Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

BAR Book Forum: Sabrina Strings’s “Fearing the Black Body”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
21 Aug 2019
BAR Book Forum: Sabrina Strings’s “Fearing the Black Body”
BAR Book Forum: Sabrina Strings’s “Fearing the Black Body”

Fat stigma is rooted incolonial-era race science, and specifically in anti-blackness, says the author.

“It is important for us to remember just how much of what passes for “classical” beauty is rooted in white supremacy.”

In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Sabrina Strings. Dr. Strings is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Her book is Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia.

Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?

Sabrina Strings: The book serves as a reminder that many of the taken-for-granted ways of knowing and doing are rooted in colonial-era race science, and specifically in anti-blackness. We are in a climate of growing social awareness about the ills of fat phobia, and how such phobia routinely besets black women and other folx from marginalized groups. And yet, what often appears to undermine the critical force of these arguments in the mainstream are seemingly apolitical claims about “health.” My book works to uncover how such claims are  politicized. Racializations and genderings of the body, and especially sexism and anti-blackness, have been integral to notions of health and illness.

What do you hope activists and community organizers will take away from reading your book?

I hope my book can be a bulwark against claims commonly made that the cultural aversion to fatness is rooted in an ethics of care. That is, people like to claim that fat stigma is rooted in concerns about the ill-health of obese persons, and that the desire to see them lose weight is really for their own good. My book shows that fat stigma precedes medical concerns about the ill effects of “excess” weight by more than a century. And, it was mostly a way to cordon off racial “others” from polite white society.

We know readers will learn a lot from your book, but what do you hope readers will un-learn? In other words, is there a particular ideology you’re hoping to dismantle?

We are trained to link health to body size. This is one of the main things I hope that people will start to un-learn. But, at the same time, I’d also like for people to  re-learn a few things. We have also been trained to un-think the centrality of anti-blackness to our conceptions of beauty. There are several pages in the book where I am showing how white men and women made direct and unfiltered commentary about the physical unattractiveness of black women and related their undesirability to their skin color and body size. Many of these same white people would claim the beauty of white skin, and svelte forms. Today, of course, white people rarely talk so openly about race and whiteness. But, it is important for us to remember just how much of what passes for “classical” beauty is rooted in white supremacy.

Who are the intellectual heroes that inspire your work?

Can anything in black feminist theory be written without bell hooks? Audre Lorde? Toni Morrison? I also feel deeply indebted to Angela Davis. Her presence as a scholar, radical, and spiritual figure is inspiring in all its manifestations. Roderick Ferguson’s work on how black bodies are continually pressed into capitalist and hetero-patriarchal service is always resonant. I think also of Zora Neale Hurston. Her works illuminated for me an aspect of the black experience that I’d never heard anyone speak about. She described racial and gendered relations in a way I’d never considered. The honesty about the black experience in her work (fiction and non-fiction) is a model for the kind of truth telling I’d like to do as a writer.

In what way does your book help us imagine new worlds?

It’s hard to argue against “science.” When people start talking about black women’s embodiment and degradation, oddly there’s always a scientific explanation marshaled to explain why said degradation is par for the course. At one point it was race science. Now, too often, it’s medical science. The book reminds us that for all its claims to objectivity, “science” is a discourse being promoted by powerful individuals. Frequently, they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. The book can be seen as a challenge to the view of science as “objective” or the mechanism by which we may necessarily “progress.” 

If we don’t have to rely on the scientific method to generate knowledge, and specifically knowledge about marginalized groups, what other ways of knowing become available? The book doesn’t explicitly call for alternative medicine, community medicine, local foods or slow foods. But, I hope that by working to dismantle the obesity = ill health equation—which demands that we encourage low-income communities and communities of color to focus on weight management—that it leaves more space for conversations about non-traditional, not-necessarily “scientific” means of generating better health outcomes for our communities to become more visible and viable.

Roberto Sirvent  is Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University in Fullerton, CA. He also serves as the Outreach and Mentoring Coordinator for the Political Theology Network.   He is co-author, with fellow BAR contributor Danny Haiphong, of the new book,American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected]

BAR Book Forum

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Sam C. Tenorio’s Book, “Jump”
18 September 2024
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
BAR Book Forum: André Brock Jr.’s “Distributed Blackness”
André Brock Jr.
BAR Book Forum: André Brock Jr.’s “Distributed Blackness”
15 July 2021
The online aggregation and coherence of Blackness online, absent Black bodies, is what inspired the author’s book.
BAR Book Forum: Kyla Schuller’s Book, “The Biopolitics of Feeling”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Kyla Schuller’s Book, “The Biopolitics of Feeling”
15 July 2021
The very physical category of femaleness was articulated by feminists and non-feminists alike as the sole property of whiteness in the 19th century
BAR Book Forum: Gerald Horne’s Jazz and Justice
Dr. Gerald Horne
BAR Book Forum: Gerald Horne’s Jazz and Justice
23 June 2021
He was stunned to ascertain that Europe was less racist toward those like himself in comparison to his homeland;
BAR Book Forum: Jerrilyn McGregory’s “One Grand Noise”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Jerrilyn McGregory’s “One Grand Noise”
16 June 2021
To break cyclical, systemic oppression requires a functionality that rejects reified notions of governance, global capitalism, and accommodation.
BAR Book Forum: Rachel Afi Quinn’s “Being La Dominicana”
Rachel Afi Quinn
BAR Book Forum: Rachel Afi Quinn’s “Being La Dominicana”
09 June 2021
Dominican racial logic frequently contradicts what US scholars think they know about how race works.
BAR Book Forum: Tiffany N. Florvil’s “Mobilizing Black Germany”
Tiffany N. Florvil
BAR Book Forum: Tiffany N. Florvil’s “Mobilizing Black Germany”
09 June 2021
Black History Month strengthened Black German claims of kinship with their nation and the larger diaspora.
BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
02 June 2021
How Black women gave the term “liberty” its meaning and expanded the scope of liberty in the nation’s capital during the nineteenth century.
BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
02 June 2021
Western media outlets, NGOs and powerful governments allied with the United States work in unison to deceive people about foreign policy.
BAR Book Forum: Katrinell M. Davis’ “Tainted Tap”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Katrinell M. Davis’ “Tainted Tap”
19 May 2021
Activists and community organizers should be inspired by the work of elders engaged in social change.

More Stories


  • Black Agenda Radio June 27, 2025
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio June 27, 2025
    27 Jun 2025
    In this week’s segment we hear about a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
  • Gerald Horne
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gerald Horne Discusses His Book "The Capital of Slavery: Washington DC 1800 - 1865"
    27 Jun 2025
    Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Dr. Horne is a prolific…
  • Peace treaty signing
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Congo and Rwanda Agreement Will Benefit the West at the Expense of the Congolese People
    27 Jun 2025
    Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of Friends of the Congo. He joins us from Washington to discuss the ongoing crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s continued intervention…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    War Propaganda, State Controlled Media, and the End of African Stream
    25 Jun 2025
    African Stream's Pan-African, anti-imperialist journalistic perspectives made it the target of a state that colludes with corporate media to spread war propaganda.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: The Beirut Jokebook, June Jordan, 1982
    25 Jun 2025
    “What did the Arab lady say to the Israeli tank?”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us