Even though the enslaved female reproduced other enslaved persons, we do not read “birth” in this instance as a reproduction of mothering precisely because the female, like the male, has been robbed of the parental right, the parental function. – Hortense Spillers, “Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe” (1987, p. 76).
The welfare-dependent single mother is finally the synecdoche, the shortest possible shorthand, for the pathology of poor, urban, black culture. – Wahneema Lubiano, “Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels” (1992, p. 335)
It is astonishing that we lead the world in maternal and child deaths. It is because of woeful inequities facing black women and infants. This is a national emergency. – Isabel Wilkerson, 2023 Accelerating Health Equity Conference Keynote Speech
Existing cultural narratives about Black motherhood impact the wellbeing of Black mothers and their children and directly influence the persistence of Black maternal health disparities. I turn to the “mammy” and “welfare queen” stereotypes to first analyze how the racist and sexist political reality of Black women made these controlling images seem like so-called “truths” about Black women. I also analyze how these stereotypes concretize existing views of Black mothers as destructive, lazy, and wasteful when they direct their care and resources towards Black children. I argue that the “mammy” and “welfare queen” stereotypes work in concert with each other as powerful cultural narratives that devalue and dismiss the Black mother/child bond and this results in what I term the “disallowing of Black mothering.” I define Black mothering as Black mothers and othermothers[1] taking care of and being emotionally and materially present for their children and able to protect and provide on their behalf. Lastly, I connect the disallowing of Black mothering with the disproportionate rate of Black maternal and infant mortality. I argue that by focusing on addressing racist and sexist cultural narratives about Black mothers, Black maternal health advocates can address one of the root causes of Black maternal health disparities—the perceived unworthiness of Black mothers having and accessing institutional and state resources.
The Disallowing of Black Mothering, Slavery, and Reproductive Justice
Black maternal health disparities are directly related to historically persistent cultural narratives about Black mothers. Jennifer Nash states that, “The black maternal body has become a symbol—or the symbol—for the deathly work of antiblackness and misogyny, and black motherhood itself is constituted by its imagined proximity to trauma, injury, precarity—by its location as the crisis” (Nash, 2019, p. 30) Black mothers have become “the symbol” for crisis due to the confluence of the denial of equitable access to state resources and the racist and sexist cultural narratives created to explain away this purposeful denial. Since slavery, Black mothering has been institutionally disallowed as a caring and protective practice for the benefit of Black children. As Hortense Spillers stated, enslaved Black women physiologically bore children, but they were actively prevented from the “reproduction of mothering” and unable to provide resources and care to their children (Spillers, 1987, p. 76). This political reality informed the ideologies which were created and disseminated to justify this dehumanizing treatment. Karen Fields and Barbara J. Fields’s term “racecraft” speaks to the precise danger of turning racism into race (Fields and Fields, 2012). Stereotypes about Black mothers do exactly this by naturalizing the inequitable conditions of Black mothers and arguing that it is reflective of Black mothers’ personal choices and failings. In this way, these stereotypes become “reality” and seemingly ubiquitous. As an example, enslaved Black mothers were not forcibly separated from their children—they were unfeeling and lacked any real emotional connection to their children. Enslaved Black mothers were not denied access to adequate food and safe conditions for their infants—they were lazy and malicious mothers who did not care whether their children lived or died (Cooper Owens, 2017, p. 110). While enslaved Black women were expected and often forced to physically reproduce babies to bolster the wealth of their white slaveholders, they were barred from mothering and protecting their babies from the unmitigated violence of enslavement. Not coincidentally, Black infant mortality rates soared because of the mistreatment of enslaved mothers and babies (Jones, 2010, pp. 33-34). Yet, Black mothers were blamed. This begins a long trend of obscuring white supremacy by insisting that Black mothers are personally failing and, moreover, choosing to do so.
The treatment of Black mothers during slavery drives the ongoing legacy of contemporary reproductive justice work. Reproductive justice is a theoretical framework created by Black feminist activists who advocate for the full scope of reproductive autonomy—this includes the right to abortion, but also the right to mother (Roberts, 2015). Loretta Ross defines reproductive justice in part as “the human right to parent the children we have in safe and healthy environments” (Ross & Solinger, 2017, p. 169). Black mothers should not have to raise healthy, happy, and successful children despite oppressive conditions. Black mothers should exist within a culture that provides physical safety for Black children and actively supports the emotional, economic, and social well-being of Black children and their families. However, the disallowing of Black mothering justifies the denial of resources to Black mothers and, by doing so, continues the disproportionate rates of Black maternal and infant health disparities. I argue that acknowledging and deconstructing pernicious cultural narratives about Black mothers will help to ameliorate the conditions that create negative health outcomes for Black mothers and children.
The Power of Cultural Narratives about Black Mothers
Stereotypes about Black mothers are a mechanism of state power and control that constrains our cultural imagination and normalizes inequitable conditions. Wahneema Lubiano describes racist and sexist ideology as being “so naturalized, so pushed by the momentum of their ubiquity, that they seem to be reality” (Lubiano, 1992, p. 329). Black women, and Black mothers specifically, are burdened by controlling images which typify them as being disinterested in their children, lazy, and, importantly, a drain on taxpayer resources. Black mothers are barred from the ideological boundaries of traditional, protected and patriarchalized motherhood and are therefore viewed as being undeserving of access to the commons.
Black mothers represent our greatest anxieties about the possible ineptitude of American capitalism and the heteropatriarchal nuclear family. Historically, Black mothers who depart from the heteropatriarchal script have been labeled as “pathological.”[2] On Fox News, guest Jason Whitlock blamed the 2023 police murder of Tyre Nichols, a Black man who was murdered by Black male police officers, on “single Black mothers.” (Saunders, 2023). Whitlock’s comments—while thankfully lambasted by many—are in fact connected to a deeply entrenched view of Black mothers as state destabilizers and as creators of discord and danger. This viewpoint makes Black mothers the reason for issues that are in fact caused by racism—such as poverty and violence. This persisting view of Black mothers, which then goes on to influence popular opinion and public policy, leads to the disallowing of Black mothering. This forecloses Black mothers from the opportunity and right to receive and provide care to their own families. Analyzing the “mammy” and “welfare queen” stereotypes help us to understand the ideological root of these culturally embedded views of Black mothers.
The “Mammy,” the “Welfare Queen,” and the Denial of State Resources
The “mammy”[3] and “welfare queen,” popularly disseminated stereotypes, justify the disallowing of Black mothering. These stereotypes go beyond the typical image associated with each—the “happy” slave and the materially well-off welfare mother, respectively—to reflect larger cultural ideas about Black mothers as being extractive and even critically dangerous to the success of the white nation-state. The mammy is the “acceptable” role for Black mothers since it denotes a denial of her own needs and that of her own Black children. Alternatively, Black mothers who reject this role may be suspiciously viewed as “welfare queens”—the dysfunctional and dangerous mother who requires discipline in the form of curtailed reproductive rights, family policing, withheld economic support, and substandard medical care. The term “welfare queen” became part of our cultural lexicon in the late 1970s during Ronald Reagan’s racially-loaded presidential campaign. This stereotype quickly gained traction precisely because Black mothers were already viewed as being wasteful of resources and guilty of poor parenting. While the “welfare queen” is a particular attack on low-income Black mothers, I argue that the welfare queen stereotype also expansively attacks social welfare entitlements, more generally, for Black mothers and children. The “welfare queen” is deviant, in large part, because she places demands on the state to provide the same economic care and support that has long been available to white mothers and children. Importantly, Matthew Desmond defines social welfare as not only measures routinely directed towards low-income Americans, but also as homeowner subsidies, government-subsidized retirement benefits, student loans, 529 college savings plans, child tax credits, among other policies which tend to benefit middle- and upper-class Americans (Desmond, 2023). When social welfare is more narrowly defined as only primarily serving the poor, this convinces us that the poor are peculiarly dependent on the state when in fact the state provides, if anything, disproportionate resources to those who are deemed “valuable” citizens. Black mothers, often viewed as outsiders, are characterized, along with their children, as social drains.
Mammy does not require or demand any state resources. Mammy, in fact, produces state resources which explicitly benefit white families at the expense of Black ones. Mammy “makes sense” because Black women have historically been viewed as workers and not as mothers. Their value has been in their muledom and has been naturalized as being an intrinsic part of who Black women are (or should be). Mammy performs the care and service work desired by middle-to-high income white families, often to the detriment of her own health and wellbeing and that of her children. Despite this, they remain within the matrix of poverty due to low pay and poor working conditions. The mammy stereotype is embodied by Aunt Jemima and the nondescript quintessential “happy” slave. Mammy is one of the only “positive” stereotypes of Black women.[4] Mammy is pedestalized by white supremacy—quite literally, as in the case of the U.S. Senate approving a mammy monument in 1923. Mammy uplifts the mythos of slavery being a benevolent “domestic” or family institution. Mammy is “positive” in the white imagination because it necessitates the total absence of Black babies and children. This is to say that Black women’s mothering is only valuable when directed towards valued future workers/ taxpayers—often imagined a white, middle-class children. Black children, by contrast, are imagined as “pickaninnies,”[5] “superpredators,”[6] and “crack babies”[7]—all of which have no future of value to look forward to.
After the abolition of slavery, the mammy stereotype became even more potent as it justified the perpetuation of slavery-like working conditions for Black women domestic workers (childcare providers, cooks, laundresses, and house cleaners) and their later exclusion from New Deal policies such as the Social Security Act. Shatema Threadcraft describes this sort of work as “unjust and dehumanizing… not least of all because they denied women the time and ability to love and provide care for their families” (Threadcraft, 2016, p. 9). Mammy bolsters the white nation-state through her labor of caring for white babies and performing necessary domestic labor. The substandard remuneration she receives for her work locks her into a certain class position. Importantly, mammy is transhistorical—and is just as much a part of our cultural imagination in the twenty-first century as she was during slavery. The underlying reality of all-encompassing work with low pay connects nineteenth-century Black women domestic laborers to twenty-first century Black women service workers who performed what was euphemistically referred to as “essential” labor during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. While “essential” implies value, the term exploited better describes how service workers are treated. In addition, today’s “mammy” intersects with the more popular “strong Black woman” stereotype which demands that Black women must constantly perform labor and provide value to others. The “strong Black woman” never makes her own needs visible, but she is very adept at fulfilling the needs of others and making it look natural and easy. The mammy stereotype works in tandem with the welfare queen, who by contrast, demands and advocates for state resources. In a carrot and stick type of formulation, these stereotypes encourage the white public to view Black mothers who seek out or use resources with suspicion, and also, encourage Black mothers to deny their own needs. These stereotypes are dichotomous: mammy is “good” and the welfare queen is “bad.” However, both white supremacist stereotypes ideologically function to prevent Black mothers from accessing necessary resources, safety, and care for themselves and their children.
The welfare queen stereotype is crystalized into our national consciousness and has long dominated our perception of Black mothers. In the cultural imaginary, welfare queens “waste” (supposedly white) taxpayer money on providing basic necessities—such as housing, food, and healthcare— to Black mothers and their children. It is important to contextualize the Black welfare queen within the larger history of United States social welfare policy. While the term “welfare queen” arose in the mid-twentieth century, the ideology that buttresses it originates much earlier–arguably, after the abolition of slavery. After slavery, Black children switched from explicitly being white profit (enslaved property) to potential Black political power and wealth. The maternalist movement in the late-nineteenth century is central to the early formation of the welfare queen stereotype. Maternalist activists successfully advocated for social welfare initiatives for white mothers. Even though they did not often specify race in their argument for the supposed sacredness of motherhood, in practice their advocacy resulted in welfare policies that specifically assisted white women and excluded others. White mothers were viewed as performing a useful service to the country by staying home to care for their children. For this reproductive labor, maternalist activists argued they ought to be compensated either through a husband who earned a “family wage” or directly from the government (Dow, 2019, p. 129). While maternalism can often be associated with anti-feminist viewpoints,[8] it should also be viewed as an enabler of certain eugenicist and/or white supremacist views about mothers, and specifically, Black mothers. Black mothers were largely barred from accessing the state benefits fought for by white maternalists.[9] Maternalists championed mother’s pensions to provide state sanctioned economic support for white mothers to stay home with their children. Daycares, by contrast, were viewed by many maternalist activists as “communist” and potentially destructive to the white patriarchal family system because it would allow women to “compete” with unemployed men (Jill Quadagno, 1994, p. 139). This agenda created a care deficit, and indeed, a resource deficit, for working Black mothers who were both disqualified from receiving mother’s pensions and also unable to find childcare. Curiously, by the mid-twentieth century, federally funded daycares became law in large part to put welfare mothers (imagined as Black mothers, specifically) to work. The mid-twentieth century origin of the welfare queen stereotype follows the post-Civil Rights expansion of welfare benefits which finally included Black mothers as beneficiaries.[10] The welfare queen stereotype actively delegitimizes Black mothers’ claims to government assistance and makes us question if Black mothers deserve any societal resources at all.
Black Maternal Health Activism and Allowing Black Mothering
Black maternal health has become an increasingly visible social issue. I view this development, in part, as an active Black feminist response to the disallowing of Black mothering. Black mothers and their supporters are demanding that medical institutions provide support and care that is on par with what is routinely provided to white mothers and their babies. Black maternal health activism is primarily addressed from a medical perspective. Physicians and other medical professionals are being asked to address their implicit bias and create equitable experiences for their Black women patients. However, I argue that responding to Black maternal health solely as a medical problem–as a problem concerning the Black pregnant and postpartum body–will not fully address the root cause of existing disparities. By examining the larger cultural narratives about Black mothers and children, activists can challenge the underlying belief that Black mothers do not deserve or need state resources. Black mothers’ health cannot be separated from persistent perceptions of Black mothers and children as wasteful, dangerous, and unproductive to society. Black mothers’ mistreatment– which leads to illness, and too often to death– should be linked to the state neglect of Black mothers and their inequitable access to resources. Instead, Black maternal health disparities are often viewed as a personal failing and the causes of health comorbidities and the lack of access to quality (anti-racist and anti-sexist) healthcare are too often minimized.
We must reject the underlying state logic that Black mothers are not performing necessary and valuable care work when they love, support, and provide for their Black children. Black maternal health activism must acknowledge and dismantle the ideological conditions that create inequitable access to resources for Black mothers and children rather than simply assessing and then attempting to correct Black maternal health disparities as they present in medical settings during pregnancy and childbirth. How might conditions for Black mothers and babies be transformed if we address the cultural narratives surrounding Black mothering? What might it look like to allow Black mothering—to prioritize the well-being of Black mothers and their children no matter their marital or socioeconomic status? What might it look like to assume that every Black child is worth protecting and loving?
Community-based birth workers are doing much of this work on behalf of Black mothers and babies. They are creating new cultural narratives about Black mothers that are resilient against the dominant viewpoints that drive the perpetuation of the “mammy” and “welfare queen”stereotypes. Birth workers—such as doulas, lactation consultants, and health educators—do much to reduce Black maternal health disparities. They listen to Black mothers and provide empathetic care that empowers Black mothers in medical settings and beyond. Moreover, grassroots birth workers and community organizations also do much to create resources for Black mothers. They often fill in the care gap created by the inadequate social safety net. Their work actively challenges the disallowing of Black mothering and corrects the existing disinvestment in Black mothers. Their work serves as an important key for ameliorating Black maternal health disparities and more research is warranted in determining how birth-workers thwart anti-welfare attitudes and step in where the state is determined to step away.
References
Dow, D. (2019). Mothering while Black: boundaries and burdens of middle-class parenthood. University of California Press.
Desmond, M. (2023) Poverty, by America. New York: Crown.
Ellis, N. T. (2023, April 24). A Texas family fought for weeks to regain custody of their newborn.
Experts say the case shows how Black parents are criminalized. CNN. Retrieved May 28, 2023, from https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/24/us/texas-family-newborn-removed-reaj/index.html
Fields, B. J., & Fields, K. E. (2012). Racecraft: The soul of inequality in American life. New York: Verso Books.
Hill Collins, P. (1995). Black women and motherhood. In Ed. Virginia Held, Justice and care (pp. 117-136). New York: Routledge.
Jones, J. (2010). Labor of love, labor of sorrow: Black women, work, and the family,from slavery to the present. New York: Basic Books.
Ladd-Taylor, M. (1993). Toward defining maternalism in US history. Journal of Women’s History, 5(2), 110-113. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2010.0401
Lubiano, W. (1992). Black ladies, relfare queens, and state minstrels. In Ed. Toni Morrison, Race-ing justice, en-gendering power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the construction of social reality (pp. 323-363). New York: Pantheon.
Nash, J. C. (2019). Birthing Black Mothers: Birth Work and the Making of Black Maternal Political Subjects. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 47(3/4), 29–50. https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2019.0054
Owens, D. C. (2017). Medical bondage: Race, gender, and the origins of American gynecology. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press.
Quadagno, J. (1994). The color of welfare: How racism undermined the war on poverty. London: Oxford University Press.
Roberts, D. (2015). Reproductive justice, not just rights. Dissent, 62(4), 79-82. https://doi.org/10.1353/dss.2015.0073
Ross, L.& Solinger, R. (2017). Reproductive justice: An introduction. (1st ed.). University of California Press.
Saunders, A. (2023, January 30). Social media rips Jason
Whitlock for blaming Tyre Nichols’ death on single Black women. Revolt. Retrieved September 23, 2023, from https://www.revolt.tv/article/2023-01-30/269648/jason-whitlock-blames-tyre-nichols-attack-on-single-black-women/
Spillers, H. J. (1987). Mama’s baby, papa’s maybe: An American grammar book. diacritics, 17(2), 65-81.
Threadcraft, S. (2016). Intimate justice: The black female body and the body politic. London: Oxford University Press.
Wallace-Sanders, K. (2008). Mammy: A century of race, gender, and southern memory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
[1] Patricia Hill Collins has noted that othermothers “assist bloodmothers by sharing mothering responsibilities” (Collins, 1995, p. 121).
[2] Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1965) stated that the Black community is “matriarchal” and therefore “pathological.”
[3] Kimberly Wallace-Sanders describes “mammy” as “grotesquely marked by excess: she is usually extremely overweight, very tall, broad-shouldered; her skin is nearly black. She manages to be a jolly presence – she often sings and tells stories while she works–and a strict disciplinarian at the same time” (2008, p. 6).
[4] The “strong Black woman” might be viewed as another supposedly “positive” stereotype of Black women and it conveniently overlaps with many of the qualities attributed to “mammy” such as tirelessness, selflessness, and serving white Americans.
[5] This is a derogatory slur for Black babies and children.
[6] “Superpredators” are said to be “urban” (read: Black) youth who are inherently violent and remorseless. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton invoked this term in the 1990s.
[7] “Crack babies” are children who were said to be born addicted to crack cocaine. It was commonly believed that “crack babies” would be intellectually and socially impaired and more likely to commit crime.
[8] Mary Ladd-Taylor differentiates maternalism from feminism by stating that “maternalists were wedded to an ideology rooted in the nineteenth-century doctrine of separate spheres and to a presumption of women’s economic and social dependence on men” (1993,p. 110).
[9] See Dawn Dow’s Mothering while Black: Boundaries and burdens of middle-class parenthood (University of California Press: 2019).
[10] Matthew Desmond notes that Americans tend to believe that most welfare recipients are Black. In 2021, 44% of Americans believe that Black Americans are lazy (Desmond, 2023).
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