“Just Mothering: Amy Coney Barrett and the Racial Politics of American Motherhood.” Laws 10.2 (2021).
Abstract: Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination and confirmation featured frequent references to her role as a mother. This article situates these references within the trajectory of American political development to demonstrate how motherhood operates as a mechanism for enforcing a white-centered racial order. Through a close analysis of both the history of politicized motherhood as well as Barrett’s nomination and confirmation hearings, I make a series of claims about motherhood and contemporary conservatism. First, conservatives stress the virtuousness of motherhood through a division between public and private spheres that valorizes the middle-class white mother. Second, conservatives emphasize certain mothering practices associated with the middle-class white family. Third, conservatives leverage an epistemological claim about the universality of mothering experiences to universalize white motherhood. Finally, this universalism obscures how motherhood operates as a site in which power distinguishes between good and bad mothers and allocates resources accordingly. By attending to what I call the “republican motherhood script” operating in contemporary conservatism, I argue that motherhood is an ideological apparatus for enforcing a racial order premised on white protectionism.
“From Family Values to Religious Freedom: Conservative Discourse and the Politics of Gay Rights”, New Political Science (2018)
Abstract: On the issue of gay rights, today’s social conservatives are more likely to describe their opposition as a matter of religious freedom or personal conscience as opposed to a belief that gays and lesbians represent an existential threat to the traditional family. But how new is this contemporary argument, and how different is it from the family values politics of the previous era? This article develops what Victoria Hattam and Joseph Lowndes call “associative chains” from two important moments in anti-gay politics: Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign and Kim Davis’s decision to not issue gay marriage licenses in Rowan County, KY. On one level, these moments reveal competing roles of the state in the lives of its citizens. Family values politics authorized an interventionist state for the protection of children, while religious freedom defenders promote a zone of personal conscience impervious to the state. On another level, however, these moments reveal the mutability of social conservative opposition to gay rights. Calls for protecting religious freedom preserve a heterosexism derived from antecedent family values politics. The novelty of religious freedom as a defense for homophobia obscures a persistent social conservative commitment to using the state to enshrine the heteronuclear family.
““Personal Responsibility” and the End of Welfare as We Know It“, PS: Political Science & Politics (2017)
Other writing has appeared in:
Public Seminar
Brexit Spawns an Unfortunate Hashtag [6 July 2016]
In this short essay I explore the rise of racist hate crime in the aftermath of the British people’s decision to leave the UK, represented by the hashtag #PostRefRacism.
Is Marriage Equality a Conservative Victory? Obergefell and the Continuing Legacy of Family Values [14 July 2015]
The Supreme Court’s decision to offer legal recognition to same-sex couples represents a “mixed-bag of political possibility.”
The Guardian:
Brian Schweitzer’s ‘Gay-dar’ Did Pick up on something about Southern Men [June 2014]
This opinion piece playfully connects innuendo about Rep. Eric Cantor’s sexuality with a history of southern men and labor.
