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
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