Angela Davis Reading

After reading, Angela Davis on “Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights,” I began thinking how I see my reproductive rights from a working-class, white woman with the hard earned opportunity to be educated at an elite school. My personal access to birth control or reproductive rights has only been questioned on one occasion, by an arrogant white male physician, who thought it unimportant to give dignity in caring for a poor, white, unmarried, pregnant girl. His poor medical practice caused me to lose a baby to miscarriage. I was stripped of my agency to decide for my own future with or without a baby.
Angela Davis, gives an account of the history of birth control. She highlights the facts that white middle/upper class women have always had different reasons for wanting birth control and abortion rights than black, native, immigrant and poor women. Black, native, immigrant and poor women have needed birth control and abortions as a necessity to limit the suffering of their socio-economic situation, to be able to decide for themselves what is appropriate. While white middle/upper class women have wanted the luxuries just to be able to chose as a fundamental right. Both reasons are essential to each class of women for the pursuit of happiness, but clearly the push for equality is set in different context. White women of the middle/upper class have been called to reproduce the next generation of heirs to this country of ours. While black, native, poor and immigrant women are described as “unfit” to produce and mother because they are still not fully recognized as humans; the ugly remnants of conquest and degradation are still being felt. Not treated humanely but called to “a moral obligation to restrict the size of their families” (210), to fix unemployment and economic failings. Access to abortion has been restricted to those who can afford it and sterilization forced as an only option to women of color and the poor. How can a race, class, or gender be called to a “moral obligation” when survival is being denied? How can it be asked of a race or class to submit help that has made them invisible through attempts at genocide? How can the abortion and reproductive rights issues be answered when a discussion is one sided and basic needs are rendered irrelevant?
My Blackness Goes Before Me: A Poem and Commentary on Racism and Reproductive Justice

by Cheryl Gittens-Jones

A steady anger burns within me
Welling up from deep
Deep inside
Three-fifths of a human being
The sacred constitution of the
Red, white and blue
Walking into a room
My blackness goes
My blackness goes
Goes before me
Those of the majority
Not all
Not few
But many
Still do not see
See me as
human
woman
Only
Black
Not as mother
Of a beautiful almond eyed
Sepia skinned
Baby girl
Not as graduate
of
Ivy league
Not as wife
As I
As Me
Someone whose life is
Just as significant
Meaningful
Purposeful
Beautiful
Three-fifths of a human being
The sacred
Sacred constitution of the
The red, white
Red, white and blue
Not removed
Still written in
Indelible ink
To be read
Perused
Overlooked
Excused
Invoked
When I walk in
Into a room in my blackness
Precedes me
You see not I
Not mother
Not woman
Not wife
Just
Black
Nothing has changed
So many things locked in
Racist
Classist
Sexist
Passive aggressiveness
Intellectual sarcasm
Impoverished ignorance
Blatant Alienation
Little has changed
I am
Black and living next door
Behind the same white
Picket fence
Enduring bleached smiles
But not with
Eyes
A steady anger
Burns within me
Welling up from deep
Deep inside
Three-fifths of a human being
The sacred constitution
Of the red, white, and blue
Blackness walking
Walking into
Into the room before me

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/05/04/blackness-goes-poem-commentary-racism-reproductive-justice-0/