Alan Dettlaff is a University of Houston professor of social work and former social worker whose new book, Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System, written with several collaborators, argues for abolishing the American child welfare system, especially its routine practice of the forced separation from their parents of as many as 200,000 children per year. A cofounder of the upEND Movement, which seeks to overturn the American child welfare system, Dettlaff argues that the system is fundamentally racist, disproportionately and unfairly targeting Black families in particular, and inextricably bound to family separation practiced in chattel slavery.