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 currentAmerican 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.
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 currentAmerican 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.
Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professorof Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of three books of nonfiction, Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, and Fatal Invention, and has coedited six works on constitutional law and gender. She lives in Philadelphia.
“Monumental. . . . An important contribution to the literature of
civil rights, reproductive issues, racism and feminism.” —San
Francisco Chronicle
“Compelling. . . . Deftly shows how distorted and racist
constructions of black motherhood have affected politics, law, and
policy in the United States.” —Ms.
“Brilliant, controversial, and profoundly valuable. . . . An
important stepping-stone toward transforming the way black women
and their children are treated in America.” —Kirkus
Reviews
“Chilling. . . . It becomes difficult to reject the author’s
thesis. . . that there is a sustained, and in some quarters
deliberate, campaign to punish Black women—especially the poor—for
having children.” —The National Law Journal
“An important and riveting book that skillfully and compellingly
explains contemporary challenges to reproductive freedom.”
—Patricia Hill Collins, author of Black Feminist Thought
“A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and
gender justice in America.” —Michelle Alexander, author of The
New Jim Crow
“A leading-edge critique of reproductive racism . . . In this
current era, we discover the foresight and absolute necessity of
Roberts’s approach.” —Angela Davis
“Race in America cannot be fully understood without reading this
compelling investigation. . . . Timely, insightful and
unforgettable.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
“A seminal work. . . . Indispensable. . . . Prescient. . . .
Even more urgent and more pertinent than it was twenty years ago.”
—Harriet Washington, author of Medical Apartheid
“A work of stunning erudition and finely calibrated moral
concern. . . . Urgent, evocative and indispensable.” —William
Jelani Cobb, author of The Substance of Hope
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