“Fatal Invention is a triumph! Race has always been an ill-defined amalgam of medical and cultural bias, thinly overlaid with the trappings of contemporary scientific thought. And no one has peeled back the layers of assumption and deception as lucidly as Dorothy Roberts.”

Harriet A. Washington, author of Medical Apartheid and Deadly Monopolies

“Fatal Invention is an extremely well-written, thoroughly documented, and potentially impactful book. While urging a continued effort to better understand genes and how they work, it challenges us to abandon the politics of biological race and to work to develop the kind of social environments that promote the well-being of all humanity.” 

David Satcher, 16th Surgeon General of the United States

“Roberts has issued a compelling and provocative warning: our freedoms are threatened by a new biopolitics that reinforces a false concept of race and turns us into ‘biocitizens’ whose DNA can be exploited both by the government and big business. Everyone concerned about social justice in America should read this powerful book.” 

Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director, American Civil Liberties Union

"Recently I had the opportunity of reading her book in its entirety and felt like a kid at the proverbial candy store. I seldom get as excited by a book as I did with this one. This book is full of ideas, innovations, and even racial theory."

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, professor of sociology, Duke University

“This is the book I read in 2022 that was the most mind-blowing. Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, really lays out the intricacies of the so-called child welfare system to demonstrate how it hasn’t been designed to protect children, let alone black children and families.”

Ibram X Kendi, The Guardian

“Roberts offers a bracing antidote to the fatalistic view that DNA determines social structure, identity and health status, and calls instead for new forms of biocitizenship premised on the full democratic engagement of our one human race. This book should be read by any and all grappling with issues of science, social justice, and racial equality.”

Nancy Krieger, PhD, Professor, Department of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health

“Punctuated with poignant cases of systemic horrors, the compelling narrative delivers data-rich analysis that reflects decades of research, observation, and advocacy for Black children and mothers. Readers at every level, especially policy makers and implementers, might well embrace this work as a primer for moving past a harmful system and creating a reimagined ideology and infrastructure to humanely care for families and keep children safe. Roberts’s latest is necessary reading.”

“A compelling argument that will hopefully prove useful to policymakers, activists, and concerned citizens.”

“A searing look at racial injustice in the U.S. child welfare system… 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 is the book I read in 2022 that was the most mind-blowing. Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, really lays out the intricacies of the so-called child welfare system to demonstrate how it hasn’t been designed to protect children, let alone black children and families.”