IAMAS Public Statement in Support of Black Lives Matter
As an international organization centered on the idea that mothers are stronger when we stand together, IAMAS (Int’l Association of Maternal Action and Scholarship) has always believed its strength is rooted in its diversity — diversity of people, experiences, and ideas. Unfortunately, in the United States and around the globe, many find diversity threatening.
George Floyd was the most recent person on a very long list of Black men and women who have been murdered as a direct result of not being born white. Moreover, we know that BBIPOC (Black, Brown, Indigenous People of Color) face many injustices beyond what is making the news. Police brutality and an unjust legal system ravage African-American families. Housing and employment discrimination; discrimination within our financial, health, and election systems; and discrimination simply navigating the world outside their homes is commonplace. Every single person should find this intolerable and actively resist the continuation of anti-Black violence in all forms.
As with most instances of oppression, women and mothers are impacted severely. We see this in the shameful rates of maternal deaths of African-American women in the United States (in which African-American mothers die at 2.5 times the rate of white mothers) as well as the ways in which African-American women are not permitted to expect basic levels of safety for their children that most white mothers do. We see this in the purposeful attempts to restrict access to government support and the continual pressure to keep BBIPOC women in low-wage work.
Moreover, “white feminism” is guilty of ignoring the experiences of African-American women for more than 150 years, and we have often failed to be allies in the crimes against humanity that African-American women have endured. White women have long outsourced their childcare and domestic work to women of color in order to gain time, accelerate their own careers, and exert their race-based privilege. It is the responsibility of all white women to learn and reflect as well as listen to organizations that have been leading critical progressive reform such as Black Lives Matter, Sistersong Collective/Black Mamas Matter Alliance, and the National Birth Equity Collaborative.
IAMAS was founded to give voice to those whose voices have been ignored — professionally, politically, and personally. In this way, we stand by all whose voices are silenced, including as a result of systemic race-based oppression. In addition, IAMAS believes knowledge is powerful. Most of our members are researchers and teachers, and many are committed to de-colonizing their classrooms, supporting the reform-focused work of African-American mothers, and leading our own families’ interrogations of structural racism via an intersectional lens. This is important work, but it is not enough.
Our organization remains largely monochromatic, which unfortunately reflects academia as a whole, but is nonetheless inexcusable. Since IAMAS formed, our executive director and the organization’s steering committee have been strategizing ways to encourage greater diversity within our organization. Some of these ideas have been put into action already. Through the Town Hall series, we have sought to extend open-access opportunities for education and share the work being done by African-American-centered non-profits as well as organizations that work with and for BBIPOC. We have designed our membership structure to encourage those who are financially disenfranchised to join. We continually examine our own shortcomings and seek input from those who have the most at stake. These are merely starting points.
During George Floyd’s final moments, he called out for his mother. Mothers, in all communities, are responding. Our gifts of compassion, strength, (re-)birth, and love are needed desperately right now. We have every intention of continuing the action-oriented work we are already doing while remaining deeply aware that more should be expected and enacted. As always, we would love to hear from our members about ways we can be more effective in these efforts. We also welcome all who would like to join us as we stand with the Black Lives Matter movement and recommit ourselves to anti-racist work, today and the days ahead.
In the spirit of education, we offer you this reading list.
Motherhood So White: A Memoir of Race, Gender, and Parenting in America by Nefertiti Austin
Reconceiving Motherhood and Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins
Black Motherhood: Contexts, Contours, and Considerations, Ed. Karen T. Craddock
Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey
Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall
We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood by Dani McClain’s
Raising Brooklyn: Nannies, Childcare, and Caribbeans Creating Community by Tamara R. Moses
Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, Eds. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams
Reproductive Justice by Loretta Ross
