UW-Madison lecture to explore how ‘White Innocence’ leads to death of black infants

The University of Wisconsin–Madison is hosting an upcoming lecture on a recently published book detailing how “White Innocence” has historically led to the death of black babies.

Annie Menzel, an associate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the university, will give a talk featuring her 2024 book, Fatal Denial: Racism and the Political Life of Black Infant Mortality, on Wednesday. 

[RELATED: NIH removes DEI requirements from grant applications]

The Gender and Women’s Studies department promoted the lecture in an Instagram post earlier this week. The lecture is titled “Fatal Denial: How White Innocence Threatens Black Infant Life, and the Responsibility of Birth Justice.”

“Fatal Denial argues that over the past 150 years, US health authorities’ explanations of and interventions into Black infant mortality have been characterized by the ‘biopolitics of racial innocence,’” a description for the event reads. 

Menzel’s lecture will explore “the institutionalized mechanisms in health care and policy that have at once obscured, enabled, and perpetuated systemic infanticide by blaming Black mothers and communities themselves.” 

Menzel will also discuss “Black feminist scholarship,” which has documented “the commodification and theft of Black women’s reproductive bodies, labors, and care,” all of which are “foundational to US racial capitalism.” 

The professor also asserts that American civilization “has made Black infants vulnerable to preventable death,” according to the event description. 

Menzel research interests include “how white supremacy, colonization, and gender-based oppression shape human reproductive life, health, and care—as well as theorizations and praxes of reproductive justice and freedom.”

Other research interests include: “race, gender, and reproductive politics and practices in North America; Black political thought, especially Black feminisms; feminist political theory and queer theory; abolitionist and anti-colonial theory and praxis; biopolitics; and feminist science and technology studies of reproductive health and medicine.”

[RELATED: University of Michigan Alumni Association ends race-based scholarship program]

Meanwhile, the University of Wisconsin has been a target of the federal government in recent months for promoting DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion). The advocacy group, Defending Education, filed a complaint on April 9 with the Office for Civil Rights against the school for offering a race-based scholarship

Additionally, the National Institutes of Health canceled $12.6 million in federal grant money to the university over other DEI concerns. 

Campus Reform has contacted the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the Gender and Women’s Studies department and Annie Menzel for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.