Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World by Dorothy Roberts

Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World

by Dorothy Roberts

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Politics & PowerSociety & Culture

The child welfare system is, in Dorothy Roberts's account, a family policing system that works alongside police and prisons to control Black communities. She traces its roots to slavery and the removal of Indigenous children, and concludes that it has to be abolished rather than reformed.

Core ideas
  • Surveillance of families: Child protective investigations reach a majority of Black children, by her account, putting their families under state surveillance.
  • Poverty treated as neglect: Being poor gets read as neglect, and parental rights can end over failing to meet agency demands rather than over abuse.
  • Abolition, not repair: Removal into foster care falls disproportionately on Black children and can feed into juvenile detention, so she wants the system replaced by approaches that actually support families.
Published2022
Pages384
ISBN9781549193170
ReadAug 2022

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