Bu these anti-vaxxers, in appropriating the language of the civil rights movement, are signaling how they view their issue: that isn’t just a matter of reproductive autonomy, as they often claim, but of discrimination and state violence.

Advertisement

This is so ridiculous it almost hurts to unravel the “logic” of it—America’s racial caste systems, exemplified most notably in the Jim Crow South but certainly not restricted to it, are the country’s purest examples of holistic, mechanized violence. It touched where you lived, where you ate, where you worshipped, where you could be buried, and whether you could participate in the democracy that codified these restrictions.

The women who have taken on the mantle of the anti-vaxx movement and attempted to rebrand it have disproportionate power in civic life, particularly compared to women of color. Far from being obtuse or uneducated, in colonizing the language of racial justice, these anti-vaxxers have proven themselves to be as shameless as they are white.