Killing the black body

373 pages

English language

Published Nov. 8, 1997 by Pantheon Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-679-44226-4
OCLC Number:: 36315907

This is a no-holds-barred response to the liberal and conservative retreat from an assertive, activist, and socially transformative civil rights agenda of recent years--using a black feminist lens and the issue of the impact of recent legislation, social policy, and welfare "reform" on black women's--especially poor black women's--control over their bodies' autonomy and their freedom to bear and raise children with respect and dignity in a society whose white mainstream is determined to demonize, even criminalize their lives. It gives its readers a cogent legal and historical argument for a radically new , and socially transformative, definition of "liberty" and "equality" for the American polity from a black feminist perspective.

The author is able to combine the most innovative and radical thinking on several fronts--racial theory, feminist, and legal--to produce a work that is at once history and political treatise. By using the history of how American law--beginning with …

This is a no-holds-barred response to the liberal and conservative retreat from an assertive, activist, and socially transformative civil rights agenda of recent years--using a black feminist lens and the issue of the impact of recent legislation, social policy, and welfare "reform" on black women's--especially poor black women's--control over their bodies' autonomy and their freedom to bear and raise children with respect and dignity in a society whose white mainstream is determined to demonize, even criminalize their lives. It gives its readers a cogent legal and historical argument for a radically new , and socially transformative, definition of "liberty" and "equality" for the American polity from a black feminist perspective.

The author is able to combine the most innovative and radical thinking on several fronts--racial theory, feminist, and legal--to produce a work that is at once history and political treatise. By using the history of how American law--beginning with slavery--has treated the issue of the state's right to interfere with the black woman's body, the author explosively and effectively makes the case for the legal redress to the racist implications of current policy with regards to 1) access to and coercive dispensing of birth control to poor black women 2) the criminalization of parenting by poor black women who have used drugs 3) the stigmatization and devaluation of poor black mothers under the new welfare provisions, and 4) the differential access to and disproportionate spending of social resources on the new reproductive technologies used by wealthy white couples to insure genetically related offspring.

The legal redress of the racism inherent in current American law and policy in these matters, the author argues in her last chapter, demands and should lead us to adopt a new standard and definition of the liberal theory of "liberty" and "equality" based on the need for, and the positive role of government in fostering, social as well as individual justice.

3 editions

Ben Waber reviewed Killing the black body by Dorothy E. Roberts

A Slightly Dated but Still Incisive Investigation

5 stars

I read the 2020 version that has an updated preface, which spends some time reviewing developments since this book's original publication. That certainly helps set the stage, although I do wish some of the language in the book was also updated since some of it hasn't aged well. However, this is still an important investigation of the control, regulation, and cultural interpretation of Black reproduction over US history, with most of the focus on the 1980-1997 era. Roberts shows over and over how a combination of intentional policy choices and a complete lack of political will to deal with the underlying causes of poor Black maternal health and economic conditions has led to appalling outcomes for Black mothers and their families. It's all the more painful reading this today, because not only have we failed to deal with these issues, but also the meticulous legal analysis that Roberts provides here …

I read the 2020 version that has an updated preface, which spends some time reviewing developments since this book's original publication. That certainly helps set the stage, although I do wish some of the language in the book was also updated since some of it hasn't aged well. However, this is still an important investigation of the control, regulation, and cultural interpretation of Black reproduction over US history, with most of the focus on the 1980-1997 era. Roberts shows over and over how a combination of intentional policy choices and a complete lack of political will to deal with the underlying causes of poor Black maternal health and economic conditions has led to appalling outcomes for Black mothers and their families. It's all the more painful reading this today, because not only have we failed to deal with these issues, but also the meticulous legal analysis that Roberts provides here relies on case law which has since been overturned and the fact that the rule of law in the US has perilously crumbled, to the point where reasoned analysis is secondary to the political desires of the Supreme Court's extreme members. Despite that, one hopes that eventually these lessons can be applied once we as a society decide it's time to truly deliver justice and reform our entire system for the better. Highly recommend

Ben Waber

rated it

September 20

Subjects

Birth control -- United States
African American women -- Civil rights
Welfare recipients -- United States
Race discrimination -- United States

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