Social Rhetoric and the Construction of Black Motherhood

Abstract

In this article, historical womanist theory, which situates Black women as a unique racialized and gendered laboring class in the United States, is empirically validated through testing of several key fundamental assumptions of the theory. This research identifies ways in which images of Black women's reproduction and parenting are manipulated in order to justify ongoing regulation and dominance of Black labor: biological, reproductive, and productive through an analysis of popular film and policies that disproportionately impact Black women in the United States.Keywords historical womanist theory, social rhetoric, political economy, Black women, welfare reform, filmIn this article, I empirically validate historical womanist theory (HWT) through a test of several of its key assumptions. I offer a brief exploration of the role of popular film in crafting media representations of Black motherhood as a manipulative tool in the construction of U.S. welfare policy. I explore the rationale behind population-specific policies, which are devised by politicians; the ways in which these policies are bolstered by social rhetoric; and how this rhetoric leads to these policies being sanctioned by the people.

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