CARNAL KNOWLEDGE: BLACK WOMEN, MORAL PANICS & SEX EDUCATION LEGISLATION

Abstract

This dissertation examines the intersection of legal studies, Black feminist thought, and sexuality studies to explore how legislation constructs, obscures, and exploits Black women. It argues that moral panics around the sexuality of white children often serve as catalysts for biopower—mechanisms of population control exercised by modern nation-states (Foucault, 1976)—mediated explicitly through law and implicitly through Black women’s bodies. Using three U.S. sex education policies implemented between 1970 and 1996 as case studies, this project demonstrates how these policies function as race-making projects, addressing white replacement anxiety while invoking Black women as spectral others—discursively present to signify deviance and inferiority but rarely explicitly named. This dissertation chronicles how Black women’s reproduction, once controlled for white economic and social interests, became framed as excessive and threatening in the post-Emancipation era. It highlights how myths about Black women’s deviance are weaponized to provoke fear, resentment, and compliance among white populations, constructing reproduction as a site of social anxiety. By examining the cultural myths that underpin these policies, this project reveals how white supremacy perpetuates itself through cultural, political, and legislative frameworks. Ultimately, this dissertation situates sex education policy as a biopolitical tool for maintaining systemic racial hierarchies and reinscribing Black women’s marginalization.