“The University of Wisconsin–Madison is hosting an upcoming lecture on a recently published book” claiming that “’White Innocence’ has historically led to the death of black babies,” reports Campus Reform:
Annie Menzel, an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the university, will give a talk featuring her 2024 book, Fatal Denial: Racism and the Political Life of Black Infant Mortality, on Wednesday.
The Gender and Women’s Studies department promoted the lecture in an Instagram post earlier this week. The lecture is titled “Fatal Denial: How White Innocence Threatens Black Infant Life, and the Responsibility of Birth Justice.”
“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 description for the event reads.
Menzel’s lecture will explore “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.”
Menzel will also discuss “Black feminist scholarship,” which has documented “the commodification and theft of Black women’s reproductive bodies, labors, and care,” all of which are “foundational to US racial capitalism.”
The professor also asserts that American civilization “has made Black infants vulnerable to preventable death,” according to the event description….Her research interests include “feminist political theory and queer theory; abolitionist and anti-colonial theory and praxis.”
Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin has been a target of the federal government in recent months for promoting DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). The advocacy group, Defending Education, filed a complaint on April 9 with the Office for Civil Rights against the school for offering a race-based scholarship.
Additionally, the National Institutes of Health canceled $12.6 million in federal grant money to the university over other DEI concerns.
Claims that white doctors discriminate against black infants have been debunked, as is explained here and here. Controlling for things like birth weight, black infants actually do ever-so-slightly better on average with white doctors than black doctors. There is no reason to fear going to a doctor of another race.
