Alan J. Dettlaff
Scholar • Author • Abolitionist
Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System: The Case for Abolition
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Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System: The Case for Abolition
Oxford University Press
A landmark work challenging the foundations of the American child welfare system, arguing that it is not a broken system in need of reform — but a racist system that must be abolished and replaced with genuine community support.
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Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System
"This wonderful examination of U.S. child welfare's devastating history ends with a well-argued chapter on abolition. Skeptical readers should begin at the end. Use the chapter's bright and urgent vision as a guide to understand how where we're at is not where we must be. Dettlaff and his colleagues propose abolition as a practical call to action."
Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation"Starting at enslavers' brutal separation of Black families, Alan J. Dettlaff adeptly traces the racist foundations of today's child welfare system — a system modeled on White saviorism, surveillance and separation. Confronting the Racist Legacy makes an important contribution to the literature exposing the system's deliberate harms and a compelling call to join the struggle for its abolition."
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World"Written with deep passion and a keen sense of urgency, this powerful book is both a poignant historical account of the violent legacy of what the author calls the 'family policing system,' and an urgent call for action… a must-read for activists, advocates, policy makers, and service providers."
Abolition. Feminism. Now. and Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America's Prison NationNo events at the moment