#BlackMaternalHealthWeek #BMHW19 #BlackMamasMatter
Commentary by Black Kos Editor Denise Oliver-Velez
Due to a combination of black women’s grassroots activism, the efforts of medical researchers, black elected officials, and high profile black women like Serena Williams and Beyoncé, the issue of black women’s maternal health and high mortality rates is finally garnering the attention it deserves.
This week is Black Maternal Health Week, addressing an issue that has been ignored by the mainstream for far too long.
First stop — the grassroots organizers:
If you are not following them — or haven’t visited their webpages — please do.
Black Mamas Matter Alliance
Our Mission
Black Mamas Matter Alliance is a Black women-led cross-sectoral alliance. We center Black mamas to advocate, drive research, build power, and shift culture for Black maternal health, rights, and justice.
Our Vision
We envision a world where Black mamas have the rights, respect, and resources to thrive before, during, and after pregnancy.
Our Goals
- Change Policy: Introduce and advance policy grounded in the human rights framework that addresses Black maternal health inequity and improves Black maternal health outcomes
- Cultivate Research: Leverage the talent and knowledge that exists in Black communities and cultivate innovative research methods to inform the policy agenda to improve Black maternal health
- Advance Care for Black Mamas: Explore, introduce, and enhance holistic and comprehensive approaches to Black mamas’ care
- Shift Culture: Redirect and reframe the conversation on Black maternal health and amplify the voices of Black mamas
Our Story
The Black Mamas Matter Alliance was sparked by a partnership project between the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective (SisterSong) that began in 2013. The two organizations collaborated on story collection on the obstacles that Southern Black women face in accessing maternal health care, leading to poor maternal health outcomes and persistent racial disparities. These findings were included in a joint report – “Reproductive Injustice: Gender and Racial Discrimination in U.S. Health Care” – submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD).
Our sisters in office are playing a key role, in amplifying the message — and in drafting legislation.
House forms first Black Maternal Health Caucus
“There's finally a group of lawmakers focused on one of the widest racial disparities in health care.”
There aren’t many House caucuses created to primarily serve the black community. Last Congress, there were only four. The most recent addition was the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls, which was launched in 2016.
For Underwood, a nurse and former health official under the Obama administration, the health crisis is personal. Shalon Irving, who died shortly after childbirth and is featured in the ProPublic/NPR series, was her classmate at Johns Hopkins.
“It demands unique congressional attention,” said Underwood.
It’s also personal for Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), who mentioned during the press conference that her mom nearly died giving birth to her. Because of legal segregation, her mother wasn’t able to go to the white-only hospital, she said. Lee plans to work with the new caucus on a strategy to get bills passed while also serving as a member of a subcommittee that oversees the Department of Health and Human Services. Lee and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) were the only House leadership present Tuesday.
The new health caucus will be working with advocates like Black Mamas Matter Alliance, which has been discussing the maternal mortality crisis for some time. The group has outlined a list of priorities for members of Congress to consider: include black women leaders and black-led organizations when writing legislation, eliminate abuse and mistreatment in health care, and push for financial access to high quality care. The group also urges members of Congress to actually cite racism as the reason why black women are dying during or shortly after child birth.
The Black Maternal Health Caucus Aims To Tackle The Alarming Mortality Rate Among Black Moms
On Tuesday, Reps. Alma Adams and Lauren Underwood announced they're forming a Black Maternal Health Caucus that they say is aimed at researching and developing policies to combat the problem.“The facts are simple," Adams tells Bustle. "Black women are dying of preventable, pregnancy-related complications at an alarming rate, and as [a] black mother and grandmother, it’s personal to me."
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At the press conference where the pair announced the caucus' formation, Underwood described current black maternal death rate statistics as "horrifying."“This issue extends beyond statistics. For too many women and families, it’s their reality," Underwood said, adding that this "demands unique congressional attention."
Back in the early 90’s I was a graduate student in anthropology, and one of my professors was a medical anthropologist — Dr. Leith Mullings. She recruited and hired three of us grad students to do ethnographic fieldwork on a project she had gotten funded for — to examine very high infant mortality rates in the black community, which became “The Harlem Birth Right Project”
That study resulted in numerous journal publications, and a book, Stress and Resilience: The Social Context of Reproduction in Central Harlem, which was published in 2001.
Documenting the daily efforts of African Americans to protect their community against highly oppressive conditions, this ground-breaking volume chronicles the unique experiences of black women that place them at higher risk for morbidity and mortality - especially during pregnancy. Stress and Resilience: The Social Context of Reproduction in Central Harlem examines the processes through which economic circumstances, environmental issues, and social conditions create situations that expose African American women to stress and chronic strain. Detailing the individual and community assets and strategies used to address these conditions, this volume provides a model methodology for translating research into public health and social action.
So — I studied the impact of systemic racism on maternal and child health in our community — which cut across class lines, over 25 years ago. In the early 70’s, I had already been engaged in the battle for reproductive justice for women of color. The cry for “Reproductive Justice” from Sister Song, was raised in the ‘90s. Yet, in spite of academic research, and community activism, the entire issue did not begin to enter the political mainstream until very recently.
The data is very clear:
Listen to Jennie Joseph’s story:
As an internationally-trained midwife in Florida, Jennie Joseph sees the issues with the maternal health care system daily — and after nearly 40 years, her frustrations are evident. Her mission is to raise awareness and call out one of the largest issues relating to African-American mothers: racism
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Morehouse College, the nation’s largest liberal arts college for men, will allow individuals who self-identify as men, regardless of the sex assigned to them at birth, to be considered for admission.
According to a press release from the institution, the new Gender Identity Admissions and Matriculation Policy will apply to all students who enroll in Morehouse College by the Fall 2020 semester and was developed after 15 months of input from faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The groundbreaking plan was led by a task force created by the President of Morehouse College, Dr. David A. Thomas.
The college still will not consider women for admission or those who were assigned male gender at birth but now identified as women.
Other details of the new admissions changes include:
- The policy also applies to students who transition at Morehouse and a student who transitions from a man to a woman will no longer be eligible to matriculate at the college.
- Morehouse will continue to use masculine pronouns, the language of brotherhood, and other gendered language that reflects its mission as an institution designed to develop men with disciplined minds who will lead lives of leadership and service,” according to the outlines of the policy.
- Exemptions to the policy will be determined by a three-person committee whose decisions can only be reversed by the university president.
- Students enrolled at Morehouse before the Fall 2020 semester are not affected by the college.
“In a rapidly changing world that includes a better understanding of gender identity, we’re proud to expand our admissions policy to consider trans men who want to be part of an institution that has produced some of the greatest leaders in social justice, politics, business, and the arts for more than 150 years,” said Terrance Dixon, Morehouse’s Vice President for Enrollment Management. “The ratification of this policy affirms the College’s commitment to develop men with disciplined minds who will lead lives of leadership and service.”
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Coachella kicked off again on Friday with one of our favorite shapeshifters, Janelle Monae, in a headlining spot. In the past decade, the multitalented artist has been, at turns, the ArchAndroid, an Electric Lady, a no longer-Hidden Figure,and, most recently, a brilliant and Dirty Computer.
“The beauty of art is that it reveals itself over time, even to the artists who create it,” Monae tells fellow gamechanger Lizzo in Them. magazine. The two 2019 Coachella performers teamed up for the first-ever cover story of Condé Nast’s LGBTQIA+-focused imprint, which debuted on Friday with Lizzo in the interviewer’s seat (written by Whembley Sewell). Like us, Lizzo wondered about the incredible journey that has given to the world the ever-evolving gift of Janelle Monae.
“With ArchAndroid, I knew what I wanted the content to be, and I used the tools that I knew how to use at that time to create it,” Monae explained. “In my projects, I always challenge myself to grow and learn my voice and how to stretch beyond what I can comfortably do. ... So as I grow and as I’m taking in information and growing at this exponential rate, I try my best to create music and albums that support that, that allow me to completely be all of me.
“With Dirty Computer, I made a bigger declaration to myself — that I’m not putting out an album if I can’t be all of me. You’re gonna take the blackness, you’re gonna take the fact that I love science fiction. You’re gonna take the fact that I am a free ass motherfucker. You’re gonna take that all in and because that is what you’re gonna get.”
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In Rwanda, we know what can happen when political leaders and media outlets single out certain groups of people as less than human.
Twenty-five years ago this month, all hell broke loose in my country, which is tucked away in the Great Lakes region of Africa. Hordes of members of the Hutu ethnic majority, armed with machetes, spears, nail-studded clubs, and other rudimentary weapons, moved house to house in villages, hunting for Tutsis, the second largest of Rwanda’s three ethnic groups. The radio station RTLM, allied with leaders of the government, had been inciting Hutus against the Tutsi minority, repeatedly describing the latter as inyenzi, or “cockroaches,” and as inzoka, or “snakes.” The station, unfortunately, had many listeners.
The promoters of genocide used other metaphors to turn people against their neighbors. Hutus, by reputation, are shorter than Tutsis; radio broadcasters also urged Hutus to “cut down the tall trees.”
In urban centers, government soldiers and well-armed members of the Interahamwe militia affiliated with the ruling party set up roadblocks filtering out Tutsis and killing them by the roadside. It was an easy task to pick them out. Ever since independence from Belgium in 1962, national identification cards specified ethnicity.
Within 100 days, an estimated 1 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were Tutsis, lay dead. The worst kind of hatred had been unleashed. What began with dehumanizing words ended in bloodshed.
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For better or worse, race-reconciliation movies are a longstanding Hollywood tradition. The formula is often the same: Stories are set in the Civil Rights era — from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s — and center on black-white relationships, with a white protagonist who is transformed by a relationship with a black person. There are exceptions, but in the crudest cases, the black person in question is usually just a narrative device for an emotional arc built around the white character’s transformation. And “The Best of Enemies” is the latest proof that Hollywood needs to find new ways to tell these stories.
This problem has some precedents in Hollywood. Prior to WWII, seminal films like “The Birth of a Nation” (1915) and “Gone with the Wind” (1939) helped formulate popular misconceptions of the Reconstruction with ahistorical portrayals of the antebellum South. “Birth” director D.W. Griffith asserted that he was simply depicting the historical truth, a similar defense mounted by filmmakers like “Green Book” director Peter Farrelly — a claim that may be apropos when the phrase “alternative facts” actually carries weight.
Now, America’s history of racial strife is being sanitized all over again, with recent films like “The Help,” “Green Book” and now “The Best of Enemies” (each written and directed by white filmmakers), which render darker aspects of Civil Rights era-struggle more palatable by trivializing them. Based on a true story, “The Best of Enemies” centers on the unlikely partnering up of outspoken civil rights activist Ann Atwater (Taraji P. Henson), and C.P. Ellis (Sam Rockwell), a local Ku Klux Klan leader who reluctantly co-chaired a community summit over the desegregation of schools in Durham, North Carolina during a racially-charged summer in 1971.
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Voices and Soul
by
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Justice Putnam
Call me a Romantic, but every time some museums, art collections or historical artifacts are lost to consuming fire or any other destruction, I shed real tears. I’m still upset about the destruction of Alexander’s Library and the cannonading of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, but I’m even more upset about the burning of the Black History museum in St Louis recently, and the continued and increasing destruction of black churches makes me more livid than I dare describe on a Porch of such loving peers.
I have visited the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris over a couple dozen times. I wouldn’t say I’m intimate with it as some academics would be, but I was interested enough in architecture, art, craft, history, culture, psychology and comparative religious history, that I dove deeper into the Notre Dame Cathedrals in France, and the Parisian cathedral even more so, than any other like destination. I try to visit every major and minor cathedral, museum or church I can, wherever I travel.
There really is no permanence, everything passes. It’s hard not to cry at such loss. Maybe a better practice would be to meditate on what brought us the civilizations that we know of, and the civilization we are here and everywhere. Maybe a better practice would be that meditation on death and renewal, and the laying of grain in a mathematical construct measured by the stars and gravity. A practice of conscious intent to sow a future through mindful work and a love for sharing that bounty. The giants of Art and Survival and Memory work the plains and hillsides and the valleys sowing a crop where crops grew before, adding to our sense of place and meaning, so that the manuscripts can be written and the histories remembered, so that the knowing of what a community can do for each other, and that our shared future is revered for now, and for whatever forever may be.
Sitting in a porchway cool,
Fades the ruddy sunlight fast,
Twilight hastens on to rule--
Working hours are wellnigh past
Shadows shoot across the lands;
But one sower lingers still,
Old, in rags, he patient stands,--
Looking on, I feel a thrill.
Black and high his silhouette
Dominates the furrows deep!
Now to sow the task is set,
Soon shall come a time to reap.
Marches he along the plain,
To and fro, and scatters wide
From his hands the precious grain;
Moody, I, to see him stride.
Darkness deepens. Gone the light.
Now his gestures to mine eyes
Are august; and strange--his height
Seems to touch the starry skies.
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WELCOME TO THE TUESDAY PORCH
If you are new to the Black Kos Community, grab a seat, some cyber eats, relax, and introduce yourself.