For those interested in taking a self-guided course on family policing’s history, present, and abolitionist future, we invite you to explore this course. This syllabus is a companion to The upEND Podcast’s first season which will be published bi-weekly through January 2024.
Review the history of family separations in the United States that began during the era of human chattel slavery and the harm that results from these separations through the narratives of formerly enslaved people.
Understand Black children’s continued separation and enslavement following the formal abolition of slavery.
Understand the changing public sentiments towards “welfare,” the “discovery” of child abuse in the early 1960s, and the racial unrest that accompanied the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
Get an overview of the carceral logic that undergirds today’s child welfare system and the functions of surveillance, regulation, and punishment.
Review the harm that results to Black children, families, and communities from forcible family separations and placement in foster care.
Reforms are used by the family policing system as a mirage to reassure the public.
Available January 2024
Available January 2024
This syllabus and the first season of The upEND Podcast follow the chapters in Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System: A Case for Abolition by Alan Dettlaff.
