How the child welfare system destroys Black families—and how abolition can build a safer world

Racial and gender inequities are embedded in U.S. systems and institutions, including the child welfare system. These inequities produce barriers and disadvantages that increase Black women's and girls' risk of coming in contact with law enforcement, courts, and places of confinement. And when we do come into contact, the interactions can be devastating and traumatizing. In this conversation, NBWJI Executive Director Dr. Sydney McKinney and Dorothy Roberts, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Program on Race, Science and Society, will discuss Roberts's new book, "Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World." Dorothy Roberts, an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law, joined the University of Pennsylvania as its 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the Law School where she also holds the inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mosell Alexander chair. Her pathbreaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bioethics, especially as they impact the lives of women, children and African-Americans. Her major books include "Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century" (New Press, 2011); "Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare" (Basic Books, 2002), and "Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty" (Pantheon, 1997). She is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters, as well as a co-editor of six books on such topics as constitutional law and women and the law.