Fatal Denial

Racism and the Political Life of Black Infant Mortality
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-0-520-29720-3
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 9, 382 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 229 mm x 152 mm, Gewicht: 530 g

Reihe: Reproductive Justice: A New Vision for the 21st Century

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Menzel, Annie

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Familiensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Public Health, Gesundheitsmanagement, Gesundheitsökonomie, Gesundheitspolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Umwelt- und Gesundheitspolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

Annie Menzel is a political theorist and former midwife. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.