White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About
Racism
White people in North America live in a social environment that
protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This
insulated environment of racial protection builds white
expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering
the ability to tolerate racial stress.
In The Color of Law (published by Liveright in May 2017), Richard
Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight
how segregation in America—the incessant kind that continues to
dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social
strife—is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the
local, state, and federal levels.
In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi
chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their
staggering power over the course of American history. Stamped
from the Beginning uses the life stories of five major American
intellectuals to offer a window into the contentious debates
between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists
and antiracists. From Puritan minister Cotton Mather to Thomas
Jefferson, from fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison to
brilliant scholar W.E.B.
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black,
White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this
self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy?
Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of
racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is
essential if we are serious about enabling communication across
racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more
urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly
acrimonious.
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of
medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the
earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical
researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it
details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals
for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition
that continues today within some black populations. It reveals
how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well
as unauthorized autopsies and dissections.
There is a global crisis in maternal health care for black women.
In the United States, black women are over three times more
likely to perish from pregnancy-related complications than white
women; their babies are half as likely to survive the first year.
Many black women experience policing, coercion, and
disempowerment during pregnancy and childbirth and are
disconnected from alternative birthing traditions.
Battling Over Birth also provides solutions. The report shares
positive experiences by black women, and identifies best
practices based on their experiences. It makes a series of
recommendations, including community accountability boards to
hold hospitals accountable; increased access to midwifery and
doula-care; recruitment and training of more health-care
professionals of color; culturally-competent, empowering prenatal
and postpartum care; greater access to home birth and birth
centers; and a sharp reduction in the use of C-sections.
Birthing Justice: Black Women, Birthing, and
Childbirth
There is a global crisis in maternal health care for black women.
In the United States, black women are over three times more
likely to perish from pregnancy-related complications than white
women; their babies are half as likely to survive the first year.
Many black women experience policing, coercion, and
disempowerment during pregnancy and childbirth and are
disconnected from alternative birthing traditions.
The pervasive crisis of Black maternal mortality is making
headlines. Nationally, Black women are three to four times more
likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women.
Black infants are over two times more likely to die in their
first year of life than white infants.This epidemic of Black
mothers and infants having the highest risk for maternal and
infant mortality has persisted for years. In fact, Black women’s
risk of maternal mortality has remained higher than white women’s
risk for the past six decades.
Black women in the United States experience unacceptably poor
maternal health outcomes, including disproportionately high rates
of death related to pregnancy or childbirth. Both societal and
health system factors contribute to high rates of poor health
outcomes and maternal mortality for Black women, who are more
likely to experience barriers to obtaining quality care and often
face racial discrimination throughout their lives.
The infant mortality rate is a key national indicator of
population health. Despite technological advances in medicine and
other health-related resources available to the average American,
the infant mortality rate (IMR) in the United States is
exceptionally high relative to other developed countries. For
black infants, the numbers are devastatingly high. In 2013, the
white IMR in the United States was five per 1000 live births
—resembling economically advanced nations like New Zealand.
Maternal mortality rates in the US are rising, particularly among black women. This article describes three things health care leaders can do to understand the contributing causes of mortality, including racism, and factors to reduce inequities and improve safety in maternal health.
The National Perinatal Taskforce acknowledges that pregnant and parenting persons occupy a range of gendered identities, and that many do not identify as women or mothers. This report utilizes terms such as “woman” and “mother” as well as more gender inclusive language such as “pregnant person” or “parent,” although we acknowledge that the report may do so inconsistently.
