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

by Dorothy Roberts

Book Overview

Killing the Black Body remains a rallying cry for education, awareness, and action on extending reproductive justice to all women. It is as crucial as ever, even two decades after its original publication.

A must-read for all those who claim to care about racial and gender justice in America. --Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

In 1997, this groundbreaking book made a powerful entrance...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679758690
• ISBN13: 9780679758693
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent book on reproductive health from a woman-of-color perspective!

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.

Needed account of reproductive history

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.

Excellent...should be required reading for all!

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.

Powerful!

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.

Black women's experiences with racism & reproduction

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.