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Summary Of Dorothy Roberts 'Killing The Black Body'

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Dorothy Roberts ' Killing the Black Body confronts racial injustice in America by tackling the historical and ever-present assault on Black women 's procreative freedom and reproductive autonomy. It emphasizes the significance of including Black women 's experience with issues such as perceived promiscuity and eugenics, and the struggle to control their own bodies in the study of the birth control and reproductive liberty movement. Roberts centralizes her arguments on four central themes, which include how "Regulating Black women 's reproductive decisions has been a central aspect of racial oppression in America,… how the control of their reproduction has shaped the meaning of reproductive liberty in America,… that we need to reconsider the meaning of reproductive liberty to take into account its relationship to racial oppression,… and that reproductive freedom is a matter of social justice, not individual choice" (Roberts, 6). Simone de Beauvoir wrote in her feminist philosophy, The Second Sex, that "It was as a Mother that woman was fearsome: it is in maternity that she must be transfigured and enslaved". She appropriately described how in Motherhood, a woman 's identity can be devalued. A relevant example of this point is the derogatory icons of Black Women - Jezebel, Mammy, Aunt Jemima, Matriarch, and Welfare Queens (Roberts, 8). Each of these icons is rooted in the deep mythology that applies racial politics to black women by corrupting the reproduction process at
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