The Effects of Scientific Racism on Black Women Essay

The Effects of Scientific Racism on Black Women Scientific racism has been used to oppress, enslave and to justify torture. In my essay I will explore how scientific racism has been used to detriment the health of women of colour. Throughout history women of colour have been experimented upon, sexualized and reproductively abused with scientific racism as justification or the underlying premise for the thought behind this abuse. I will explore this idea using examples throughout various periods of history, as well I will show the contemporary effects. First, I will look at the enslavement of Africans in the New World. During this period women of African descent were raped and abused. They were deemed as sexual beings and†¦show more content†¦These science-based eugenic influences break through the lines of science in to the world of politics, promulgating anti-humanistic views of poor women of colour in the form of legislation fraught with bigotry and baseless generalizations. This political view flows through the judicial system, as courts apply eugenic philosophies in determining who should be sterilized and for what reasons. Black feminists have investigated how rape as a specific form of sexual violence is embedded in a system of interlocking race, gender, and class oppression (Davis 1978, 1981, 1989; Hall 1983). Reproductive rights issues such as access to information on sexuality and birth control, the struggles for abortion rights, and patterns of forced sterilization have also garnered attention Examining the links between sexuality and power in a system of interlocking race, gender, and class oppression should reveal how important controlling Black womens sexuality has been to the effective operation of domination overall. The words of Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, and Alice Walker provide a promising foundation for a comprehensive Black feminist analysis. 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