August 23, 2016
By Anjalee Behti, If/When/How Legal Intern
In July, If/When/How hosted chapter leaders from across the nation at the Ninth Annual Leadership Institute (LI) at The George Washington University. In addition to including new workshops on compassionate activism, identifying cisgender supremacy, and judicial bypass, If/When/How used the LI to hone in on the connection between racial justice and reproductive justice.
Historically, racism has endured structurally through application of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Supreme Court cases like Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. 543 (1823), which denied Native Americans rights to their land; Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856), which held that African-Americans, enslaved or free, could not be American citizens and thus had no standing to sue in federal court; and Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), which established the standard of “separate but equal” as constitutional law, demonstrate that our nation’s leaders—predominantly white men in power – have applied the Equal Protection Clause unequally and at will.
Today, racism is more indirect and subtle; in a way, it is more procedural, and, ostensibly, nonracial. It relies more heavily on the manipulation of ideas within mass media to reproduce and disseminate the ideologies needed to justify racism, such as capitalism and biological determinism. Racial profiling, in addition to the disproportionate killings of black civilians by police, coded racial rhetoric in political speeches, and microaggressions made towards people of color are but a few examples of how racism takes life in American society today.
Given this history and landscape, the If/When/How National Office found it critical to explicitly discuss the connection between racial justice and reproductive justice. Lina Houston, Director of Campus & Community Programs, invited attendees to employ a racial justice lens in her “RJ2: Racial Justice is Reproductive Justice” presentation. Recalling that the reproductive justice movement was founded by women of color who fought for control over their reproductive lives, the presentation sought to highlight the intersection of these two movements.
Terms often used, but rarely defined, were boldly explained. The presentation covered the differences between ethnicity (a social construct) and race (a political construct), prejudice and privilege, racism as the sum of prejudice plus power, and white supremacy as an institutionally-perpetuated system of oppression. I accounted for one of the eighteen women of color in attendance at the conference, and sat with about fifty white people as I listened to racism explained as a system of disadvantage based on race and racialization, founded historically on white supremacy.
In identifying various levels of oppression, we concentrated on how personal oppression is learned directly (taught) or indirectly (caught); how interpersonal oppression represents behavior in light of assumptions we hold regarding the inferiority of others; how institutional oppression is exemplified through established laws, customs, traditions, and practices that systemically result in social inequalities; and how cultural oppression takes place through individual and institutional expression of superiority of one group’s culture, heritage, and values.
The RJ2 presentation sought to educate a color-conscious legal field, and particularly, define the tangible connection between racial justice and reproductive justice. Namely, that victims of racism and systemic oppression are people of color who have historically been colonized, enslaved, and segregated, have endured housing and job discrimination, police brutality, lower wages, and disproportionate incarceration rates. In the world of reproductive health, people of color – particularly women – have been subject to parallel demoralizations. The federal government’s regulation of the Indian Health Services subjected 25,000 Native American women to sterilization only forty years ago. African-American women with the same education level as white women experience infant mortality at a rate 2.5 times higher. Latinas lack health insurance at the highest rate among women living in the United States.
This historical understanding of race in America is critical in reproductive justice advocacy, as the social and racial constructs of our nation’s history define our present state. In 2016, countless people still lack access to reproductive health clinics, unjust pregnancy regulations and practices in prisons exist, and many states continue to restrict the dispensing of contraceptives. In order to create positive social change, we must recognize historical inequities and implement a race-conscious framework. By discussing the numerous connections between racial justice and reproductive justice, our convening became not only educational, but personal, practical, and authentic, as we broke into two groups for separate caucusing work. Follow up next week to read about what happened in the Students of Color and Unpacking White Privilege caucuses.
The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or position of If/When/How.