on how the legacy of slavery and carceral systems have impacted Black families is rooted in decades of rigorous examination, research, and reflection. This is a compelling, thoughtful, and urgent work. ”
—Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
ABOUT DOROTHY
Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a contributor to the 1619 Project and the author of four books, including the best-selling Killing the Black Body. Her path breaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent social justice issues in policing, family regulation, science, medicine, and bioethics. She has been featured in countless media outlets including The New York Times, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, Vice News, CNN, ABC, and many others. She lives in Philadelphia.