Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-11T02:38:16.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Can You Hear Me Now?” Race, Motherhood, and the Politics of Being Heard

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 December 2018

Kimberly Killen
Kimberly Killen*
Affiliation:
University of Colorado, Boulder
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Motherhood as a political identity grants women political legitimacy, enabling them to make rights-based claims. However, the efficacy and possibility of motherhood as a political identity is entangled in the sexist and racist narratives that are inextricable from white supremacy. In this article, I analyze the language used by the Mothers of the Movement (MothM) at the 2016 Democratic National Convention to demonstrate how the identities and experiences of Black women, specifically Black mothers, are co-opted and reproduced as deficient, criminal, and irrelevant, thereby limiting their ability to make claims as mothers and citizens. How, then, can marginalized mothers confront the tools of white supremacy, which portray them as “bad” mothers and “bad” citizens, to be heard within the dominant order without conforming to it? I contend that in appropriating the very discourses and spaces that seek to exclude and subjugate them, the MothM demonstrate the hypocrisy of the system of “good motherhood”—all the while reaffirming their status as equal citizens deserving of political recognition. Drawing from Black feminist thinkers, I demonstrate how motherhood and the rights that the MothM claim as mothers can be conceptualized as assertions of freedom and equal citizenship.

Keywords

Motherhoodracerecognitionpolitical resistanceMothers of the Movementdemocracywhite supremacy
Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 623 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author would like to thank Michaele Ferguson, Anna Daily, Nora Keller, Rachel Mattson, Brett Bessen, Hannah Paul, the editors and anonymous reviewers at Politics & Gender, as well as fellow panelists and audience members at the Western Political Science Association for their comments and encouragement.

References

REFERENCES

Baldwin, James. 1962. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dell, 1962.Google Scholar
Bayard de Volo, Lorraine. 2004. “Mobilizing Mothers for War: Cross-National Framing Strategies in Nicaragua's Contra War.” Gender & Society 18 (6): 715–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Cathy. 2004. “Deviance as Resistance: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Black Politics.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 1 (1): 27–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Patricia Hill. 2014. From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
David, Marlo D. 2016. “‘I Got Self, Pencil and Notebook’: Literacy and Maternal Desire in Sapphire's PUSH.” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 35 (1): 173–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez, Nick. 2016. “Right-Wing Media Lash Out at Mothers of the Movement for Speaking at Democratic Convention.” Media Matters, July 26. https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/07/26/right-wing-media-lash-out-mothers-movement-speaking-democratic-convention/211926 (accessed October 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. 2007. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Guest, Steve. 2016. “Giuliani on Mothers of the Movement Speaking at DNC: Clear Democrats Are the ‘Anti-Police Party.’” The Daily Caller, July 27. http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/27/giuliani-on-mothers-of-the-movement-speaking-at-dnc-clear-democrats-are-the-anti-police-party/ (accessed October 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Halberstam, Jack. 2011. The Queer Art of Failure. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hancock, Ange-Marie. 2004. The Politics of Disgust. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Harrington, Craig. 2016. “Fox News Completely Ignores the ‘Mothers of the Movement’ during Democratic National Convention.” Media Matters, July 26. https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/07/26/fox-news-completely-ignores-mothers-movement-during-democratic-national-convention/211924 (accessed October 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Kaleem, Jaweed. 2016. “‘Black Lives Matter!’ Chants Erupt as Mothers of the Movement Take the Stage at the DNC.” Los Angeles Times, July 26. http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-dnc-mothers-of-the-movement-20160726-snap-story.html (accessed October 22, 2018).Google Scholar
Lorde, Audre. 1984. Sister Outsider. Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press.Google Scholar
McClintock, Anne. 1993. “Family Feuds: Gender, Nationalism, and the Family.” Feminist Review, no. 44: 61–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noonan, Rita K. 1995. “Women against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective Action Frames in Chile's Transition to Democracy.” Sociological Forum 10 (1): 81–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Dorothy. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Roberts, Neil. 2015. Freedom as Marronage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sparks, Holloway. 2016. “Quarrelling with Rancière: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Democratic Disruption.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 49 (4): 420–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Threadcraft, Shatema. 2016. Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body Politic. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, William Julius. 1987. The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wingrove, Elizabeth. 2016. “blah blah WOMEN blah blah EQUALITY blah blah DIFFERENCE.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 49 (4): 408–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zivi, Karen. 2005. “Contesting Motherhood in the Age of AIDS: Maternal Ideology in the Debate over Mandatory HIV Testing.” Feminist Studies 31 (2): 347–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar