Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

This book was indeed eye-opening and had a profound affect on me. Still, her initial thesis is simply reinforced and repeated again and again, and this 300 page book could have been 1/3 the length.

This book was new and It come within one week of purchasing it and it was in great brand new condition

Although it is bittersweet (I wish there was no need for a book on this sour subject), I absolutely love this book! Dr. Roberts' thorough analysis of reproductive health as it relates to Black women is outstanding. As a medical and public health professional, I often refer to this book as a resource for various projects and research. I recommend this book to anyone who is entering the field of reproductive health, medicine, or health care. I also met Dr. Roberts and she is truly a gem - sweet, down-to-earth, and very knowledgeable.

I am fortunate to have picked up this book at a local feminist bookstore. This book taught me an abundant amount of information regarding the complex connections between reproduction, gender, and race in the United States. Starting with slavery, the author takes the reader all the way through to the present. Unfortunetly not much has changed since then. Society continues to control the reproduction of black women in order to keep the status quo of white male power structures alive and well. The most difficult chapter for me concerned the eugenics movement and forced sterilization. I knew this occurred but was not aware of how systematic it was. Who knows if doctors really stopped sterilizing black women without their consent in the 1970's as the author stated? I wouldn't be surprized if this practice continues. I had to have a couple drinks to process that chapter.

No longer can I hide behind ignorance of these events.

this book is deep. i am happy our professor had us read this book for the quarter or i would have never known how much control this world has placed on the black female. i myself and a black women who has realized the implications of having birth control centers placed all throughout the lower income communities especially planned parenthood (founder Marget Sanger)who has destroyed our bodies by forcing us to insert norplant, the pill and other dangerous birth control;do i hear 'genocide', into our bodies. if you are a black female searching for answers on your body or a wonderer, girlfriend! this book is for you.

Disappointing in the research. Instead of a critical, objective analysis, the author simply reduced her "research" to intellectual venting. I really expected better from this talented instructor.

I differ from most of the other reviewers. I read this book as part of a requirement for a doctoral seminar. I think the book had much potential, but fell short. Dr. Roberts failed to articulate who her audience was intended to be or what she hoped to accomplish. She clearly was biased against whites. Notably, she always capitalized "black" but never white or any other race. She uses data, but never frames it in any type of context. Data that cannot be compared is of no value. Further, she did not use good scholarship in some of her statements. Early in the book, she states that Thomas Jefferson and others were racists and footnotes it by referring to what someone else said about Jefferson. In good scholarship, if you want to know what someone thought, you go to the primary source, not what someone else said about what they thought. The book could have been very good, but I couldn't tell where she intended to go, so I will never know if she arrived.