Fatal Denial argues that over the past 150 years, US health authorities’ explanations of and interventions into Black infant mortality have been characterized by the "biopolitics of racial innocence," a term describing the institutionalized mechanisms in health care and policy that have at once obscured, enabled, and perpetuated systemic infanticide by blaming Black mothers and communities themselves.
Following Black feminist scholarship demonstrating that the commodification and theft of Black women’s reproductive bodies, labors, and care is foundational to US racial capitalism, Annie Menzel posits that the polity has made Black infants vulnerable to preventable death. Drawing on key Black political thought and praxis around infant mortality—from W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell to Black midwives and birth workers—this work also tracks continued refusals to acknowledge this routinized reproductive violence, illuminating both a rich history of care and the possibility of more transformative futures.
Annie Menzel is a political theorist and former midwife. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
"Grounded in political theory, Fatal Denial is a deeply interdisciplinary and passionately argued study of Black infant and maternal mortality. Menzel moves with grace from theories of biopolitics and racial innocence to historically textured accounts of Black infant mortality in the 19th to 21st centuries to careful readings of Black political thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois and Mary Church Terrell. The epilogue on birth justice will make a major contribution to feminist theory."—Lawrie Balfour, author of Toni Morrison: Imagining Freedom
"This is important work in critical race and feminist scholarship, and the manuscript is well situated within those fields while also offering an original perspective on them. The multifocal lens on Black infants, Black mothers, and Black midwives across the past 100 years is interesting and unique, making this book stand out."—Shannon Sullivan, author of White Privilege
“Fatal Denial is an incredible achievement in understanding the biopolitics of Black infant mortality. Annie Menzel takes us to a place of no return, where racial innocence stands on trial for blaming Black mothers and infants for health disparities and mortality. There can be no denial that Black vulnerability insulates white privilege but what Menzel masterfully unpacks are the layers of history and policy that show how this privilege perpetuates Black infant mortality and is, in essence, a danger to Black life."—Dana-Ain Davis, author of Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth
382 pp.6 x 9Illus: 10 b/w illustrations
9780520297197$85.00|£71.00Hardcover
May 2024