Welcome to Getting Curious, I'm Jonathan Vines and every week I sit down for a gorgeous conversation with a brilliant expert to learn all about something that makes me curious.

On today's episode, I'm joined by Dorothy Roberts, where I ask her, is America's foster care system really rooted in care?

Welcome to Getting Curious, this is Jonathan Vines, I have such an exciting guest today who is an award-winning author and expert on the interplay of gender, race and class in legal issues concerning reproduction, bioethics and child welfare.

She is also the author of Killing the Black Body, which I'm sure you've heard of. Welcome to the show, Dorothy Roberts, whose latest book is torn apart, how the child welfare system destroys black families and how abolition can build a safer world.

Dorothy, thank you for doing the earth's work and helping bring so much knowledge to so many people.

I'm so grateful for your time today, sidebar, I'm trying to do this cool journalistic thing where I don't give everyone like physical compliments, but I would just be remiss, your locks and your glasses combo is just so pretty and it's just I can't, okay, I'm still a hair stylist, but I don't have to like check that part of myself at the door, okay.

But you look amazing, how are you?

I'm well and I appreciate all the compliments, thank you, Jonathan. So I'm the show, we've talked a lot about the connections between family separation, mass incarceration and police brutality.

When we did our episode about child separation at the border back when Trump was in office, there was so much talk and anger rightly so.

And our guest said we've actually been separating families for way longer than just at the border. And that was the first time that I started to understand how mass incarceration could play a role in family separation.

So that's part of what makes you so exciting for us because you can shed a whole new light on what the quote child welfare system is and what it needs and why it needs to be included in this discussion because it's playing like a huge part that we really I don't really know about.

But our guiding question today is, who does America's child welfare system really serve?

So when we hear terms like quote child welfare system or foster care and child protective services, who do these institutions seem to serve on the service?

Well, thanks for that great introduction, Jonathan. You touched on a lot of what I hope we can talk about today.

And one of the reasons why you weren't aware of how oppressive the system is is that it's done a great job of propaganda and fooling people into thinking that it's this benevolent social service government program that protects children from terrible abuse in their home supports needy families and is a child saver.

And I think most people believe that even though it might have some problems with sometimes we hear about in the news that overall it is this needed service to families and especially to children who are being abused.

And that false picture makes people unaware of the harm but also uninterested in learning more about it and not making the connections between the prison system and criminal law enforcement policing when in fact this is a system that's really entangled with all those others, but it also functions in the same way it is a policing system.

What other assumptions might people have about child protective services foster care or other like buzzwords in this world?

Yeah, well think about those buzzwords and the labels for this system child welfare system.

So it seems to be to many people to be a system that promotes children's welfare that makes children better off that comes into rescue children who are in need.

And then there's child protective services.

So people think this is a government agency full of kinds social workers that protect children where there's a report that they're being harmed in the home.

...