An intersectional account of the objectification of Black women is necessary to combat historical exploitation and shape heteroeconomic public discourse.

Purportedly, postracism marks the end of racial discrimination and separates interpersonal experiences with racism from the historical, institutional, and structural legacies of racial oppression in the United States (see, e.g., Goldberg, 2002; Joseph, 2012; Squires et al., 2010). Blacktavists, as we demonstrate, resist these imposed silences about race and the subsequent discursive invisibility it creates not only by calling specific attention to their raced bodies but by contextualizing Medolac’s efforts within a historical and ongoing context of racism. Responding to the inception of the company’s campaign, Blacktavists discursively linked Medolac’s efforts to the institution of slavery, making U.S. racism and the exploitation of Black female bodies visible within the “postracial” landscape of the United States. Within popularly circulating discourses of postracism, Medolac’s efforts to recruit urban African-American women can be read as colorblind and unmotivated by racism; however, Blacktavists’ rhetoric reveals a pattern of Black labor being exploited for White interests and frames Medolac as part of this exploitative pattern. Afrykayn Moon (2015a), in her blog titled View From a Rack, noted: How does offering to purchase breast milk from African American mothers compare to slavery? Slavery is a legal or economic system under which people are treated as property. Knowing that, the essence of slavery is using people as property, exploiting a group because of their race, economic status or religion for financial gain. Does that ring a bell for you? Medolac is proposing to collect African American women’s milk from low-income areas of Detroit, and sell it to hospitals for seven dollars. That’s a six hundred percent profit made off the backs (or breast in this case) of African American mothers! (para. 5) Moon’s blog post clearly situates Medolac’s efforts within a much larger historical context of discrimination and oppression, drawing parallels between the company’s use of Black breastfeeding women and slave owners’ use of Black labor. Calling attention to Black bodies, Moon remarks that Medolac is profiting “off the backs (or breast in this case) of African American mothers.” Race scholars have indicated the tension between discursive and material constructions of race, suggesting that embodiment is essential for understanding marginalization (see, e.g., Moraga, 1983). Using this lens we see how Moon, focusing on the materiality of Black mothers’ bodies, moves between the discursive constructions and the material conditions of race to make racism visible on and through the bodies of Black breastfeeding women. Rendering U.S. histories of racism visible within civic discourses that circulate the myths of postracism and colorblindness, Blacktavists resist and reject being categorized and labeled through White narratives and instead manage how they are seen by providing an intersectional account of the ways their raced, gendered, sexed, and classed bodies have been abused. As executive director of BMBFA and Internet blogger Kiddada Green (2015a) noted, “African American women have been impacted traumatically by historical commodification of our bodies” (para. 3). Similarly, Allers (2015), a consultant for BMBFA and independent blogger, addressing Medolac, articulated, “You disrespected the historical relationship between Black women and white women and our breast milk by not respecting the community enough to reach out to any Black breastfeeding advocates, advisors or organizations in devising your scheme” (para. 2). In both accounts, Green and Allers resist Medolac’s efforts to discursively construct their bodies as commodifiable by calling on the unique intersection of history, race, and gender. Specifically, by rooting their critique within these intersections, Green and Allers frame Black mothers as members of a supported and sustaining community and make an alternate narrative of Black motherhood visible within public discourse. Blacktavists’ strategy to link Medolac’s campaign to histories of Black exploitation is articulated discursively as well as represented through powerful visual images, image macros that can shape public discourse and manage the visibility of Black breastfeeding women. Image macros were one Facebook group’s primary contribution to the #StopMedolac campaign. The anonymous organizer(s) of the page “Breastfeeding Mothers Unite” posted a number of image macros during the campaign that were circulated and shared by other Blacktavists across various platforms. Both Figure 1 and Figure 2 were posted as profile pictures to the Breastfeeding Mothers Unite Facebook page and contextualize mothering rhetorics within a complex web of history, race, class, gender, and sexuality. In Figure 1, a drawing of a Black woman nursing a White infant appears in the foreground, while a White woman, presumably the infant’s mother, lies in a comfortable bed in the background of the image in a well-furnished bedroom. Visually representing the legacy of Black women working as wet nurses for their slave-owning mistresses, the image states, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it” and includes the following: “#StopMedolac from targeting Black mothers in Detroit for breast milk.” This comment directs the viewer to connect slavery-era racial exploitation, a narrative that is banished from contemporary discourses of the postrace era in the United States, to Medolac’s campaign in Detroit. The relationship between the mistress, the slave, and the nursing child at once relies on embodiment to reinforce the heteronormativity of whiteness, while propagating the marginal sexuality of blackness. This occurs insofar as the White mother, having satisfied reproductive expectations (Carter, 2007), reclines to rest, while the wet nurse bares her Black breast for a White infant. Drawing together cultural expectations of race, gender, sexuality, and social class, this image macro reinforces generalizations of White motherhood as leisurely, privileged, and separated from the physical care of the infant, while motherhood is exploited, laborious, and inextricable from satisfying the physical needs of White women and infants. Highlighting the ways that Black female sexuality has been milked for White interests, Blacktavists position Black mothers as hypervisible within a postrace discursive landscape—requiring viewers to not only see race and racist relationships but also the complicit ways that gender, sexuality, and social class inform contemporary racial relationships in the United States.