{"id":2320,"date":"2021-12-13T07:43:15","date_gmt":"2021-12-13T12:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/?p=2320"},"modified":"2022-02-01T11:12:19","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T16:12:19","slug":"unequal-impact-on-women-of-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/symkowick\/unequal-impact-on-women-of-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Unequal Impact on Women of Color"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the Vol. 1 Issue 11 of Everywoman published in 1970, the short dramatic sketch titled \u201cConference in Black\u201d by Black author Caroline Laud dives into the differences in perception between white feminists and feminists of color.<\/p><\/div>\n

Women of color were disproportionately victimized by a lack of reproductive rights. In New York, around 80 percent of the deaths caused by illegal abortions were Black or Puerto Rican women (Davis 117). The negative conditions were furthered by the general lack of accessibility women of color had to these health procedures. Published in 1970, Vol. 1 Issue 11 of Everywoman<\/em> dives into the differences in perception between white feminists and feminists of color. The simple, black and white, news and current affairs magazine aimed for an audience of \u201creal women\u201d including women of every race, feminists and non-feminists alike. The issue contains an article about a conference with two contrasting views about the same conference, one written by the Black author Caroline Laud and the other by a white, anonymous author. Laud chose to write her section in the form of a short dramatic sketch called \u201cConference in Black.\u201d The piece is formatted as a call and response between white, \u201cLiberal Women\u201d and Black Women (Laud 5). In the sketch, the liberal women state, \u201ctummy too round\u201d and the Black women reply \u201cGoddamn baby inside\u2026\/ Can\u2019t afford to keep it\u2026 Can’t afford to get an abortion\u201d (Laud 5). In the performance of the sketch, those playing the liberal women hold mirrors to their faces connoting vanity. The line \u201ctummy too round\u201d makes the white women seem absorbed only with their looks. They are worried about becoming too fat while Black women struggle with an unplanned pregnancy that they \u201ccan\u2019t afford.\u201d Laud claims that women of color have even less agency over their reproductive health than their vain, white counterparts.<\/p>\n

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The contrasting side to the Everywoman article \u201cConference in Black,” titled “and White,\u201d was written by an anonymous white author.<\/p><\/div>\n

Considering that the issue of reproductive rights especially impacted women of color, one would expect that women of all identities would unite under the cause. But in actuality, the issue was extremely divisive. Most of the women who supported abortion rights were white, middle-class, liberal woman. On the other hand, as Angela Davis observes in the chapter \u201cRacism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights\u201d of the book Woman Race Class<\/em> published in 1981, the “ranks of the abortion rights campaign did not include substantial numbers of women of color” (Davis117). Furthermore, white women did not seem to understand or acknowledge this divide. The contrasting sides to the Everywoman<\/em> article \u201cConference in Black \/ and White\u201d highlights this discrepancy. Where Laud chooses to write about the inequity within the movement, the anonymous white author frames the conference with a much more positive tone (Conference 5). She reflects that at the conference, \u201cwe shared our thoughts, our feelings, our conflicts, our love. Sisters who had never met felt a sense of community with each other.\u201d The stark contrast between these two works reflects the obliviousness of many white liberal feminists to the struggles of women of color.<\/p>\n

Many women of color did not support the abortion rights campaign because white liberal feminists failed to understand the significance of including sterilizations within the policies. Within the U.S. history of birth control lies a history of eugenics. In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that \u201crace purity must be maintained” and the falling rates of white births were “race suicide\u201d (Davis 121). Later the Eugenics Society was formed and soon after claimed: “twenty-six states had passed compulsory sterilization laws [and] thousands of \u2018unfit\u2019 persons had already been surgically prevented from reproducing\u201d (Davis 121). The American Birth Control League also formed and supported birth control specifically among Black people. Its successor, the Birth Control Federation of America, planned a \u201cNegro Project\u201d in 1939. The project claimed that the black population in the South \u201cbreed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least fit, and least able to rear children properly\u201d (Davis 123). Furthermore, so-called \u201cpopulation control\u201d was also deeply rooted in the very beginning of the birth control movement. Margaret Sanger, a champion of birth control, advocated for its usage to reduce births by women of color. Sanger wrote in a letter to a colleague, \u201cWe do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population\u201d (Davis 125).<\/p>\n

These practices continued into the 1970s. At the beginning of the abortion movement, many assumed that population control through abortions and permanent contraceptives such as sterilization would be the solution to poverty. Reduced family sizes would mean fewer people to support and feed. The U.S. government supported such population control efforts, creating sterilization projects within the \u200b\u200bDepartment of Health, Education, and Welfare. According to the news section of Vol. 5, Issue 6 of Women\u2019s Press, in the eight years before the issue was published in 1975, \u201cthe U.S. government has increased its population control budget by 6,000%\u201d (Houghma 4). These projects often targeted women of color and had a much larger impact than was advertised at the time. In 1972 the department claimed that around 16,000 women and 8,000 men had been sterilized (Davis 120). But today, Carl Shultz, director of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare\u2019s Population Affairs Office, estimates that between 100,000 and 200,000 sterilizations had actually been funded that year by the federal government.<\/p>\n

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The poem \u201cCreciendo en el barrio,\u201d by Chicana poet Donna James, explores how the horrors of sterilization impact the speaker’s community. The poem is found in the anthology From the belly of the shark.<\/p><\/div>\n

In response, people of color began to write about the horrors of the government\u2019s push for \u201cpopulation control.\u201d Chicana\/o poets in particular explored the terrible effects of mass sterilizations on their communities. For instance, the anthology\u00a0From the belly of the shark<\/em>\u00a0contains several poems by Chicana\/o poets which express individual experiences with the issue. Published in 1970, the anthology includes works by Chicanos, Inuits, Hawaiians, Indians, and Puerto Ricans in the United States. In particular, the poem “Creciendo en el barrio\u201d by Chicana poet Donna James, explores how the horrors of this practice impacts the entire community through its children (James 104). \u201cCreciendo en el barrio\u201d translates to growing up in the barrio, a lower-income Spanish-speaking area of a town or city. In the fourth stanza, James exposes the reality of the so-called \u201cpopulation control\u201d initiatives in these communities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And in the clinics ninos die<\/p>\n

\u00a0Before and after birth<\/p>\n

\u201cFar too many Mexicans in this town\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t they breed like rabbits though\u201d<\/p>\n

The children are dying in the clinics \u201cbefore and after birth.\u201d In the hospitals, women are forced to get sterilizations and, if they do have a child, the community is so harmful that some children do not survive. James demonstrates that neither their nation\u2019s government nor their hospitals value the lives of those within the barrio. Through the use of quotations, James attempts to capture the rationale of these institutions. To outsiders, the people in the barrio are considered \u201cMexicans\u201d even though they reside in America. By not referring to these people as \u201cMexican-American,\u201d they are categorized as other. The visitors continue to state, \u201cdon\u2019t they breed like rabbits though,\u201d reducing the people of the community to rabbits, an animal considered small prey that reproduces extremely rapidly. The government systems are taking advantage of this community through a mindset of dehumanization.<\/p>\n

Thus, as Davis claims in the book Woman Race Class<\/em>, although many of these women were “in favor of abortion rights [it] did not mean they were proponents of abortion” (Davis 118). Women of color understood the horrors that accompanied a lack of reproductive rights, yet they also had experienced the permanent, non-consensual effects of mass sterilizations. Morally, many could not support the abortion movement if they were not guaranteed protection.<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

\u201cConference in Black and White.\u201d pp. 4. Everywoman<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 11. Dec. 1970, pp. 5<\/p>\n

Davis, Angela. \u201cRacism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights.\u201d Woman Race Class<\/em>, Vintage E-Books, 1981, pp. 117-127<\/p>\n

Houghma, Ishi. \u201cNews.\u201d Women\u2019s Press 5<\/em>, no. 6\u00a0 September 1, 1975 pp.4<\/p>\n

James, Donna. “Creciendo en el barrio.\u201d From the Belly of the Shark : A New Anthology of\u00a0Native Americans : Poems by Chicanos, Eskimos, Hawaiians, Indians, Puerto Ricans inthe U.S.A., with Related Poems by Others<\/em>. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York. 1973.pp. 102-104<\/p>\n

Laud, Caroline. \u201cConference in Black and White.\u201d pp. 4. Everywoman<\/em>, vol. 1, no. 11. Dec. 1970,\u00a0pp. 4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Women of color were disproportionately victimized by a lack of reproductive rights. In New York, around 80 percent of the deaths caused by illegal abortions were Black or Puerto Rican women (Davis 117). The negative conditions were furthered by the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2658,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-symkowick"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2658"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3178,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions\/3178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl113-f18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}