Hanis-Perry explores race and reproduction in the South
BY CHANEL DAVIS
THE CHRONICLE
Wake Forest University's Anna Julia
Cooper Center and the Center for
Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt
University kicked off its Gender, Health
and The South symposium, Thursday,
April 16 at WFU with a keynote address
by Melissa Harris-Perry.
The event was designed to bring
activists, scholars and students together to
present original research and questions
about gender, race, region and health.
Discussions around those matters included
pregnancy and reproductive justice, com
munity-based initiatives, the social foun
dations of health and the impact of gen
dered attitudes, narratives and labor condi
tions on health and health care.
There were panelists from Bennett
College and Winston-Salem State
University along with Wake Forest and
Vanderbilt Universities.
The Presidential Endowed Chair in
Politics and International Affairs at WFU
and founding director of the Anna Julia
Cooper Center spoke on "Race and
Reproductive Justice in the South."
Harris-Perry argued several hypothesis
including that for American women citi
zenship is connected to motherhood and its
complications, the politics surrounding
women's' reproductive organs, black
motherhood is a problem for black families
but a solution for white families, and the
public policy of black motherhood.
"On the one hand, motherhood is this
basis for women as they are making claims
initially about thkir-right to be part of the
American state, a tool for generating
American citizens in the context of the
14th amendment, but it is also true that
once motherhood and pregnancy are cen
tral to our understanding of women's citi
zenship then women's bodies become par
ticularly fraught terrain for American poli
tics," she said.
Harris-Perry also highlighted how pub
lic policy changed across race lines stating
that the enslaved women the production of
the uterus never created citizenship. It
often led to women deciding that it could
be better for their children to die than live
Harris-Perry
in slavery, per Toni Morrison's 'Beloved'.
"The name and status rises from the
mother, not the father. So even if the father
is free, whether he is free and black or free
and white, that has nothing to do with the
child. Enslaved mothers actually repro
duced bondage," she said. 'To think about
what it means to reproduce from you own
body the very tools that create a system
that enslaves both you and others is to have
to ask what would constitute resistance. Is
it having children and bothering to love
them despite the fact that you are in a
dehumanizing system; or is it refusing to
have children?"
Harris-PeiTy also went on to say that it
has been perceived over time that poor
black women are told that they are a bur
den on the state potentially endangering
their children's lives after birth and before
it. Despite those claims, Harris-Perry also
showed how the same women who were
not equal to the state were equal enough to
raise the children of white, well-to-do fam
ilies as in "Gone with the Wind" and "The
Help."
She would go on to call both the steril
ization of black women, the
#Blacklivesmatter movement, voter sup
pression, common-sense sex education
and poverty factors that are against repro
ductive justice.
"As much as black mothering is a big
problem, it is not a problem when it is put
and deployed for the good of white fami
lies," she said.
Above Sonna Williams, far right, NC Pre-K Teacher
at MudPies Downtown East, leads a group through
one learning station using the technology of a multi
touch table, a cooperative learning tool that helps
develop positive social skills through collaboration,
voting, and teamwork.
Early childhood center
teaches community
about Hatch
CHRONICLE STAFF REPORT
People who gathered at the East Seventh Street loca
tion of MudPies, Downtown East on Tuesday, April 14,
heard ahput innovative early childhood care from a repre
sentativA)f Hatch "The Early Learning Experts."
The representative spoke during a "Conversations
with the CEO" workshop at MudPies, also known as
Northwest Child Development Centers, a nonprofit organ
ization incorporated in 1971.
The Hatch method of teaching incorporates technolo
gy such as computers, interactive boards and multi-touch
tables.
For more information, contact MudPies at 336-721
1215 or at wwwMudPiesNC.org.
Lisa Moore, left, Hatch
sales consultant, watch
es and guides the
evening's guests as they
each try his or her hand
at the 75-inch interac
tive whiteboard, which
includes Hatch software
and features thousands
of fun and purposeful
learning activities.
Tony Lewis L. Burton
(Center )III, PhD, chief
executive officer of
Northwest Child
Development Centers,
checks out some of the
evening's guests at an
interactive table.
Photos by Erin Mizelle for the Winston-Salem Chronicle
Above Lisa Moore, Hatch sales consultant, discusses
how technology is an integrated part of learning in
21st century preschool classrooms with the assis
tance of Mud Pies Downtown East teaching staff
and community representatives, on Tuesday, April
14,2015, in downtown Winston-Salem, North.
i
i
&
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