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

by Dorothy Roberts

Overview

In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance into the national conversation on race. In a media landscape dominated by racially biased images of welfare queens and crack babies, Killing the Black Body exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies. From slave masters’ economic stake in bonded women’s fertility to government programs that coerced thousands of poor Black women into being sterilized as late as the 1970s, these abuses pointed to the degradation of Black motherhood—and the exclusion of Black women’s reproductive needs in mainstream feminist and civil rights agendas.
 
Now, some two decades later, Killing the Black Body has not only exerted profound influence, but also remains as crucial as ever—a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679758693
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/29/1998
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	11,939
Product dimensions:	5.13(w) x 7.97(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professorof Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of three books of nonfiction, Killing the Black Body, Shattered Bonds, and Fatal Invention, and has coedited six works on constitutional law and gender. She lives in Philadelphia.

Editorial Reviews

From forced breeding and involuntary sterilization to the use of invasive methods of birth control (Norplant and Depo-Provera) and more recently welfare reform legislation, Rutgers law professor Roberts traces the history of social policies used by the dominant power structure to control black women's reproductive freedom. Her well-documented work convincingly reveals why black people, and women in particular, have reason to mistrust the medical establishment and government programs, especially those related to family planning. Roberts argues for an expanded concept of liberty that will "facilitate the processes of choice and self-determination" as well as protect individuals against government coercion. -- Faye Powell, Portland State University Library, Oregon

Library Journal

Roberts's exploration of the history of African-American women and reproductive rights is brilliant, controversial, and profoundly valuable. The author, a professor of law (Rutgers University), brings forth a view of black women wholly ignored by mainstream America. Beginning with slavery and moving to the present day, she argues that white America has perpetuated a legacy of pathological social violence against black women and their reproductive capabilities. Female slaves, Roberts asserts, were often bought with the express purpose of using them as breeders; white males profited by raping black women and selling their children. Later, in the first half of the 20th century, the eugenics movement turned contraception from a tool of women's liberation into a tool of control to cut birth rates among southern blacks, and as late as the 1970s black women were routinely sterilized by hysterectomies that were not medically necessary. More recently, poor black women living in urban areas have been forced by courts, doctors, and health care organizations to be implanted with the Norplant birth-control device; doctors frequently refuse to remove it on request. Roberts's arguments are especially convincing because they are so well researched and thoroughly dissected. Drawn from documented cases, African-American theorists, and media reports, Roberts's knowledge of her subject is total. Instead of painting black women as passive victims of this reproductive racism, she represents them through the image offered by a former slave, Anna Julia Cooper, who characterizes the black woman fighting to protect the bodies of her daughters as "an entrapped tigress." Roberts outlines an agenda for change in thefinal chapter, positioning the book as an important stepping-stone toward transforming the way black women and their children are treated in America."The denial of Black reproductive autonomy serves the interests of white supremacy," Roberts states, and she demands her reader rethink the relationship between race and reproduction.

Kirkus Reviews