Delivery room experiences are 鈥済round zero of the black maternal health crisis,鈥 Duke University professor and author Jennifer C. Nash said Tuesday, March 1, during 性视界传媒鈥檚 virtual , cosponsored by the and the .
Nash, whose third and most recent book is 鈥淏irthing Black Mothers,鈥 discussed the role of birth doulas, particularly doulas of color, who she calls 鈥渁gents of birth justice鈥 and whose experiences she documented in the book.
Recent medical association acknowledgements and media reports have drawn greater attention to black mother and infant mortality rates, said Nash, who is the Jean Fox O'Barr Women鈥檚 Studies Distinguished Professor and professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke.
She referred to women of color doulas as 鈥渢he necessary and perhaps only stopgap preventing black mothers and children from dying from obstetric violence.鈥 Black mothers are four times more likely to die during childbirth.
鈥淭his outpouring of attention has made a singular point,鈥 Nash said, 鈥渢hat racism is to blame for the life-or-death crisis that black mothers and their children face.
鈥淚 came to see [the delivery room] as a dense site of conflict, where bodies, politics, ideologies and desires dance around and sometimes collide with each other,鈥 Nash added. 鈥淚t is a space where actors, including obstetricians, midwives, doulas, patients and families with different investments in institutionalized medicine come into contact. And it is a space where ideas about illness and wellness, pregnancy and labor, timelines and medical intervention, interact and at times conflict.鈥
Tianna Cobb, a postdoctoral research and teaching fellow in Mason鈥檚 Department of Communication, moderated the conversation that followed Nash鈥檚 presentation. Nash met virtually with Mason faculty and undergraduates for additional discussion that day prior to the event. About 100 people attended the online lecture.
, associate director of the African and African American Studies Program聽and senior director of the Office of Fellowships in the , presented the Sojourner Truth Community Partner Award to , a D.C. nonprofit that promotes education among women and girls of color.
The Sojourner Truth Faculty Award went to , assistant professor of in the . Gupta鈥檚 work includes investigations of mental and reproductive health as it relates to gender-based violence.
Nash received the Sojourner Truth Lecture Award.
In its 22nd year, the Sojourner Truth Lecture bridges Black History Month and Women鈥檚 History Month.