Commodities No More: A Future Where Black Children Belong to Themselves

Two decades after Dorothy Roberts’ Shattered Bonds (2000), activists and abolitionists continue to contest Child Protective Services and foster care as misnomers, falsely representing a system that surveils and separates families for profit rather than protecting children. Critics employ the terms Family Regulation System and Jane Crow to highlight the criminalization of parents and the termination of their parental rights in service of the capitalist state. This critical social failure reveals the internalization of negative stereotypes and culture of poverty theories about Black women and families. Eugenic logics deem mothers in need of social and financial support, especially those struggling with mental illness and drug use, as deficient and unfit. Risk discourse is weaponized to remove Black children from their parents’ custody and generate state profits through social work and adoption services. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates an ideological shift required to reconcile the historic separation of Black mother and child and envisions a future where Black parents are the guardians of their children who belong to no one but themselves.