
Professor Dorothy E. Roberts’ new book, Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World, was published by Basic Books on April 5.
Roberts, an acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and the law, is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School. She is also the founding director of the Penn Program on Race, Science & Society in the Center for Africana Studies.
The following is an excerpt of Torn Apart, curated and shared by Mother Jones:
Instead, the outing led to the most terrifying experience of her life… .
Roberts’ other 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 also recently penned “Race,” a chapter in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, focusing on race as a construct and the historical regulation of Black women’s bodies.
Roberts joined the University of Pennsylvania as its 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and the Law School. She is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and book chapters as well as a co-editor of six books on topics such as constitutional law and women and the law.