The issue of maternal mortality rates has and continues to disproportionately affect Black women at an alarming rate. In the NPR article, Michelle Jokisch Polo examines Black birth workers, including doulas and midwives, who deliver black babies and prioritize Black mothers, noting how the social context exacerbates this health disparity. In class, we read and discussed the work and impact of Anna Julia Cooper, a revolutionary figure and early black feminist theorist. Cooper’s position as a Black woman and renowned educator shaped her ideas and applying these ideas to Polo’s article offers a unique perspective. A significant component of Cooper’s work explores the intersection of being Black and a woman in a post-slavery American society. …show more content…
Applying this to contemporary society and the NPR article, Cooper would say that because being a Black woman is such a unique position, the increase of Black birth workers is highly beneficial because Black mothers can receive “services of doulas and midwives who look like them” (Polo 2022). As a result, the hope is to decrease the number of Black mothers and Black babies dying during or soon after childbirth, eliminating that health disparity. Relatedly, Cooper identified the family unit as the building block(s) of society and that by focusing on families, the broader scope of society can be understood (Cooper, The Colored Woman’s Office). Connecting this concept to Polo’s article, if Black women are “nearly two times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women,” this means that Black babies, potentially Black daughters, will be devoid of black mothering, which could further the identity crisis that they might feel due to their position in society (Polo 2022). This is also correlated with another feature of Cooper’s framework, where she noted that black women have a central role in the
In 1995, at the University of Georgia Kent Anderson Leslie, published her first book called “Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson, 1849-1893”. The book is about a Girl names Amanda America Dickson who was born to a slave mother Julia Dickson and a white popular planter David Dickson. When Julia was 13 years old David who was in his forties at the time raped her and that turned into Julia getting pregnant. Amanda was born November 20,1849 and given to her father David and her grandmother Elizabeth Dickson. Her mother decided to give her up because she wanted her to be born free and not have to live the life she has had to live.
Brittney Cooper is an author, black feminist theorist and Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender's studies at Rutgers University. In her speech, The racial politics of time, Cooper argues that the concept of time is dominated by whites and that “that time does not belong to us[blacks].” She adopts an informative and inspirational tone to convey her position on race in America. Cooper fills her speech with rhetorical questions, facts, and quotes from professional and personal peers. Cooper begins her speech off with a rhetorical question,“What if I told you that time has a race, a race in the contemporary way that we understand race in the United States?”,this quote helps reel the listener in, gets them thinking and sets the tone for the
The Critical Race Theory was developed by a group of feminist scholars who studied the ways “racism and sexism helped to create and reinforce a power structure that historically privileged white males had over other Americans”. In the past 20 years, critical race theorists have used slave history to prove how a negative image of black women has persisted. It is the opinion of many respected scholars that the Critical Race Theory is difficult to define with simple examples. Two female scholars Derrick Bell and Darlene Clark Hine gave detailed examples to clarify their claims that race and gender played a major role in how CRT scholars were able to demonstrate why slave owners created the “jezebel” and “mammy” stereotypes. The “jezebel” was a term that implied a black female slave was a primitive creature with uncontrollable sex urges which caused innocent white slave owners to lose self-control.
The year of 1978 became a historic moment in time for Faye Wattleton and this country. At the age of 34, she became not only the first African American woman, but also the youngest person to preside over the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She used her position to further progress and advocate for the organization. One of the greatest powers she had that other leaders of the organization before her did not was the ability to bridge the gap with minorities. The health of African Americans has not always been, and still is not a top priority in this country, but she was able to get some our voices heard.
The final, and arguably the most important, question acknowledged by Amita Kelly is if black neighborhoods are truly the main sites for Planned Parenthood. The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization centered on reproductive and sexual health, conducted a study in 2014 to determine if such an accusation were true. Their results concluded that sixty percent of American abortion clinics, including Planned Parenthood, are in neighborhoods mainly populated by white families. Kelly portrays an effective argument in defending Margaret Sanger from Carson’s racial
James Baldwin uses personal experience in The Fire Next Time to support the thesis that African Americans in his generation were damaged physically and psychologically as victims of racism. The girls of Baldwin’s generation “[turned] into matrons before they had become women” (Baldwin 17). There are plenty of risk factors concerning the girls’ premature age while pregnant. The girls became destined to become like their mothers instead of pursuing the American Dream: to have freedom. A mother’s responsibilities are to care for the child and work in the household, stereotypically speaking.
This essay examines how intersectionality impacts Black women, examining their various levels of struggle and the tenacity that defines their path. Crenshaw contends that comprehending intersectionality allows us to see the diverse identities of minority women and better grasp how various oppressive systems interact to produce compounded discrimination. She highlights the significance of viewing race, gender, and other social categories as linked components of one's identity rather than as separate and isolated issues. Black women reside at the intersection of race and gender, which exposes them to a unique set of issues that are sometimes disregarded or misunderstood. Black women face racism and sexism in predominantly White nations, making their experiences complex.
History of Black reproductive health In summary, the book, “Killing the Black Body” written by Dorothy Roberts examines the reproductive rights of Black women, she states that historical, sociological, and legal frameworks have negatively impacted the reproductive rights of Black women. In my opinion, despite the book being published in 1997, the topics discussed still relate to the current issues we face today in society. Moreover, describing how history beginning with slavery has still impacted Black women’s maternal health. Defining Black Maternal Health
In Danielle McGuire’s book, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance, the author argues that sexual violence was a way for whites to intimidate and control African Americans during the movement. McGuire points out that because of the sexual violence African American women went through, it allowed them to fight back against the oppression and shape the Civil Rights Movement. The author introduces the readers to the violence that African American women were facing, “The stories of black women who fought for bodily integrity and personal dignity hold profound truths about the sexualized violence that marked racial politics and African American lives during the modern civil rights movement.” (pg xx). This quote gives readers a broader understanding of African American women's challenges.
It is often said that a new definition of a woman arose in the 1920s. But is that true? While most women experienced many newfound freedoms in the 1920s, black women could not explore these freedoms as easily as white women. In the novel Passing by Nella Larsen, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry grew up in Chicago together and are now both two wives and mothers in New York City during the 1920s, but there is a big difference between them. The novel’s title refers to light-skinned black women masquerading as white women for social benefits.
Published in 1959, Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones, according to the editors of Norton Anthology of African American Literature, is considered by most black feminist critics to be “the beginning of contemporary African American women’s writings…… because it portrayed black women’s centrality within the context of a specifically black culture” (2050). That said it is only fair to give credit to Marshall for her tremendous work in brilliantly portraying the long ignored yet very
As black women always conform under patriarchal principles, women are generally silenced and deprived of rights because men are entitled to control everything. Women are silenced in a way that they lose their confidence and hesitate to speak up due to the norms present in the society they live in. Hence, even if women have the confidence to try to speak, men wouldn’t bother to listen since men ought to believe that they are superior to women. In addition to that, women often live in a life cycle of repetitions due to patriarchal principles since women are established to fulfill the roles the society had given them. It is evidenced by Celie as she struggles to survive and to define oneself apart from the controlling, manipulative, and abusive men in her life.
In addition to that, the black community isolated Sethe because she did something that the community considered wrong. Black feminism will be the approach utilized here to see the oppression of woman of color because it includes sexism, classism and racism. Since the female characters are very dominant in the novel, a black feminist approach should be very effective and it enables one to see how the female characters deal with the past and live with it in the present, what motherhood mean to the female characters, and how much the past influences the female characters who lives in the present. The end of the novel reveals the forgiveness and the acceptance not only of the black community toward Sethe’s choice (killing her daughter) but also of the white people (the Bodwins) who accepted Denver to work for them. This reconciliation shows that the courage and the will to get rid off from the past to live side by side peacefully and to move toward the future together.
Afro-American women writers present how racism permeates the innermost recesses of the mind and heart of the blacks and affects even the most intimate human relationships. While depicting the corrosive impact of racism from social as well as psychological perspectives, they highlight the human cost black people have to pay in terms of their personal relationships, particularly the one between mother and daughter. Women novelists’ treatment of motherhood brings out black mothers’ pressures and challenges for survival and also reveals their different strategies and mechanisms to deal with these challenges. Along with this, the challenges black mothers have to face in dealing with their adolescent daughters, who suffer due to racism and are heavily influenced by the dominant value system, are also underlined by these writers. They portray how a black mother teaches her daughter to negotiate the hostile, wider world, and prepares her to face the problems and challenges boldly and confidently.
Dee approaches culture by decontextualising it, while Maggie and Mama relate to it with a kind of ‘organic criticality’. The former stance is mere rhetoric and the later one is womanist. In one of her interviews, Alice Walker identifies three cycles of Black Woman she would explore in her woman’s writing: 1.