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The Unfair Maternal Health Care System Towards Black Women

Introduction

The maternal health care system embodies racism towards black women. This has become accepted and seen as normal, even though it goes against democratic beliefs and values. Throughout the years of American development, stereotypes of people of different races have affected their day-to-day life. Medical systems still use these stereotypes to use on their patients pregnant black women have endured the unfair treatment of receiving help from maternal health professionals, all due to racism. There have been many studies around why this is and the only answer is racism. It doesn't matter the social class of the mother, or the educational level. The level of education that a black and white mother has can be the same, but because of the color of their skin, will determine the health of their baby. This is a major problem because the medical system for maternal problems is picking and choosing who to help. Why try to separate these two women from each other when at the end of the day they are both mothers? Due to democracy and how the system they made is set up, black women are faced with another setback. Knowing that it isn't an economic problem within these women, and purely based on race, it puts these mothers at risk of receiving help when giving birth to their children. Democracy is a big part of how this country is made up with the involvement of white supremacy.

"Minorities are known to live shorter lives than Whites. African Americans also suffer higher rates of each of the most common types of cancer and a higher incidence of obesity. The data are limited, but some studies have shown that having a diverse healthcare provider organization is good for patients”

Who can we Trust in the Medical System?

lack of trust in the medical system from the black community is no surprise. There have been studies showing that the lack of diversity in hospitals has been the leading cause of minority deaths in hospitals. The lack of diversity in hospitals can be fixed by hiring more people that can fill in that “diverse circle”. But It's harder than we think. There's a whole system of how doctors are being put into hospitals. These inequalities are causing an unbalance in the medical system that is also affecting its patients “Racial/ethnic health and healthcare disparities persist despite efforts to close the gaps. Minorities are known to live shorter lives than Whites. African Americans also suffer higher rates of each of the most common types of cancer and a higher incidence of obesity. The data are limited, but some studies have shown that having a diverse healthcare provider organization is good for patients” (Racism Is Still a Problem in Healthcare C-Suite: Efforts Aimed at Boosting Diversity in Healthcare Leadership Fail to Make Progress). There have been studies shown at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that discovered that African Americans that integrated with physicians of the same race were more satisfied with their treatment compared to others. Racial discrimination in the medical field and among medical professionals has caused black people to be led astray from that. There is a pattern of black people, especially older ones, that don't trust the hospital or the medical field in general. All of their superstitions and overthinking can be justified if medical professionals aren't picking doctors on skill but more so on race and gender.

The hiring process within the medical system is one that can be one of the many reasons that black women go through unfair treatment in maternal care. With race and gender as the foundation of excluding diversity in hospitals, their incidents have become so common there isn't any word on it. “Collins (2001) shows that racial/ethnic minority groups encounter a politics of containment, ridden with the exploitation of less powerful racial groups for the benefit of more powerful racial groups” (THE LITTLE BROWN WOMAN Gender Discrimination in American Medicine). Race and gender are the foundation of hiring people in our medical field, which is an unjust way of picking people in a field that is helping the citizens of this country. They will see the best of the best doctors and ignore them or not even consider hiring them, due to their gender and race, which is how democracy is making it so the medical system will always fail those of color (black people especially), and is in this hamster wheel that we somehow can’t get out of. Politics play a huge part in this, when in reality the real reason why it plays its part in this is that if one race and gender is benefitting from this then the other minorities don't stand a chance.

White Supremacy

Some may argue that black and white mothers coming from the same social class may receive the same amount of treatment in hospitals. Poor black and white women are seen as equals due to their income but because of race, they are at completely different levels. Regardless of social class, white women will always have this advantage over black women due to their race. “Because racial differences in infant mortality persist net of class differences, they are a particularly good illustration of the effects of white privilege and racism on health despite one’s socioeconomic status. As Khanna and Harris explain, ‘While other social identities may mediate the ways in which whites experience race privilege, whites (regardless of social class) do experience some level of race privilege by virtue of their whiteness’ “ (Using Racial and Class Differences in Infant Mortality to Teach about White Privilege: A Cooperative Group Activity). White women have a better rate of delivering healthy babies due to their white privilege. They have this privilege that is harming other black mothers when receiving help. To give black women equal treatment, systems that were built on racism would rather preach that we have equality in this country but wouldn't blink an eye at the black women who are suffering. It is important to go back to the root of this problem and where this is coming from. White supremacy is one of the many building blocks of this country and the democracy of the people, and it's now affecting the future children of America. Racism in America is causing black mothers to have their reproductive rights and health in jeopardy. The lack of action being taken to help black women to be safe in hospitals and when receiving health care is a crisis that everyone should know about and at least try to fix.

There is an education scale that people would want to add to this argument. Many believe that the level of education a mother has is the critical foundation for the treatment she’ll receive in hospitals. But this is false. Research shows highly educated black women still face discrimination in maternal health, compared to white women with high education status that receive proper treatment for their birth. This has caused there to be stress-related effects on black mothers and their children which can affect the health of their wellbeing and baby in negative ways. “Discrimination-related stress is associated with worse infant health outcomes among black mothers and unequal treatment – for example, in the labor and housing markets – might affect black mothers’ ability to access resources related to child health, such as medical care. Further, research suggests that more-educated black women are disproportionately affected by discrimination- the links between lifetime discrimination exposure and very low birth weight were strongest among college-educated black women”. (Maternal educational attainment and infant mortality in the United States)

People say that knowledge is power, and as black women are the most oppressed people in this country, that's what they strive for in order to give a title for themselves other than being “another black woman ''. No matter what lengths a black woman may go to in order to be seen as equal in this country, it will always go back to the color of her skin and set them at square one. White women have more treatment of black mothers due to their white supremacy and this is all against democratic beliefs. If all people in America are equal, why are these mothers being held on different scales?

Medical Apartheid

As years pass by, the racial gap that separates the health of black babies compared to white babies grows. Black babies are twice as likely to die compared to white infants. “Villarosa starkly notes, ‘In one year, that racial gap adds up to more than 4,000 lost black babies’ (2018). Here, the specter of ‘lost black babies’ is not the result of black women’s imagined pathological reproductivity—as infant mortality was often cast in previous eras—but newly described as the result of medical apartheid” (Birthing Black Mothers). The loss of babies in the black community is due to the lack of attention black mothers are receiving when pregnant. This creates this gap between black women and white women with the rate of babies being born. The death rates of black babies are growing each year and yet our democracy does nothing about it. They have turned a blind eye to the fact that people of this country, black women are losing children or dying due to the fact hospitals and democracy is failing. You would think that democracy was for all people in America, but it’s starting to sound as if it applies to those that actually have rights in this country. It makes us question , who are the “We” in "We the People"? The reproductive rights of black women are at risk. When giving birth to a baby they are most likely to face more medical issues due to racism which can affect their health status, or if they choose to not have a child they are threatened with not having a choice. Accounting for race defeats the purpose of receiving medical treatment. Black women not being able to have a choice in their own bodies and having to take the risky choice of picking life or death is not fair and goes against what democracy stands for. Knowing that they can’t necessarily pick life or death when giving birth to a child is scary, and needs to be recognized and fixed immediately.

“A variety of forms of political labor, ranging from biopolitical state efforts to regulate black motherhood to black mothers advocating for health care that ensures their survival; from baby-friendly hospital initiatives designed to promote breastfeeding, to women of color (WOC) birth workers organized around birth justice"

There’s also a gap outside of the delivery room, and in the hospital itself. There is a pattern in the medical system . That system of choosing who should be working with the people of America isn't fair to all. There is a lack of black nurses in the maternal health system and this may be one of the many reasons why black women aren't receiving the best of help. Relating this back to politics and the democracy of America, It's an engraved system that has caused black mothers to have fear when having a child, not knowing if the medical treatment they will receive will truly help them or only make them worse compared to how they were original. The lack of medical attention they receive due to racism is how democracy plays its part in this topic and doesn’t truly serve all the people in America. “A variety of forms of political labor, ranging from biopolitical state efforts to regulate black motherhood to black mothers advocating for health care that ensures their survival; from baby-friendly hospital initiatives designed to promote breastfeeding, to women of color (WOC) birth workers organized around birth justice. Black mothers have been transformed (or perhaps have transformed themselves) into objects of ‘attention, compassion, analysis, and sometimes reparation’ that echo earlier forms of more retributive state discipline, but here with a seemingly compassionate difference” (Birthing Black Mothers: Birth Work and the Making of Black Maternal Political Subjects). The environment black women are put into and the help they receive can create this safe environment. Due to the lack of a more diverse spectrum of doctors, has caused the health of many pregnant black mothers to plummet. Some people have gotten to the point where they don't trust anyone in the medical system and that no matter the race they will get the same treatment. Having a nurse of the same race and/or same background can help you feel comfortable, but will they get the opposite treatment than what they were expecting? There is a system no matter the race of the health profession they follow when treating patients. There may be a sense of comfort, but black women are the victims of this system that constantly puts them down when receiving medical treatment.

Work Cited

BHATT, WASUDHA. “THE LITTLE BROWN WOMAN: Gender Discrimination in American Medicine.” Gender and Society, vol. 27, no. 5, 2013, pp. 659–80. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43669822. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Livingston, S. Racism Is Still a Problem in Healthcare C-Suite: Efforts Aimed at Boosting Diversity in Healthcare Leadership Fail to Make Progress. https://doi.org/26554292

Rosenberg, Lynn, et al. “Perceptions of Racial Discrimination and the Risk of Preterm Birth.” Epidemiology, vol. 13, no. 6, 2002, pp. 646–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3703477. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Nash, Jennifer C. “Birthing Black Mothers: Birth Work and the Making of Black Maternal Political Subjects.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 47, no. 3/4, 2019, pp. 29–50. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26803260. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Taylor, Cedric A. L. “ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN MEASURES OF SES AND LOW BIRTH WEIGHT AMONG BLACK MOTHERS AND WHITE MOTHERS IN MICHIGAN.” Michigan Sociological Review, vol. 24, 2010, pp. 56–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40969153. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Cebulak, Jessica A., and John F. Zipp. “Using Racial and Class Differences in Infant Mortality to Teach about White Privilege: A Cooperative Group Activity.” Teaching Sociology, vol. 47, no. 2, 2019, pp. 102–15. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26746520. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

DuMonthier, Asha, et al. “HEALTH & WELL-BEING.” The Status of Black Women: In the United States, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2017, pp. 88–117. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep27082.9. Accessed 23 Mar. 2023.

Green, Tiffany, and Tod G. Hamilton. “Maternal Educational Attainment and Infant Mortality in the United States: Does the Gradient Vary by Race/Ethnicity and Nativity?” Demographic Research, vol. 41, 2019, pp. 713–52. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26850665. Accessed 24 Mar. 2023.

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