Alan J. Dettlaff
Scholar Author Abolitionist
Praise For
Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Abolition Geography:
Essays Towards Liberation
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.
Dorothy Roberts
Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families—And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World
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 of the American Child Welfare System makes an important contribution to the literature exposing the system’s deliberate harms and a compelling call to join the struggle for its abolition.
Beth E. Richie
Abolition. Feminism. Now. and Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence and America’s Prison Nation
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 and as it circulates widely, the work for freedom, safety, and dignity will be better for it.