Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty [Paperback]

Dorothy Roberts (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 29, 1998

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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dorothy Roberts' passionate and well-documented book looks at a less-talked about side of the battle for reproductive rights: the history of the social and governmental control of African American women's bodies.

Roberts, a law professor at Rutgers University, asserts that African American women have been engaged from the start in an ongoing fight to gain control of their reproductive choice. First, in the early days of American slavery, from control by white "masters" who forced slaves to produce children to work for them, and now, from government "solutions" to African American child-bearing like the distribution of the long-term contraceptive Norplant in African American communities.

Roberts also takes the mainstream feminist movement to task for working mostly for the "negative right" of liberty, that is, the right of women to not have the government involved in their reproductive decision-making. To Roberts this debate, focused mainly on government non-interference, ignores issues especially important to African American women such as access to contraception or reproduction technologies. "Reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice," she says, stating further that it is social inequality, more than any legal interference, that severely limits African American women's ability to choose how and whether to have children. "We need a way of rethinking the meaning of liberty so that it protects all citizens equally," Roberts writes. "I propose that focusing on the connection between reproductive rights and racial equality is the place to start." --Maria Dolan --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Rutgers law professor Roberts examines "the history of social policies used by the dominant power structure to control black women's reproductive freedom."
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (December 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679758690
• ISBN-13: 978-0679758693
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,943 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #2 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Abortion & Birth Control

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Needed account of reproductive history, August 17, 2002

By 

Robin Orlowski "political activist" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Paperback)

Roberts, a Rutgers law professor, examines the sociopolitical reproductive history of black women--concluding this group did and still faces disparate treatment in public policy. The combined impact of race/ethnicity, sex and ecconomic status govern black women's relation to their own bodies--and treatment from policymakers and medical personnel.

While this premise has been previously examined by other scholars, Robert's contribution differs in legal analysis of the state/women relationship specifically as it applies to black women. She also faults fellow feminists for their ignorance, silence, and apathy towards black women's unique reproductive rights.

Begining with a critique of the predominantley white pro-choice movement for preoccupation with white middle class women and the assumption reproductive access means the same thing for all groups, Roberts holds black women's fertility is only valued if a predominantley white society can find ways to benefit from it.

She also notes that illegal abortion took the highest tolls on low-income black women who were unlikely to have the financial and political clout of rich white women to convince doctors to perform theraputic abortions in secret. At the same time, abortion should not be the sole issue of a truly progressive reproductive rights movement because coercive sterilization and contraceptive programs are also painful incidents in black women's reproductive history.

The pro-choice movement should oppose reccent 'welfare reform victories' because of the destruction such punitative measures have on black communities. Although most recipients were and continue to be white, policy debates were flooded with inferred images of the black "welfare queen" to foster and exacerbate racial and class tensions within the most conservative industrialized nation in the world.

Because anything else repeats the very conditions she is seeking to eliminate, a truly progressive reproductive policy supports the rights of all women to control their own bodies. Not enough to perform "multicultural" outreach, all feminist reproductive rights groups must fully intergrate a multi-pronged, class concious approach into their mission statement and policy objectives.

This book is an indispensible text for a social science course on reproductive rights, law, and/or social policy, but should be read by all who are concerned about securing freedom for all.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Black women's experiences with racism & reproduction, August 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Paperback)

This book is amazing. Roberts discusses in great detatil the extreme limitations that society puts on black women's bodies. Chapters focus on the lack of control that black women experience over their bodies beginning with slavery, Margaret Sanger, abortion,through modern day horrors of Norplant, Deproprevera and media outrage over the crack babies. Roberts spends a great deal of time discussing the crimnialization of black woman's reproduction this topic was by far my favorite. I am so glad to have found a book about black women's reproduction. It is important to have this book out there, to have in print the prejudices that millions of black woman have experienced is powerful. It is important that I as a white woman realize and acknowledge that my experience as a white woman varies a great deal from black women's experiences because of racism. I believe the next step after acknowlegeing this diffrence is to work to create equality and justice for all women. I thank Dorothy Roberts for this most important book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful!, June 15, 2000

By 

Raquel B. (Mount Vernon, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty (Paperback)

Ms. Roberts did an excellent job in detailing the racism behind reproduction and family planning as it pertains to Black women. I heard of unauthorized sterilizations, but had no idea of how wide-spread such policies went nor that they are present in today's society. It seems that women, especially Black women can't get a fair break. I'll never understand how someone else can tell someone what to do with their body. Yet these same people refuse to put the same energy and money in education and real healthcare. We have to take this knowledge and educate our brothers and sisters so that it can stop.