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Black Babies Are in Grave Danger!

By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Colum

      Don’t believe me.

      Read it for yourself. Recently, CNN Health had a report dated August 18, 2020 in which it reported a finding from researchers from George Mason University which analyzed data of 1.8 million hospital births in Florida between 1992 and 2015.

     The findings were breathtaking to say the least and were published in

The Journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) this past Monday.
 


Lafe Tolliver, Esq

      Get ready to weep and howl: the findings indicated that when cared for by White physicians, Black newborns were about three times more likely to die in the hospital than White newborns.

      These findings, the study suggest, appear more strongly in more complicated case and when hospitals deliver more Black newborns.

      As a savings grace, the study also found that Black physicians outperform their White colleagues when caring for Black newborns.

Let that sink in for a moment!

      A study found that Black newborns have a better chance of living when they are cared for by Black doctors and the White doctors do not do a favorable job in caring for Black newborns.

      Imagine the concern and alarm such a finding will generate in hospitals across the nation when black parents go to the maternity ward to have a child delivered by a nearly all white medical team or staff or doctor.

      What is it about a Black newborn baby that, under the medical care of a White doctor, that child stands a lesser chance of survival than if that child was under similar newborn care by a Black doctor?

      What is it that a Black newborn baby may trigger in an attending White doctor that can result in lesser professional care and concern than if that same child was under the watchful eye of a Black doctor?

       Are we saying that to increase the likelihood of a Black newborn surviving, that greater concern and care should go into choosing a hospital where a Black physician has admitting privileges to so that the Black mother can rest assured that her child will not become a death statistic?

       What preconceived notions, racist or otherwise, does a White doctor bring to the delivery room when he or she notices that the delivering Mother is nonwhite?

       It is emotional trauma and the infliction of mental and emotional distress upon a mother, who is non-white, for her to know that such a study exists.

     What options does she have to increase the chances of her newborn making it out of the hospital alive?

     Understand that the sample pool from which these findings were deduced, was one million eight hundred thousand births! Not a small sample by any means and, understandably, a sufficient sample by which to quiet any naysayers trying to discredit the quality of the data.

     Such a blockbuster finding should put every hospital on speed dial that they have a Herculean job to do in order to allay the fears of Black mothers that they are in safe hands; and that all measures are being done to insure that the child that they are about to deliver, will live.

     Such a study calls into question the institutional racism of the medical profession wherein such a finding could be found to be credible that White doctors could be found to be a cause of Black babies dying at a higher rate than white babies.

      And here is the critical touch point: Black babies survive at a higher rate when Black doctors oversee their delivery and care.

It is as if White doctors, at the beginning of life for Black babies are exhibiting those acts and thoughts that calculably lead to the death of Black babies and that Black doctors are the saviors of their own race when it comes to new Black bodies coming into the world.

      Obviously, the medical profession and the hospitals should be charged with the immediate task of teaching implicit bias as a required classroom subject because it appears that White doctors are bringing into the delivery room, attitudes and perceptions about Black life that is harmful to the health of the Black baby at the time of his or her birth.

     It is beyond comprehension that the mere fact that a Black mother goes to a white hospital, should even remotely have to concern herself with this now reported fact that White doctors can be a danger to her newborn, even being born or living out his or her first months of life.

     What is it about a Black baby that would trigger negative thoughts in a White doctor that the new born he or she is about to deliver or perform post delivery care, does not deserve the right to live as equally as the White child delivered from a White Mother?

      Are the seeds of black hate or disgust so embedded in certain white medical professionals that such a study would make such a finding that a Black doctor is your best bet to improve your odds of your black child being born and being born alive or surviving thereafter?

      Such a finding raises the need for more funding for Black Doulas

to be intimately engaged in the Black birthing process to ensure that black babies get to see the light of day.

Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com

 

 

 
   
   


Copyright © 2019 by [The Sojourner's Truth]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 08/27/20 16:34:39 -0400.


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