(Re)Turning to Black feminist consciousness: Deconstructing the politics of reproductive racism in Britain
Medical Anthropology Quarterly / Medical Anthropological Quarterly
Published online on June 14, 2026
Abstract
["Medical Anthropology Quarterly, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nUsing ethnographic vignettes from my doctoral research, this article contextualizes and analyses Britain's Black maternal health crisis— a crisis of reproductive racism— through a Black feminist lens. The inequities Black mothers face has a strong Black (and) feminist history of being analyzed in relation to the politics of anti‐Black racism and misogynoir as they are upheld and sanctioned by the State and the maternity services. This article, therefore, positions Black feminist consciousness as the overarching ethical and analytical framework that contemporary researchers must (re)turn to when studying reproductive racism in Britain. In light of this argument, I draw attention to the Black feminist articulations of racism, uneven reproduction, and reproductive necropolitics (introducing the idea of “necropolitical mythopoeia”), arguing that they are robust analytical tools that can kickstart the epistemological (r)evolution that is desperately needed in the British research landscape.\n"]