We’re getting down with Marxy Marx and the Foucky Bunch! In this episode, Alyssa and Brendane discuss reproductive justice, dispossession, and the stakes for Black birthing people in a post-Roe v. Wade world with Dr. Mali Collins (IG | Twitter).
What’s the Word? Dispossession. We draw a thread through Karl Marx’s primitive accumulation, Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital, and David Harvey’s accumulation by dispossession to thinking about the ways Black birthing people have been dispossessed of reproductive rights and motherhood.
What We’re Reading. “The Meaning of Liberty” in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts. In this chapter Roberts argues that we must reshape (or perhaps exceed) our understanding of reproductive liberty by accounting for the experiences and needs of Black women.
What in the World?! We are joined by Assistant Professor Mali Collins to discuss who expansive definition of reproductive labour, the spectacle of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the whiteness of the abortion access movement, what we can do to survive this moment in community, reconnecting with your body, and black maternal dispossession.
Past episodes to dive into for reference:
S1 E14 Episode: Afropessimism: Anything but Black!
S1 E6 Episode: Deathcraft Country
Zora’s Daughters Podcast: Season Three, Episode 3
Co-Hosts: Alyssa A. James (AJ) and Brendane A. Tynes (BT)
Guest: Dr. Mali Collins (MC)
Total Length: 01:13:30
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[0:00:31] Alyssa (AJ): Hey Everyone! Welcome Back to Zora’s Daughters. The podcast where we share Black feminist perspectives and close read pop culture and other social topics that affect Black folks. I’m Alyssa and I use she/her/hers pronouns.
[0:00:44] Brendane (BT): Hey y’all! I’m Brendane she/her/hers pronouns as well. We have quite the episode in store for you today. We’ll be talking about reproductive justice, dispossession, Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts and we have our first guest of the season.
[0:01:00] (mouth bimp bimp clock clock (clocks gets lower) drumroll noise by AJ and BT
[0:01:03] BT: I don’t know what that was…
[0:01:04] BT: Assistant professor Mali (background it’s a cucking laughing cuck cuck like a chicken um like the true bird I am) the assistant professor Mali Collins! And she’ll be on with us in the final segment to chat about what’s at stake for Black birthing people in this post Roe v Wade world.
[0:01:22] AJ: Although as you’ll learn or already know, Black women and non-men have always been extra roe, as in outside of its application. And yesterday, or on Sunday for those of you (pause) for basically everybody because we’re recording on Monday and you all will get this on Wednesday we hit the 100 day milestone of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade, so tomorrow Thursday October 6, is the National Day of Student Action for Reproductive Justice, and so we wanted to make this podcast episode as our contribution in support and to reaffirm that we believe in the right to bodily autonomy to choose, or to choose not to birth and to parent in safe and supportive community.
[0:02:08] BT: Absolutely. So, before we give too much away, we would like to just note that creating episodes like these would not be possible without the support of listeners just like you.
[0:02:21] AJ: Like you (drawn out)
[0:02:24] BT: Soo. The best way to support (like you said in background) us is becoming a patron where you can access the ZD Community speak to us personally and see exclusive videos and audio from our episodes so head on over to patreon.com/zorasdaughters to learn more, and another way you can support us is by leaving a rating and review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Following us on social media and sharing our episodes with your friends, your families, your students, your neighbors, your enemies, that person at work that you’re like girl you need to learn sumthin’. I mean just everybody (AJ laughs)
[0:03:01] AJ: And we cannot forget the merch! Okay. People have been loving the notebooks and the mugs both feature our new podcast cover image that was designed last year, and I mean really, you all have been taking notes and sipping tea with us for the last two years and a little bit metaphorically, so why not do it literally (BT in background why not) if you have forgotten all of these links and accounts just head to zorasdaughters.com where you can find our shop, social media, transcripts, and other goodies. (good good)
[0:03:22] BT: And if you haven’t
[0:03:27] AJ and BT: Goodies Ciara goodies or my goodies not my goodies cause these goodies are engaged. I don’t know my goodies might be on up if these prices keep going up
[0:03:57] BT: But anyway, or on already we recommend listening to Season 1, Episode 6 Deathcraft Country where we talk about the history of birth control movements and eugenics as well, as the mass hysterectomies in ICE and yes that was two years ago.
[0:04:08] AJ: Time flies and goes around in circles. le sigh
[0:04:10] AJ: Well, let’s get into it. What’s the word
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[0:04:20] BT: Our word for today is dispossession which I’m actually surprised we haven’t talked about already.
[0:04:27] AJ: Me too. I did a quick check when I was writing this up and we’ve only used it 5 times on the podcast. Which is probably 10,000 times less than most anthropologists these days.
[0:04:38] BT It’s a really sexy concept right now and we may have used it a handful of times, but we’ve talked about it in many different ways. And I actually, I was texting you about this. I was in a dissertation writing group with a diverse group of people. And one white gay was trying to make an argument that Black people in the 1920s were being dispossessed by giving their money up for movie tickets. That was his argument in his chapter in his dissertation, (laugh). That was a form of dispossession. And so, we here to say clear the air, clear the room that dispossession does not simply mean that you lose something, right. And you can’t be dispossessed technically if you are getting something in exchange. You know, that’s neither here nor there.
We are going to start with the basically definition of dispossession right which is Dispossession quote is “the action of depriving someone of land, property, or other possessions” So, you’d would think that is all we need to say about the matter but then we wouldn’t be anthropologists cause all we do talk right so we got to do
[0:05:55]AJ: Talk talk talk (laugh)
[0:05:56]BT: We got to talk about the history right, we got talk about context, and we got to talk about the usage.
[0:05:56] AJ: Exactly
[0:06:04] BT: So, first you know we going park over with our old friend and German philosopher Karl Marx, who I call Marxy Marx
[0:06:15] AJ: Marxy Marx’s friend laugh Marxy Marx and the funky bunch [Laughter]
[0:06:22]BT: Is that real, … is that a man?
[0:06:23] AJ: Marky Mark you know Mark Wahlberg Marky Mark and the funky bunch
[0:06:27] BT: Oh gosh well Karl Marx
[0:06:31] AJ: I got it: Marxy Mark and the Foucky bunch!
[0:06:37] AJ: Oh snap we just started a whole new band, okay!
[0:06:41] BT: We did of philosophers!
[0:06:45] AJ: Well actually I think we have to start with our wonderful Scottish economist Adam Smith. So, before Marx, Adam argued that capitalism rose from workers specializing in particular aspects of the labor process and some people being hard workers and good savers. So, he called this original accumulation. Marx was like umm no, a whole system of exploitation doesn’t arise from some people saving their pennies and so he introduced the term primitive accumulation. He argued that you have to take into account violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism in order to understand the accumulation of land and wealth. In capital volume 1. He writes “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of Black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of the capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation.”
[0:07:53]BT: Now, (sigh) see even Marxy Mark has his critics, I might be one of them lowkey, but ah Rosa Luxemburg who is a Polish- German Revolutionary and she was abducted and assassinated in 1919.
[0:08:08] AJ: Yea she was pretty anti-colonialism, anti- imperialism. I read some of her work for my exams. She actually wrote an essay about Martinique after the volcanic explosion that annihilated an entire town in 1902 and the gist of the essay was all of the rest of you colonizers will burn in hell on earth one day too.
[Laugh]
[0:08:37] AJ: Very loosely paraphrasing but that was the gist of it.
[0:08:42] BT: Wow! Not she prophet and a bad bitch. Ok girl. I love it. She critiqued Marx’s assertion that workers would be buying commodities from the bourgeoisie and to helping them turn a profit. So, goods would become unaffordable. Therefore, capitalists needed to sell their goods in order to in other economies to make any money. And she argued that expansion is the crux of accumulation: capitalism needs to constantly expand into non capitalist areas, in order to access resources markets and cheap labor. However this was self-defeating because as non-capitalist economies became capitalist there would be no more markets to sell into and then capitalism would break down dun dun, hence all y’all burning in… literally burning we are literally burning today um
[0:09:37] AJ: Have we reached max accumulation? I mean there are a lot of critiques of Luxemburg’s work, but this is where we are going to come to dispossession because enter David Harvey. He’s working through her work and a little bit recuperating her work. David Harvey contemporary Marxist geographer and drawing on Rosa Luxemburg’s work he proposes the concept of accumulation by dispossession. He argues that depriving people of the land and public assets through privatization, financialization, manipulating crises, and state redistribution plays an integral role in the bourgeoisie gaining power and oppressing the working class. Accumulation is no longer just about production, it’s about trading and exchanging asset values.
So, I think we all know, we might know America loves privatizing public goods. And they definitely love manipulating a crisis. Definitely love that (mmh hmm) and increasing, increasing uh what is it called uh interest rates stuff like that. Disaster capitalism, love it, it’s like the backbone of the United States So typically what there say is by privatizing this public good its going to be more efficient, less corrupt, it’s going to create more jobs, etcetera, etcetera. Healthcare is a really great example of that. So, rather than deciding everyone deserves a quality accessible healthcare, the best kind of healthcare is reserved for those with the most resources. America chooses freedom or liberty. That is the freedom to choose your provider over equality. So, this is the history and the weight of that word dispossession. It carries a ton of that history and weight with it when people write in their journal articles. Even though there just be like and the dispossession of this. The dispossession of Black people in movie theaters by buying tickets um.
[0:11:39] BT: Yea.
[0:11:40] AJ: I don’t think that he was talking about alienation.
[0:1143]BT: Definitely was not about.. you know
[0:11:45] AJ: and labor and land but,
[0:11:47] BT: Actually capitalist exchange right and so dispossession has its history and its roots definitely in Black Studies and Indigenous Studies, and sometimes those coalesce. Sometimes Black studies and Indigenous studies come together in their understanding of dispossession. And sometimes they diverge but I won’t get into the politics of that today. But if you’re like wondering like what does that have to do with reproductive justice? We are going to connect the dots for you. Okay, we can be materially and ontologically dispossessed right, through chattel slavery is the is the example of that right, how do you turn a person into an object right? You dispossess them of their personhood. And so Black birthing people have historically been dispossessed of their reproductive rights and even their access to motherhood. And we’ll get into that later.
[0:12:45] AJ: Very soon in fact very soon
[0:12:48] BT: Fact um hmm
[0:12:52] AJ: So precisely I think Saidiya Hartman said that dispossession uh teethers us to the event of slavery. So it is something that is inherited, its passed on from generation to generation and that dispossession was codified in partus sequitur ventrem which is the law of slavery that says “that which is bought forth follows the womb.” That is the child will inherit the status of the mother. Which is something that we discussed in our Afropessimism episode which was season 1 episode 14. If you want to hear more about that wonderful Latin term.
[0:13:30] BT: and that’s right we did. It’s actually one of our most listened to episodes so.
[0:13:36] AJ: Oh no, it’s the most listened to episodes.
[0:13:38] BT: Its thee oh thee most listened to period. Everyone said we need to learn about dispossession and Blackness, that’s right.
[0:13:42] AJ: Afropessimism
[0:13:45} BT: Heard you, Afropessimism period
[0:13:52] AJ: Let us know if send us message lets us know on social media uh if you want us to do a part two to Afro pessimism episode you can hit us up at Zora’s Daughters on Instagram or zoras_daughters on twitter. Just live tweet us while you’re listening okay
[0:14:03] BT: Yes
[0:14:05] AJ: Someone told us that we need to do more reminding people to send us messages during the episode so,
[0:14:08] BT: Please do
[0:14:10] AJ: So here we are
[0:14:12] BT: We want to hear from you. We are going to go ahead and transition into what we are reading today. So, Alyssa what are we reading today?
Music break
[0:14:19] AJ: We are reading “The meaning of Liberty” in Killing the Black Body: Race Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts.
I’m really excited that we’re reading this because we’ve talked about it a few times. I think it kinda came back into vogue for certain folks. In like uh I want to say 2017 came back into vogue It never left vogue for many of us however.
[0:14:51] BT: Yes
[0:14:54] AJ: But now we get to dive in. Dorothy Roberts is the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the Law School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her path breaking work in law and public policy focuses on urgent contemporary issues in health, social justice, and bio ethics, especially as they impact the lives of women, children, and African-Americans. Her major books include Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families— and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World which was published this year; Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-first Century published in 2011, Shattered Bonds: The color of Child Welfare published in 2002 and of course what we are reading today Killing the Black Body: Race Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty which was published in 1997. She is the author of more than 100 articles and book chapters, as well as a coeditor of six books on such topics as constitutional law, and women and the law.
[0:15:57] BT: Wow, I don’t know can you name a more prolific scholar?
[0:16:10] AJ: Yea this is cool this is our second legal/law scholar that we are reading on the podcast.
[0:16:13] BT: Yea that is true
[0:16:15] AJ: So yea here we are channeling DuBois famous question “How does it feel to be a problem?” Roberts analyzes the problem of Black procreation. The way Black Motherhood and birthing bodies have been historically and contemporaneously pathologized by white America in order to justify racist archetypes and control childbearing. She shows that policies purported to help Black communities actually reinforce the stereotypes that Black people themselves and not racial inequality are the reason for their, our subjugation. With this text Roberts makes three overarching assertions: racial oppression is exercised on Black women’s bodies through controlling their reproductive decisions. This control has shaped how we understand reproductive liberty in the US; and finally, we must expand our understanding of reproductive liberty to account for racial oppression.
[0:17:10] BT: And so there’s something really interesting happening here. And it might be a mark of the time that Roberts published this right but this, her instance on using the word liberty and working within that category which is something that I think we’ll talk about our guest possibly as well. Um what we might hear these days right are reproductive justice. And so reproductive justice might be reaching more towards what Roberts was gesturing towards in her work. But what is it? We keep throwing this word around. Reproductive Justice as defined by SisterSong which is a women of color reproductive justice collective understands reproductive justice “as a human right that is about access and not choice because there is no choice when there is no access; and it’s not just concerned with abortion. So, abortion is critical but access to contraception, compressive sex education, STI prevention and care, alternative birth options, adequate pre-natal and pregnancy care, domestic violence assistance, adequate wages to support our families, safe homes and more are also necessary.
So the chapter that we are reading today helps us rethink the meaning of reproductive freedom in order to account for, what Roberts names as equality but I would say she actually trying to gesture past that in a way. And so, she gives us another way of improving life for Black people that actually if we are thinking intersectionality right would improve things for everyone.
[0:19:06] AJ: I think the other thing about her working through the framework of liberty is of course she is a legal scholar.
[0:19:13] BT: mmm-hmm
[0:19:17] AJ: and she is looking at the constitution and what liberty means within that context. But we’ll get into that a little bit. We are no constitutional experts
[0:19:23] BT: We are not.
[0:19:25] AJ: And especially not me, I’m like what constitution? We have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I know a little bit about that one and we can talk about that because people argue that abortion is enshrined in the charter of rights and freedoms in Canada. But some people say no. Anyhow, this chapter is a critical interpretation of the meanings of freedom and liberty in the legal sense. And how when not accompanied by a racial analysis precludes equality. Additionally, the liberal reproductive liberty movements Roberts is talking about, they were interested in maintaining the arrangements that made it possible for them to have choice. To have the choice. Specifically, abortion but individual choice does not guarantee access. So, when it comes to reproductive liberty, Roberts explains that liberty is understood negatively. This is in the legal constitutional context. Not negative as in bad but that we have the right against state interference. So, this is opposed to a positive right that would for example provide the resources needed to support procreative activities. It means that the state cannot legally enforce birth control on racialized groups as an example under threat of imprisonment, but they can constrain them into it. Like by tying access to benefits to having Nexplanon is that what’s it’s called Nexplanon? a birth control implant. So, you have to, in order to receive your benefits or in order to receive more benefits you have to have a semi-permanent birth control inserted into your body. In this structure where liberty is valued over equality choices is reserved for those with the means to afford it and we expect and accept vast social inequities. Roberts writes” Inequality is the price we may have to freedom. Liberty rests on the assumption that the individuals’ rights and autonomy take precedence over social justice. We see how capitalism, liberalism, and Anti-Black racism form a web where having the right to choose means that some folks those that are wealthy and privileged will always have more choices than those who are not wealthy.”
[0:21:51] BT: Right and for Black women who are demonized and denigrated, right and that actually forms the structure of the legal system. In which we under which we live (whew) um their choices are limited by stereotypes and government action and in action. So, Black women have this unique position and in which its seen as moral and just to limit their reproductive choices. And I like to uh to say kinda personally that poor folks and Black folks have to make decisions and not choices, right. We don’t get that kinda of like to have a choice is a rich white kinda thing right. And we gotta make decisions, um. Also, would like to flag that in 1997, so some of y’all weren’t even a speck in your parents eyes. (laugh) Right? Roberts was talking about the fears of about the Supreme Court overruling Roe v. Wade. Right so that reproductive justice activists were mobilizing 25 years ago. Right so, just like today that mobilization was motivated um by the threat of affluent women losing their reproductive rights rather than participating in the ongoing organizing for equal rights and protections for all. And not only that but Roberts, explains that the movements attention to the right of an abortion was simultaneously narrow and large enough to overshadow the needs of Black women. And so, these racist discourses that cast Black women as unfit mothers or really to name them as only fit to mother white women’s children, right. It also impair their choices not only for abortion, but other aspects of reproduction and parenting. And, in other chapters of the book she talks about um how access to IVF which is In vitro fertilization and other kind of reproductive technologies are specifically um, geared towards white affluent people who were able to reproduce in that way. Right so at the same time that you have this kind of legal action and in action to discourage Black women from reproducing right you have legal action and in action through the framework of liberty to encourage white folks to reproduce right. And under the name of the “individual choice” the right to choose as an individual. And so, Roberts explains that “addressing the particular concerns of Black women helps to expand our vision of reproductive freedom to include the full scope of what it means to have control of over one’s reproductive life.”
[0:24:43] AJ: See like had y’all just been thinking, intersectionality 25, 35 years ago, WE WOULD NOT BE where we are today (whoo) (laugh) I know it’s a big ask it’s a huge lift.
[0:25:08] AJ: What can we say?
[0:25:11] AJ: But of course, what that means is attention to Black women’s experiences demand that we reject the preoccupation with abortion rights and turn our attention to a broader vision of reproductive freedom and reproductive justice. Liberty drawn from the US constitution does not guarantee social justice, access or choice. It does not undo the infrastructure that makes it so that some people do not have a choice in the first place and others have you know have to make decisions (mmhmm) I think her closing line is especially Black feminist when she says “My objective is not to deny the wealthy people options because others do not have them. Rather my vision of liberty seeks to ensure that dispossessed and disempowered groups share the means to be self-determining and valued members of society.” So it’s about expansion. And why some people receive that as foreclosing or encroaching upon their rights, I will never know.
[0:26:10] BT: I mean.. I will say (laugher) I will say raise my finger up as they do in the church um
[0:26:26] AJ: Isn’t that for when you have to go to the bathroom or something [laugh]?
[0:26:28] BT: Let me just interject quickly, laugh that one of the things I found interesting about her working within these frameworks right is really and something that I think and also bring up our guest too is how we can, how we as Black folks, need to start pushing outside of the language that has been given towards us. So rather than saying retaking liberty or refashioning liberty to include us when we know that it was written without us, right. What are other words or things that we can reach towards that help us actually define what we are looking for. Um but of course this was written in 1997 and it’s for legal lawyers, they don’t like to push the boundaries too much. It’s going to cost them a paycheck. So, yea um I like that’s one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately.
[0:27:15] AJ: So that takes us to our final segment Which is what
[0:27:22] BT: What
[0:27:24] AJ: What, what in the world (chile)
[0:27:30] BT: What in the world is going on?
[0:27:32] AJ: What’s going on
Music
[0:27:36] BT: Today we have with us a friend, a love, my world and she’ll get that once you listen to this…
[0:27:43] laugh
[0:27:46] BT: …Professor Mali Collins. Mali Collins is assistant professor in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies (CRGC) at American University. Her research areas include Black motherhood studies, Black archival studies, 20th and 21st century literature and art, medical humanities, digital technology, and reproductive health, and justice. She is a practicing birth, postpartum, and pregnancy termination doula, and a trained Perinatal and Infant Loss advocate with the Womb Room in Baltimore, MD. Dr. Collins is currently preparing her book manuscript, Scrap, Theory, Reproductive Injustice in the Black Feminist Imagination which is under contract with OSU press 2024. Which creates new methodologies to investigate contemporary formations of Black maternal dispossession within the confines of radical documentation and archiving. So welcome to the Zoom studio Dr. Collins.
[0:28:47] AJ: Aye welcome
[0:28:55] BT: Okay, welcome to the zoom studio Dr. Collins it is so wonderful to see you on this lovely Monday evening
[0:29:04] Mali (MC):Hi Alyssa, Hi Brendane.
[0:29:07] AJ: Hi! There is a lot of air sign energy in the room. We have a fellow Aquarius for y’all (yes we do MC in background).
[0:29:14] BT: With a Sag moon, so watch out! (Laugh) We are so excited to have you on and so we’re just going to get started and start with our first question, which is what does reproductive justice mean to you?
[0:29:32] MC: Whew so these are really all of your questions are great. And yea this is a good one I think this is a question that my answer changes a lot. Um and I think for me I follow in the academic sense I think I follow the Black feminist tenet right, of Loretta Ross which is reproductive justice is the right to not have kids it’s the right to have kids, and if I want kids to raise them safely into adulthood. For me, I think it’s also my right to reproduce what I would like when I want, and I think that’s something that people forget a lot about reproductive justice. Or just reproductive capacity in general is that we are all reproducing all the time. Whether that’s cultural mores or reproducing institutions, family, toxicity, we’re reproducing a lot of the time. So we are all reproductive subjects and for me reproductive justice is really understanding how you are a reproductive subject and how you move in the world and how you affect other people based on your reproductive flagrant.
[0:30:51]BT: Wow that is such an expansive definition I don’t think I would have ever thought about reproducing all of those different things in that way but that is something that is important for us to seek justice for and around um however you define justice. And, I was telling Alyssa, earlier that um one of the things I really am starting to dislike strongly I won’t use the word hate is the ways that a lot of Black people have to work within these frameworks, like justice and liberty and equality etc. that are already… democracy that are already built on our exclusion. And so we’re always trying to like write ourselves or think ourselves into it um and so I like your expansion of reproductive justice to include all of these different things and I’m like also thinking okay what if we could rename that as something make it Black just rename it. Just get rid of you know the language that has been given to us I wonder what that would be that’s not something I’m posing as a question to you. But it’s something I’ve been really thinking about.
[0:32:01] MC: Well, you all have been reading Dorothy Roberts, right? And I think that’s really like the thrust or what she is writing between the lines right in that last chapter when she is asking us. What is liberty? Because if liberty always with the hammer of justice and institutions, and like the state well then how does that even apply right and so I would pose, my question always to my students is we’re constantly operating in this grammar of unfreedom. Well, this is what Black people can’t do. Look at what that white person did. I can’t believe Brett Favre. What like look, at what these white people are doing to us I can’t believe it. They put another Black woman in jail for an abortion. Like we have all this grammar for the shit we’re in, right and how the violation of our reproductive liberties. But, if we really want to talk about what’s on the other side of that piece well, what’s the grammar for Black reproductive freedom. Like I don’t even have a grammar for that, and I think that’s what Roberts is talking about the in the fourth chapter like when she is quoting Patricia Williams too. So it’s like yea so how do I go about dispossession and talk about our reproductive freedom at the same time Like we don’t even know how to do it we aren’t there yet?
[0:33:18] BT: And what does it mean to have freedom and to hold freedom when you can’t really hold yourself right in this grammar of unfreedom that you’re talking about. So Yea that’s really
[0:33:32] BT: And so you do I’m just going like toot your horn here. You wear so many different hats because of your super stellium and Capricorn you always got keep a bag about you. And you are doula for birth, postpartum, pregnancy termination, you’re also an advocate for perinatal and infant loss um and I just you are a mother as well so right, you’re operating through all of these different hats and I’m wondering for you when the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was announced right. What did you feel and what did you think was at stake for Black birthing people in that moment?
[0:34:17] MC: Um that’s a great question yea so I do a lot of labor a lot of reproductive labor but I think this Roe v. Wade moment is similar to these other spectacles of our era. Right, like not to reduce the murder of George Floyd but that was a large spectacle for our country, the election of Trump, was a spectacle right all of these like moments that bookmark injustice for us and Roe v Wade felt no different. Um the overturn of Roe V Wade felt no different for me in that respect especially since I study, I know there are Black people in jail like literally right now in the same state 30 miles away from me like because they googled how to have a medicalized abortion. I mean like, what is going to change? But I think then really think about it what’s really scary for me for Black people we have to continue to think about how the overturn of Roe V Wade just simply allows the state to do more nefarious things. Right so we have southern states like Missouri which already confiscate the records of everybody’s periods at their one Planned Parenthood in the state right they have spreadsheets of people periods to keep track of those people things. We know in Mississippi that statue well even the US like federally the statute of limitations, on murder there is no statue. Right, you commit a crime when you were 15 you can be tried when you are 70 but we are going to see the extending of the statute of limitations for things like um seeking an abortion. Right so even if I have a 15-year-old who is alive and kicking and doing amazing things. If I initially sought to have an abortion when I was pregnant with that 15-year-old I can be tried for child endangerment and attempted murder right so these are these extensions in Southern states. Well states that I grew up in Wisconsin that they are actively trying to enact. So that, because it is not enough to put Black people in jail now. We have to retroactively punish Black people for their reproductive freedoms in the past. Yea, so generationally we are seeing people put on trial both culturally and also legally.
[0:36:39] BT: This brings me to just one of the articles that you wrote about the period tracking apps, and you know just like telling people to delete the apps off your phone cause that data is sold. Because, that data is sold to governments, that data is sold to people who can, you know, put you in jail for missing a period. And can call that a miscarriage. Um right and that can be something you are tried for attempted murder. Um or child endangerment as you named and then also, just as a general warning to folks who even if you are in state that you know abortion is legal to think about and be very careful about what you share publicly on social media and also who you tell about these kinds of procedures. Um we are going to move into a space where if someone knows someone who has had an abortion right you could be held criminally liable or legally liable. And so that’s just a warning.
[0:37:37] AJ: I would say just thinking based on building on what you were saying it made me think of Chrissy Teigen recently coming out and saying oh it wasn’t just a loss of a child that I had, we are going to call it what it is. It was an abortion and I just was trying to think about what is that going to do for like abortion laws, what is that going to do for her and does that actually help anybody, by her announcing that?
[0:38:01 BT: um sorry I’m not laughing
[0:38:05] AJ: Are you laughing?
[0:38:16] BT: I was a little bit just because thinking about Chrissy Teigen helping people that just made me laugh but that’s all that’s it.
[0:38:21] AJ: Yea it’s really an oxymoron
[0:38:28] AJ: but I think what I was trying to work through It’s kinda like the whole me too thing. Right one person told there story then everyone else was like oh, I’m going to tell my story, me too me too me too this happened to me too And that caused or created a kind of awareness and some kinda of change right So, is that part of the reason that she is doing that is now a culture of if I come out and say this particularly as a celebrity would someone who has um like social clout and lots of followers influence. Is that then going to encourage other people and is that dangerous?
[0:39:05] MC: Well I think you hit it on the head right there. Chrissy Teigen has a lot of privilege. So she gets to say I had an abortion. One because she lives in California, she rich, She’s is famous and nothing is happening to Chrissy Teigen right, and this actually ties into kinda well the MeToo movement but also something that um Brendane just said we also have to be really aware of this particular cultural moment That we are going to see is a lot of not just white but just like the celebrity of reproductive justice culture creating what I would think of really a fourth wave which is what the white feminists do with waves right. Create a fourth wave of reproductive justice or just feminism, feminist rights. When Black feminist have been doing this for a time there have been no waves. So, you know we should have been or Black feminists would articulate a key reproductive justice moment, as the death of Trayvon Martin. Not when Roe v. Wade was overturned. So, I think there is a lot of cultural piggybacking. I see a lot of like my work being regurgitated right now by white journalists. Like there was huge I’m getting a little salty but there was a huge like really.
[0:40:16] AJ: On no. Be the ocean girl laugh
[0:40:23] MC: I know no other way. So, there was um like a really well know white woman journalist that who had basically verbatim. The article that I wrote Rewired news that I published Brendane just mentioned Almost like some parallels like word for word about period tracking apps that went viral um after Roe v. Wade. Um so, it’s a lot of hey, you know it’s just again Black feminists are doing this work first and now it’s being popularized because to it’s spectacle um, but I think people like Chrissy Teigen too have an opportunity to give lots and lots of money to bail Black women out who again are in jail right now for having abortions. Who are having GoFundMes for people right now. You can put in the show notes for people who just want to raise money so that they can buy their kids school clothes because they are not living at home anymore because they are in jail.
[0:41:27]um hmm.
[0:41:31] MC: And so it’s about the erasure of. I’m always worried about the erasure of but yeah, Black women who have just been in jail and been prosecuted for a violation for like their reproductive rights not being upheld. While Chrissy Teigen gets to put a feather in her cap
[0:41:41] Yea
[0:41:42]MC: Look how real I am
[0:41:44] BT:TM real TM you know
[0:41:50] BT: Yea I think remember you tweeting about your article being stolen. Um, and (that’s wild) it’s just umm so sorry that people are like this um and but what you said about like Black feminist space and doing this work then ringing the alarm then saying we need to expand what we fight for reproductive justice um and reproductive freedom for all people but especially Black people. It made me think about how um right this focus on abortion as Roberts, Dorothy Roberts says right, is actually something that is very white. This focus on access to abortion has being this white affluent issue um where actually, if we were to take on the experiences of Black women right, Black birthing people we would actually be able to expand the fight for reproductive justice and um Alyssa kinda made this quip at the end and it’s just like and we don’t know why people don’t want to expand rights for everyone. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Um and so I was just saying that as an aside but, I would like to ask you like in addition to donating to GoFundMe’s for people who are mothers who are unable to provide for their children because they’re in prison during um for exercising their reproductive unfreedom I guess we could call it. What um other things would you recommend? For people to do um that are trying to push against these systems?
[0:43:50]MC: Yea um I mean I’m very pessimistic about the systems TM um you know because like um here we are 2022. I just don’t know what can be done. I think on a very individual or community level um I think the best exhibitions or actions for reproductive justice is like what the type of camaraderie and family I have. You Brendane is, you know like I moved to Baltimore as a single Black mom. I don’t have any family there right so Brendane is the person that comes to take my kids right. Right I can’t pick them up from school, and I think that’s huge right like access to child care, access to free child care, access to just community in general. Um I think it’s also things that people can do. Um we need more free doula services. And in a very flippant but hilarious uh phase of my midwife she said, “a doula ain’t nothin but a back rubber” and like I mean that in the best way right because if you think of traditional birthing practices right it was one of the only moments of privacy that enslaved women had, which is that they had a small cadre of other women around them. If nothing else to learn how birth went so that could help each other birth. Cause one of the of only moments, right of privacy. And there are moments like that I think we can recreate that type of circle. Right, and that means of all areas of reproductive labor. Like you know someone who’s having a baby, why don’t you drop off food for them? If you know someone who doesn’t have access to clean water, drop off water for them like expanding our notions of reproductive labor. Your kill professor who needs a cup of coffee, drop off that cup of coffee you know what I’m saying?
[0:45:28] AJ: Coffee (laugh)
[0:45:31] MC: Hashtag AU! But yea, obviously money is really great. I would just like obviously be weary to say this on your podcast but be weary of donating to really large foundations. And um if you are going to give money make sure that it is really localized. I’m really into like why are you giving back to communities that you didn’t come from right because there is no such thing of giving back to somewhere you’ve never been. So, um giving to communities you came from. Or just helping, yea there are states right now that are total abortion bands. Right making sure those people have rides. There’s Facebook groups and things like that you can make connections in.
[0:46:09] AJ: Making sure that those people have been doing that are anchored in that community for a while and not just posting something on Twitter. And saying if you need an abortion and I will drive you it’s like, you are trying to get us both arrested. Why are you doing this? (laugh) But I think those, that is really good advice like being involved in a regular basis. Being involved in community. I think that people after roe v wade was overturned people were so scarred. People were just like I can’t believe that this was happening. That this is happening what am I going to do? And it’s like if you were involved in the organizing, if you were involved in the movement and you knew what was going on this wouldn’t have surprised you. And you wouldn’t be so shocked right now. You would be like I know exactly what I need to do in order to continue living my life in this unfreedom that we’re in. In America.
[0:47:03] BT: Yeah
[0:47:04]MC: It hasn’t really stopped my work as an abortion doula. I mean like I help like two people have abortions a couple days after it was overturned. And I mean obviously, live in Maryland where it’s not as punitive obviously. But
[0:47:23] BT: Larry Hogan got the… (oh laugh) I’mma leave it there uh
[0:47:27 AJ: Not yet
[0:47:30] MC: Um I mean but does it change a lot. No, I mean, people are still free to go. Abortion clinics are pretty underfunded are pretty dingy, they smell weird and there’s triggering episodes of Law and Order still on those little TV screens in the corner. Like, I mean there us like it’s like abortion is always going to happen. They’re always going to happen um so this is just an opportunity for us to pivot again like you were saying turn to other forms of reproductive justice work that we can do. Let’s recenter talking about clean water, Baltimore City Schools, lets recenter talking about food justice, right all of these different things, gun violence
[0:48:07] BT: Yea and one thing that I saw as an opportunity to for folks um at this time is to really get connected with kinda ancestral practices as you were mentioning. Right this kind of this, creating that community around you at birth that midwife, your doula, your other supporting birthing people around you. Um but also for people who are kinda of I guess dependent on period apps and things like that to think about this is an opportunity to become reconnected to your body and ways that like, capitalism um and technology has like disconnected us from our bodies. Right and so for folks who bleed who are concerned like there are ways to there are herbal practices. There’s other you know I be doing my wild carrot seed oil but I’m not endorsing that I’m not endorsing. I’m just saying that I do it sometimes um (background laugh) as part of my practice too. Now that um I’m having sex with someone who could get me pregnant right, so like. These are things that I’m also tracking my own cycle on paper. And just like making sure that I keep up with my own systems. Right and understanding what it means to like uh be in my own body and so, I’m I don’t know. I saw it not as an exciting I won’t use the word exciting but like this is like an opening right for us to actually get reconnected to our bodies and ways that this medical system has taken from us. Um and just the vision of like giving birth with a small community. That to me just seems really exciting. Um so I want to encourage that, but also encourage for folks who have a high risk of pregnancies right, we also want to fight for them to be able to have a safe community around them. Rather that includes medical doctors, etcetera. They can also give birth and survive it.
[0:50:14] AJ: Well our word for the day was dispossession. And of course your book manuscript is about Black maternal dispossession So I just want to hear you chat about that a little bit. What does that mean to you. How are you unpacking that and working through it in your book the Conduct of Black Maternal Dispossession?
[0:50:34] BT: So we go buy it (laugh) we trying to run it up when it comes out whew
[0:50:39] MC: Whew I have to go back to my defense like Jen Nash asking me like I’m a legal scholar. What is dispossession cause to me I see it like. Oh, I engage dispossession like on the level of alienation. Right, and I mean if you want to get freaky with it right natal alienation, in particular, Orlando Patterson’s idea of natal alienation is the originality separation of a child or a parent or person from their community from their parent or like the person that is there to take care of them. The person to who they belong and replacing that belonging with someone who owns them. And so, in the book I’m looking at I’m always oscillating and think its air sign thing. But I don’t think it’s useful to only think about Black mothers as like people. I think of Black motherhood as a social location I think about it as an experience I think about it as an institution and in response to those many forms, I also think about dispossession as, you know as a separation of from your mother tongue, being dispossessed of your language being dispossessed of your mother land. And then also being dispossessed of your actual mother or literal caregiver. Um and so I think that dispossession can be act, but what I’m really interested in what happens in that lack (mmh)? Right, the lack that is left over. The vacancy. How do we continue to try to fill that vacancy? Can the void be filled? Are we always chasing it by reproducing it in other relationships.
[0:52:19] AJ: We are all coughing a little bit
[0:52:17] BT: Not Me (laughing)
[0:52:19] AJ: Yea (laughing) In my throat ooh
[0:52:25] BT: Therapy on Mondays.
[0:52:28] MC: I just met with LaShawn earlier he was okay, but um how much right does dispossession just as much as we have this legacy we’re like oh you know that the ancestors talking all that is transgenerational trauma. Yes, and how much is it your shit, from being dispossessed? In real time, right from things from whom into what you belong and how are we reproducing dispossession for other people and acting that out. Right so like again I’m interested in the effected histories. I don’t think that always an archive, institutional archive right with, insidious archiving practices. Or say like a travelers journal from like the 15th century. They just don’t plainly they don’t articulate the affective histories right as like Roberts writes it will articulate monetary loss for the master when a baby dies. But no one records how the mom felt. No one recorded that, except I think right through cultural representations through visuals and the material work we create today when we’re all re-triggered. When we see another Black kid dead. Right, how does that illustrate what they felt then? How do they speak through us? And so, I just think you know dispossession never left us it’s always here and we are still reproducing. It’s our legacy.
[0:53:48] AJ: Wow.
[0:53:51] BT: Period.
[0:53:53] MC: Period. Saidiya Hartman wrote that last line, not me.
[0:53:58] BT: (laugh) We talked about that earlier when we defined, when we defined dispossession so,
[0:54:06] MC: Page 7, page 7 was your moment
[0:54:10] AJ: Um really all up in my mind like wow yea, we there are definitely ways that while we reproduce those things I mean, of course, it’s cultural we’re learning now that it can be genetic um with Afro genetic and things like that. So we are kinda seeing those remnants and those left overs of the past and in our productions today in our cultural and social productions today. Yea you got me in my thoughts. and I’m thinking
[0:54:39] MC: Oh that’s where I stay hmm
[0:54:45] BT: Yea and I think one of the one of the through lines that I see in your work and just in this Black feminist reproductive freedom, reproductive justice or insert new word here for me its like, I just we need to talk about something else and do something else. Um of this kind of incorporation of the affective and that’s something that as in affect scholar. Ooh I don’t want to call myself that eww ( you got to do it, say it out loud background) From someone who reads affect theory. Um and you know we’re discovering, or white people mainly white men are discovering that feelings and how people see your feelings and interpret your feelings matter and how you move through the world. Right so there’s that boom in the affective that that happened um that I would say in the last decade or so. I think you are really pointing to this again, Black feminists been doing this work right and in turning to outside of the archive um and thinking about how can we tell and re-tell a story that. Is being told but is also kind of foretold? Um which is something that Joy James talks about when she talks about um Black death being kind of integral to democracy. As something that we cannot actually have democracy without having Black people in particular Black children be you know killed. And Um one of the lines that she says in the essay I can’t remember exactly but I was like this is a very reproductive justice moment and where she is like Black parents particularly, Black mothers not only have to worry about dying in birth but then have to turn around and see their child time as stolen time as if as long The length of my child’s life right is actually stolen time because they are never meant to survive and so. One of the things I think I would love to see more of and Black movements that aren’t headed by Black feminists right is this incorporation of thinking of reproductive justice but of course that would require people to let go of the fantasy that you know Black Cis men are going to free us and be our leaders or the fantasy that like reproductive justice also does not affect them. Right so yea that is just also something that I thought about um
[0:57:31] MC: I mean I think an affective reality is how I came to my project and I mean my dissertation was really me working through postpartum depression, that I had after I had my son. So, I had, I went to a perinatal support group when I was like 9 months pregnant. I was sitting there and one of like two people of color this is in Maryland. And everyone was just like I can’t wait for my baby I’m just going to put him, in all these things and this is what we are going to do, and I was like. I can wait I just felt like I wanted my son to stay inside of me for as long as possible I felt he might make it to six might make it to eight might make it to 12. We all know high profile Black children who have died at those ages if I was lucky to even birth him safely. You know and that was shortly after Tamir Rice’s death and murder, and you know I would I was basically arrested for lack of a better term by that type of preemptive grief you know my son wasn’t held by anybody but me. And I didn’t me and Sonu we were buddies. We didn’t leave the house and I didn’t want anyone to look at him didn’t want to touch him didn’t want to cross the street. I just didn’t want to expose him to anything. And so, this dissertation was really me just investigating like you know I can’t be the only one who thinks this way. I knew a type of clinical term [cuts out]. I was talking to my therapist you are dealing with this. it will pass. My son hit 2 and I’m like it’s even worse now, you know. It grew exponentially and so I think in a lot of ways I mean so like the book that really like made it clear for me was Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body and you know in the first chapter when she is talking about that woman Ida and that’s who I dedicated my book to because you know, she fought to keep her child in the field with her and so she could hear the baby cry um and when she needed to nurse them. And then a storm came, and rain filled the ditch and her baby drowned. And um (clears throat) they were told to go back to work. You know and no one knew how she felt. And at that time, I felt I knew how she felt or I could feel what she was feeling. And so it was just my job to continually investigate not necessarily why I knew the why we felt that way. But would do now not necessarily to cope but I don’t really operate in that word. Umm but how we continue to endure and why I choose to and choose to have another Black child why I want to have more Black children.
[01:00:07] AJ: Okay I wanted to ask uh do you watch the Handmaid’s Tale?
[01:00:18]MC: So, I’m I don’t watch the Handmaid’s Tale um because currently my um my very highly intellectual repertoire is only including the 90 Day Fiancé series. Um oh my gosh we
[01:00:28] AJ: We can be friends
[01:00:32]MC: Oh I know I’m worried about how deep your invest in this cause I can go deep
[01:00:36] MC: I actually thought about starting a podcast
[01:00:39} AJ: So have I!
[01:00:42] MC: Oh, I’m sorry I don’t watch the Handmaid’s Tale
[01:00:43] AJ: Damn
[01:00:43] MC: I’m sorry I don’t have anything cute to say about it
[01:00:45] AJ: Darn
[01:00:46:] MC: I’m sorry
[01:00:48] AJ: Well I was just thinking for the listeners out there,
[01:00:50] MC: Oh, I know
[01:00:52] AJ: In the last episode June she is the main character. She’s finally escaped to Gilead which is the fascist regime that takes over the formerly known as the United States and June finally escapes, she has a second child. She has with her and um she’s playing on the swing in the most recent episode and this woman who’s like Gilead kinda follower acolyte in Canada. Cause now the main character June is a refugee in Canada and their playing on the swing and this woman walks up and is like “you are so lucky that you have a child you must feel so blessed you’re so blessed” and when she like please thank you like back off, she’s like “you’re a slut you’re a fucking slut”. And I’m just like, okay this is interesting cause like in the Handmaid’s Tale there’s like this interesting thing dichotomy or um this split of the mind. Where people are like wow you are so blessed to have children but at the same time, anyone who does have them unless they’re like an elite. It’s a slut and I’m like this people think oh wow I’m you this is happening to white women so I can completely relate but at the same time, that’s very similar rhetoric that has been used against Black women right like oh you have a child that’s great and if people don’t watch the Handmaid’s Tale it’s like a dystopian reality or dystopian society where people where like fertility rates are down cause of like population and stuff like that. That’s what Dorothy Roberts was talking about.
[01:02:32} BT: She literally called for the psychic I don’t know if she used the word split but she does actually name that it’s like an actual psychic process that happens. Right where Black women are necessary applauded for having children but under slavery right it’s like your survival is dependent upon how. if you birth right and what you birth, how much you birth. Right you are so your praise or whatever is that. Then at same time as soon as you cross that threshold right you are um
[01:03:07] AJ: You’re now marked as a Jezebel.
[01:03:07] BT: Yea the Jezebel the whore
[01:03:10] AJ: You’re marked as the Jezebel, the whore.
[01:03:13] BT: That’s in my dissertation
[01:03:16] MC: I mean Black children signified right, you’re basically saying they signify our value and our ability to produce to make more value and like it’s the same side of the coin It also render us valueless. Because we’ve been sullied or if the child was born not for productive means I mean now right in a child slavery sense of course. Children work as products but let’s look now in a different type of way and a more psychic enslavement. Our children aren’t directly born as products there useless their futile. Right and I think Brendane you traffic in this work right so useful that we now talk about catalyst we talk about slavery as a holocaust, as genocide. I think we are now in this iteration of the African diasporic experience since enslavement but after the life of slavery like, now we are currently in the Holocaust of Black children right just iterating differently now we are in a new phase with that Holocaust
[01:04:20] BT: Yeah
[01:04:15] AJ: I don’t want to make it hot Brendane, but I know that is something that you talk about with like there being this unrealized motherhood in all Black girls who don’t make it womanhood. Right like I don’t want to make it hot cause I know that is your dissertation.
[01:04:35]BT: I mean you can make it as hot as you want ‘cause you know I’m still working through some of what I’m thinking about. But yeah, and Mali I like what you said about ‘sullied’ . There is something about the imagination right the imagination of motherhood and this projection of motherhood on to Black girls who are killed violently. Um and Black women young Black women who are killed violently. So not just, um one girl in Baltimore, that I talk about where in 2018 she was shot by a stray bullet and then, I was having a conversation with someone else about it and she was like “You know she never got the chance to be a mother” and I’m like she was what? eight. She might have been five she actually might have been five. Why are we thinking about a little girl as her missed opportunity of being a mother and of course that thought means that if she were to become a mother, She would birth a Black son who would then do x, y and z right. And we don’t tend to think about Black boys when their killed as pre fathers right? Oh we missed out on another opportunity to like nobody was saying that about Mike Brown right. They were saying well, he never got the chance to go to college right. He never got the chance to kinda do this kinda of um what about what word I’m borrowing is called self-power right they never got this chance to ascend through self-power which is something that only um only Black men can access.
[01:06:20] BT: And so
[01:06:26] MC: Was that interlocked of yours Black?
[01:06:53] BT She was Black, she was a Black mother herself which I think um speaks a lot to her imagination of what her utility is um and what she imagines little girls to be useful and I also think and connect it back to just like Angela Davis in one of her books writes about the four girls who were killed in the church bombing and says “well these girls never got a chance to become freedom fighters” right so why is it that these imaginations for Black girls and young Black women involved in doing labor rather than be reproductive or whatever right? Which is not the same imaginings we have for Black boys but the person that I think is really interesting or two people that also like in really at our Breonna Taylor and Koryn Gaines because Koryn Gaines was a mother and a lot of the talk about her death and why she was condemned by Black people was because she choose not to do the right thing as a mother and survive. She chose to fight back. And so, what does it mean to always already be vilified and then on top of that not receive the memory that you should. And you should in your community because you didn’t do the right thing as a mother when as a Black mother you never know when death is going to come. Right For you or your child vs Breonna Taylor where there was a significant um reproductive justice movement around the fact she never got the chance to become a mother. Right um and it’s like, that’s such a strange thing to state reproductive justice in right. Not ‘oh this young Black woman never got the chance to live her dreams’ right? It’s that she never got the chance to become a mother and so this projection and imagination of motherhood um onto single Black young women that allows them to retain some type of memory in our national imagination because before Breonna Taylor the only Black woman that people could name really was Sandra Bland who was another single childless young Black woman. Right and so the imagination around her was because she was educated right that she could give birth and produce you know good Black kids. But once you already become a mother, like Koryn Gaines right even though Koryn Gains was educated, even though she was a freedom fighter whatever whatever right? She could never be remembered as someone worth um grieving. Because she was always like, as a Black mother, she was always already vilified. So that’s it.
[01:09:17]MC: Black Mothers were bad subjects (mmh -hmm ), right? We never behave in these paradigms and so I feel like important about that work that you are doing to like it just reannouces that question which just like wow can we talk about Black women for five seconds? Not to quote their potential, not to like talk about their reproductive status. Not talk about what they could have been or just who they were right just engage with them the level of being and we can’t we don’t think they really deserve to be here in the first place. Right where is the paradigm for Black women not Black mothers just Black women in general. Can we iterate them outside of their reproductive status, reproductive potential, right go hand in hand cause that asking about value.
[0:10:03] AJ: Yea
[0:10:05]MC: Because we don’t see the value in that
[0:10:08] AJ: or misbehave as subjects and because we don’t see the value in that or
[01:10:10] BT: or stay in the subjects and the beginning point of all that being this part of kinda secular venture/ invention. This moment and singularity of chattel slavery that defined a Black person with a uterus as someone who must be a breeder. Um and so just yea like essentially that chapter in my dissertation just be thinking of the legacies of that. Not just for the living but for the dead. Right what does that allows us to think um and then how does our imaginations of the dead constrain the movements that we have to right for the living. Um so Mali you know you and I, always get on zoom and talk for hours and
laughs
[01:10:58] MC: yea
[01:11:00] BT: Um but we are going to say um goodbye and
[01:11:06} MC: Okay
[01:11:06] BT: and you know wrap it up a little bit and (laugh)
[01:11:12] BT: Wrap this shit up
[01:11:15] BT: But this has been such a pleasure and an honor to sit with you in this way and have you. Educate us learn us a little bit um learn our listeners a little bit and just fill
(music begins in background) this space with so much Black I don’t even know what to say just I don’t even know what to say Black love Black freedom, unfreedom all of that so
[01:11:37] MC: You’re so sweet
[01:11:38] AJ: Yea
[01:11:40] MC: Thank you so much for having me
[01:11:40] AJ: And so I have so much to sit with and I’m sure that our listeners feel the same as well.
[01:11:47]MC: Well Thank you for your work and all the labor that you are doing with the podcasts spreading the good word
[01:11:52] The good word the good word of the Lorde
[01:11:55] BT: We try we try
[01:12:02] BT: Well, that’s all we have for y’all today thank you all for listening. This episode was produced by Alyssa James and Brendane Tynes and distributed in partnership with the American Anthropological Association. This season of the podcast is generously funded by a grant from the Arts and Science graduate council, the Heyman Center Public Humanities Graduate fellowship and donations from listeners just like you.
[01:12:26] AJ: Yes, thank you all for your support if you like this episode please share it via social media, WhatsApp or loud speaker. We would love to hear what you have to say about this episode so be sure to follow us on Instagram @zorasdaughters and on Twitter @zoras_daughters For transcripts, syllabi, information on how to cite us become a patron to access exclusive content cause we about to have a conversation about 90 day fiancée right about right after this and we probably put it on Patreon. Visit our website zoradaughters.com. Where can people find you Mali?
[01:12:59] MC: You can find me on twitter @dr_reprojustice and then I have a semiprofessional Instagram @protectblackmotherhood I like semi professional
[0:13:10] I like the implications of that and then space right now is like
[01:13:22] BT: We know what goes on the ‘gram honey! [Laughter] Last but not least, remember that we must take care of ourselves and each other. Bye!
[01:13:30] AJ: Bye!
[01:13:30] AJ: You can say bye too.
[01:13:30] MC: Oh, I can say bye? Bye! [Laughter]