I’m not super familiar to that literature to draw the connections here, but McMillan Cottom’s analysis of medical racism is certainly a powerful and convincing case of epistemic injustice. There has been a lot of philosophical works on testimonial injustice and testimonial smothering recently.
McMillan Cottom then analyzes this situation as one about epistemic authority - black women are not seen as competent knowers, even when it comes to their own bodily sensations.
She recounts a heartbreaking retelling of a medical racism story - one among many that made black women 2 to 6 times more likely to die from pregnancy than white women in the US. (I must admit I’m still having trouble grasping the nuances here so you should go read and decide for yourself.) Black women can never be such commodities. She asks “can black women be beautiful the way white women are?” and answers in the negative, because beauty standards, however unrealistic they are, are used to keep (white) women commodities in line. A lot has been written on unrealistic beauty standards as patriarchal and capitalist policing of women’s bodies, but McMillan Cottom’s analysis adds a racial dimension. But it’s also a metaphor, as black women’s behaviours are extensively policed to the detriment of their own development. This has led to physiological problems later in life.
I still don’t know how to best summarize/describe the content of this book, so I figured I’ll just talk about some themes in elementary school book report style.Īlready in the preface, McMillan Cottom talks about “fixing feet”, a literal reality because she had a condition that made her walk funny and her mother couldn’t afford surgical correction. This book made me want to be a sociologist. If you are someone like me - new to black feminism and new to sociology - you should read it. As featured by The Daily Show, NPR, PBS, CBC, Time, VIBE, Entertainment Weekly, Well-Read Black Girl, and Chris Hayes, “incisive, witty, and provocative essays” (Publishers Weekly) by one of the “most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time” (Rebecca Traister), now in paperback …Īll of this is to excuse why I haven’t blogged about this amazing book that completely changed my perspective until now.
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