Whose reproductive futures? Race-biopolitics and resistance in the Black infant mortality reduction campaigns in Milwaukee

Abstract

This paper contributes to Foucauldian population geographies by examining an infant mortality reduction campaign in Milwaukee. The infant mortality rate for Milwaukee’s Black community is about three times that for whites and higher than rates for other racialized groups. This paper asks how Milwaukee’s public health interventions came to focus on sleep deaths, when population data show that preterm birth and congenital abnormalities are the leading causes of all infant deaths in the city, and the greatest contributor to the racial gap. The City of Milwaukee Health Department and partners drew on contradictory biopolitical logics and practices: On one hand, they located the problem of the “gap” in particular segregated neighborhoods-in-crisis, and on the other hand, they used an ostensibly “race-blind” strategy of promoting safe sleep environments. These spatializations together shifted blame for the crisis onto “failing” parents, especially Black parents. Tracing instances of resistance through the development and implementation of the campaign suggests possibilities for an anti-racist biopolitics.