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Dorothy Roberts is an award-winning author and expert on the interplay of gender, race, and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics, and child welfare.
Her latest book, TORN APART: How the child welfare system destroys black families—and how abolition can build a safer world, is available Now at Basic Books
“
Torn Apart is a brilliant and impassioned call for abolition of our racist and disastrous systems of family policing. Better than anyone else could, Dorothy Roberts shows convincingly why we must reimagine child welfare and develop new systems for meeting human needs, preventing violence, and caring for children, families, and communities." ―
Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
"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
“Once again Dorothy Roberts offers us a bold, visionary critique of the contemporary institutional consequences of colonialism and slavery. Her penetrating analysis of the family policing system and its masquerade as child protective services not only persuades us that reforms alone will forever reinforce the system’s racist and repressive foundations, it also compels us to imagine new modes of care and frameworks for abolitionist futures.”
―Angela Y. Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle
"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
“Roberts demonstrates how the current [child welfare] system serves as a continuation of the widespread earlier policies that perpetuated Black enslavement and Indigenous displacement. A compassionate guide, Roberts clearly explains the relevant research and includes heartbreaking testimonies from accused parents. Not content to merely criticize, she lays out the elements that must be addressed in any new system: income support, housing, nutrition, education, child care, and health care. A compelling argument.”
―Kirkus Reviews
Ibram X Kendi puts Torn Apart at the top of his radar as the most "mind-blowing" book he has read in 2022.