Tracing Invisible Historical Legacies in Human Milk Donation: Does Race Matter in Postpartum Care in Cabo Verde?

Worldwide and throughout history, people have shared human milk. This bodily fluid has been shared voluntarily among peers, but it has also been commodified and misappropriated, reproducing dynamics of gendered, racialized, and classed exploitation. This paper presents a case study based on fieldwork at Cabo Verde's Human Milk Bank, a clinical service that collects and redistributes voluntarily donated human milk, with an explicit commitment to practice human milk donation ethically and surpass oppressive historical legacies. As racialized histories of colonialism and slavery still pervade the social fabric of Cabo Verde, I examine how ambiguities, silences, and conundrums continue to emerge in clinical work around breast milk donation. Interrogating whether it is enough to acknowledge the oppressive history of a practice and reframe its meanings to make it just and equitable, this article argues that answers to these questions can only be found by paying attention and being present to the feelings of disjuncture and uneasiness that historical and ethnographic work confront us with.