Dorothy Roberts
“Truly valuing Black children would mean dismantling the destructive family policing system and replacing it with a radically different way of caring for children, supporting families, and imagining safety.”
Professor, Author, Activist
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.
2024 MacArthur Foundation Fellow
MY LATEST BOOK
TORN APART: How the child welfare system destroys black families and how abolition can build a safer world
Available Now! at Basic Books
Read an excerpt from TORN APART
The Washington Post has run a powerful op-ed by Dorothy Roberts about the decision the of governor of Texas to direct state agencies to investigate gender-affirming care for trans children as “child abuse.”
Torn Apart is the inaugural podcast in our Ms. Book Club Series. Hosted and co-produced by Professor Dorothy Roberts, this limited series podcast in four parts is based on her award-winning book, Torn Apart. In the podcast, she examines the child welfare system and advocates for abolishing family policing and reimagining child welfare. Tune in to hear the voices of impacted families, family defenders, activists, and scholars.
Listen to my new Torn Apart podcast series with Ms. Magazine
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"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
“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
Association for Humanist Sociology 2023 Betty and Alfred McClung Lee Book Award
Society for the Study of Social Problems 2023 C. Wright Mills Award, finalist
American Sociological Association 2022 Distinguished Scholarly Book Award, honorable mention
Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo 2022 Book Prize for Social Justice, shortlist
Los Angeles Times 2022 Book Prizes, finalist
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