Listen free for 30 days
-
Torn Apart
- How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
- Narrated by: Dorothy Roberts, Janina Edwards
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Torn Apart
Buy Now for $28.27
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
An award-winning scholar exposes the foundational racism of the child welfare system and calls for radical change
Many believe the child welfare system protects children from abuse. But as Torn Apart uncovers, this system is designed to punish Black families. Drawing on decades of research, legal scholar and sociologist Dorothy Roberts reveals that the child welfare system is better understood as a “family policing system” that collaborates with law enforcement and prisons to oppress Black communities. Child protection investigations ensnare a majority of Black children, putting their families under intense state surveillance and regulation. Black children are disproportionately likely to be torn from their families and placed in foster care, driving many to juvenile detention and imprisonment.
The only way to stop the destruction caused by family policing, Torn Apart argues, is to abolish the child welfare system and liberate Black communities.
What the critics say
"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