Dorothy E. Roberts (1) (1956–)

(54) Written in 1999 I think - right as I finished my OBGYN training in the Deep South. We were irritated that we had to sign special consents for publicly funded sterilization surgeries making it perfectly clear that patients knew what they were signing up for. Sometimes I don't know what to believe. Sometimes I think it becomes convenient in hindsight for people to say they had no agency or foreknowledge in what happened to them. And sometimes I think... WTF. I am so tired of living in the South where the legacy of slavery looms large. What chance do a huge proportion of black (and frankly, rural white poor) have in this region; in this country? This book discusses the abuses of power from masters' control of their slaves' procreation to current day abortion and IVF funding realities and everything in between. The in between being things like: criminally penalizing women who use crack (read poor black mother, not the white suburbanites snorting coke and drinking wine, mind you) during pregnancy as child abusers, and cutting off welfare benefits to women who have the audacity to have another child while on the dole. The author very eloquently frames these government infringements on procreation as being based more on racial tensions than class oppression. I am not sure I completely buy that as the eugenics origins of population control and forced sterilization were race-neutral focusing on individuals of low intelligence and state dependency.

This book is much more convincing and better written than 'Medical Apartheid,' another social history on the abuses of the medical system on black people. Much less sensational and more focused on constitutional law and precepts of ethics which required me to think really hard about many sentences I read. But that is OK - it led to some real soul-searching. Is "liberty" - i.e. government non-interference in procreative choices in the name of the right to "privacy' (a moot point I guess in the post-Roe world) better than the government ensuring "equality?" Are poor women really free to pursue their own fundamental right to procreate with a dearth of jobs, child-care options, quality job-training and education in addition to having subsistence benefits contingent on using long-acting contraception and withholding funding for abortion?.... Umm, No. And by the way, more absolute number of dollars are lost/spent allowing an increasing number of deductions on tax returns per number of kids for middle class folk than in the paltry incremental increase in monthly allotment of subsistence benefits per welfare kid. Just saying. And in the meantime IVF allows rich (i.e. white) couples to make designer babies further perpetuating a racial achievement gap. But contemplating just alternatives also seems unpalatable. Or at least hard to imagine from my position of privilege - a welfare state; a one-child policy; reparations to ancestors of slaves, only state-sanctioned access to IVF based on lottery. I dunno.

Intriguing. I wonder what the author thinks about the overturn of Roe v Wade and the BLM movement. Interesting to me that people were already worried > 20 yrs ago that basing the right to abortion on a 'right to privacy' was misguided - it needs to be based in arguments of gender equality. Anyway, I digress. This is my field so I am overly passionate. Glad I read, but dense at times and while dated, still very relevant. As a new introduction and blurbs from other authors suggest - Roberts' arguments are the same ones that continue to be surfaced as "new" revelations today re: BLM and social/racial justice issues through the lens of reproductive freedom. These are NOT new ideas!

Should be required reading if not for medical students then at least for OBGYNs.… (altro)

this is eye opening. what a terrible, disgusting system we've put in place, and then blamed on the victims. the racism that pervades every aspect of our society is even in the child welfare system, which this book focuses on. it's awful and the statistics cited are horrifying.

as a book, though, i think her points are all pretty much made in the first 30 pages, and the rest is just supplemental. we would be better served - because more people would read it and we'd have a chance for more change - if this was a long article or paper instead of a book.

(as an aside, at the very end she lists changes that need to be made that would bolster the foundation of society for systemic change to make a difference. they were largely the issues that the progressive presidential candidates had on their platforms this election cycle. so the bad news is that we still haven't made these changes, but the good news is that we're finally talking about them in the mainstream.)

"Child protection authorities are taking custody of Black children at alarming rates, and in doing so, they are dismantling social networks that are critical to Black community welfare."

"...call the child welfare system what it is: a state-run program that disrupts, restructures, and polices Black families."

"The truth is that many poor Black parents fight desperately against a wealthy and powerful system to regain their children. They are often worn down by pointless and burdensome requirements, insidious financial incentives, and racial bias."

"...the foster care system in the nation's cities operates as an apartheid institution."

"Poverty - not the type or severity of maltreatment - is the single most important predictor of placement in foster care and the amount of time spent there."

some of the horrifying stats, from early on in the book:
"In Chicago, 95 percent of the children placed in foster care are Black."
"About 30 percent of the children who live in New York City are white. Yet white children make up on ly 3 percent of its foster care caseload."
"Today, 42 percent of all children in foster care nationwide are Black, even though Black children constitute only 17 percent of the nation's youth."
"More than 70 percent of foster children in San Francisco in 1994 were Black, although Blacks made up only 10 percent of the city's population."… (altro)

This was the first book picked for the Reproductive Justice Book Club a friend of mine started. This is very different then anything I would normally read but I want to give the author lots of credit because it's very readable. There was the potential for it to become a list of statistics but the author was just so passionate about her subject that it was hard not be drawn in. Many of the reproductive issues the author addresses were on the edge of my radar but somehow I never put together how disproportionately they affect women of color.

I admit to having a little bit of trouble with the section on the myth of the welfare queen, mainly because I grew up in a neighborhood where there were a lot of girls that would get pregnant so they could quit their job and go on welfare, they were not however Black which is why I never drew the correlation to race that the author illustrated.

All in all glad this book club is making my try something different. It's nice to read a grown up nonfiction book that's not a biography or cook book and learn something new.… (altro)