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

A legal scholar's argument that the U.S. child welfare system is not protective infrastructure but a "family policing" regime that disproportionately surveils, separates, and disciplines Black families — and that reform inside the system can't fix it.

Core ideas
  • "Neglect" is the dominant trigger for removal and is heavily entangled with poverty — making the system functionally a punishment for being poor and Black.
  • Mandated reporting, hotline tips, and home visits operate as a surveillance network parallel to police, with weaker due-process protections.
  • The abolitionist move: redirect resources from removal infrastructure to material support (housing, income, childcare) — the things that actually prevent harm.
Published2022
Pages384
ISBN9781549193170
ReadAug 2022
structural critique

Connected to 7 other books

shared themes first
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