Fatal denial : racism and the political life of Black infant mortality / Annie Menzel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Menzel, Annie, author.

Series:

Reproductive justice ; 9.

Reproductive justice : a new vision for the twenty-first century ; 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American infants--Mortality--United States.

African American infants.

Biopolitics--Unties States.

Biopolitics.

Race discrimination--Unties States.

Race discrimination.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xxiii, 353 pages) : illustrations.

Place of Publication:

Oakland, CA : University of California Press, [2024]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Cover

Series Editors

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Fatal Deflections

1. The Cult of True Babyhood: Innocence and Infant Mortality

2. Three Forms of Innocence in W.E.B. Du Bois's "Of the Passing of the First-Born

3. Innocence and Inheritance: Mary Church Terrell and the Reproduction of the White World

4. The Midwife's Bag

5. From Infants in Crisis to Maternal Health Crisis: Birth Justice against Racial Innocence

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780520969650

0520969650