Fatal Denial - Racism and the Political Life of Black Infant Mortality

Fatal Denial argues that over the past 150 years, US health authorities' explanations of and interventions into Black infant mortality have been characterized by the "biopolitics of racial innocence," a term describing the institutionalized mechanisms in health care and policy that have at once obscured, enabled, and perpetuated systemic infanticide by blaming Black mothers and communities themselves.Following Black feminist scholarship demonstrating that the commodification and theft of Black women's reproductive bodies, labors, and care is foundational to US racial capitalism, Annie Menzel posits that the polity has made Black infants vulnerable to preventable death. Drawing on key Black political thought and praxis around infant mortality-from W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell to Black midwives and birth workers-this work also tracks continued refusals to acknowledge this routinized reproductive violence, illuminating both a rich history of care and the possibility of more transformative futures.

Product details

• Authors: Annie Menzel
• Publisher: University Of California Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 28.05.2024
• EAN: 9780520297197
• ISBN: 978-0-520-29719-7
• No. of pages: 382
• Series: Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > Social education, social work; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); USA, MEDICAL / Public Health, Personal & public health, Social discrimination & inequality, United States of America, USA, Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Race & Ethnic Relations, Black & Asian Studies, Personal and public health / health education, Racism and racial discrimination / Anti-racism, Relating to African American / Black American people