Was asked to share & update the list of titles that I gifted the incoming interns (who by the way for the record resented the gift and hated me) back in 2019. I still stand by this being an essential reading list for white OBGYN residents who match into Black serving programs.
In no particular order:
The following from Professor Mother @DorothyERoberts
Killing the Black Body
Fatal Invention
Structural Competency Meets Structural Racism: Race, Politics, and the Structure of Medical Knowledge (With @JonathanMetzl)
Birthing Justice:
Black Women, Pregnancy and Childbirth,
edited by Julia Chinyere Oparah
and @ADBPhD amazon.com/Birthing-Justi…
To Prevent Women from Dying in Childbirth, First Stop Blaming Them
in Scientific American by my true Soul Sister like we were separated at birth 😍😍 @mclemoremr scientificamerican.com/article/to-pre…
Before you send another urine drug screen before talking to your Black pregnant client please read Policing the Womb
Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood by @michelebgoodwin
Before you start claiming your white selves as experts in go past the Wikipedia & read:
Reproductive Justice: An Introduction
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice
Radical Reproductive Justice all by Mother @LorettaJRoss & colleagues
To understand the harm you are doing to actual Black pregnant people BUY Thick and Other Essays on Audible by @tressiemcphd & listen to Dying to Be Competent & read I Was Pregnant & in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman
Many things by Sister Friend @doccrearperry including Respectful Maternity Care: Shifting Medical Education And Practice Toward An Anti-Racist Framework healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hb…
By Baby Sisters @doczo1 @IVAPhD @doyinspeaks et. al. Black Women Scholars & the Research Working Group of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance
Black Maternal Health Research Re-Envisioned: Best Practices for the Conduct of Research With, For & By Black Mamas harvardlpr.com/wp-content/upl…
By Sister Dr. @RJEpiOBWarrior also with Sister Dr. @mclemoremr
The Ethics of Perinatal Care for Black Women: Dismantling the Structural Racism in "Mother Blame" Narratives
Speaking of diversity in the workforce it’s hard to do that when program directors are disproportionately old white men committed to maintaining the status quo.
What is our responsibility especially those of us not from the marginalized communities upon whom medical education is weaponized to protect Black birthing people?
The Role of OBGYNS in Advancing Perinatal Justice & Accountability with @RJEpiOBWarrior
This article by @drtaylor09 is a PRIMER on misogynoir in reproductive health. It definitely gets added to the next gift baskets
A critical look at the social implications of anti-abortion legislation: “The desire to control Black bodies & Black liberation is a function of white supremacy & it permeates every strategy & goal-even for well-meaning reproductive freedom advocates.”
Before you document document a verbal report of marijuana use in an OB visit that months large triggers a CPS call, read Torn Apart by our Spirit Auntie @DorothyERoberts to help you think critically about your role as a “mandatory reporter” & how you document about Black parents
Think you don’t see color when prescribing for minoritized postpartum clients? Think again.
🛑 saying that being Black or Asian is a risk factor for cesarean. Read this article by @Ijeoma_MD and consider if it’s really that being white when you walk into a perinatal setting ruled by white supremacy is protective against cesarean. #RacismNotRace
In honor of Prematurity Awareness Month this article which reminds us of the impact Obstetric Racism isn’t with pregnant people alone but has multigenerational impact. I was a 35 week preemie. My good sis @mclemoremr was a preemie too.
Gonna say it again & keep saying it until folks stop asking us to cite our sources: Gynecology & infectious disease as disciplines were the foundations of Plantation. They gained in importance when the importation of enslaved Africans was banned in 1808 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Will add on some evidence based research later but this tweetorial by @acweyand is absolutely instructional.
Despite advances in treatment disparities in death rates from Breast Cancer have widened in the past 20 years of surveillance and mortality rates decreased at greater rates that Black, Latinx and indigenous people compared to their white counterparts.
So I triggered folks yesterday with 2 tweets & as fragile white folks will they demanded to speak to the manager on my job. There’s 2 problems. 1: The manager don’t care what you think about what I say on Twitter cuz 2: I am the manager.
But for the record I said what I said.
So not only will I stand by my statements, I’ll explain Karen. The OBVIOUS point of the tweet was that it is absurd to apply causality to healthcare disparities to “race” because race is an artificial social grouping created by Europeans to justify slavery & colonization.
Not only is there no biological basis for race; in fact historically “whiteness” didn’t exist before the 17th century when European Christians had to morally reconcile the slaughter and subjugation of indigenous peoples and enslavement of Africans to build their “empires”.
Dear white midwives,
Nurse midwifery is the only modern American profession in the nation besides police which began with slave/Indian catcher patrols, whose existence is rooted in white supremacy: the control, elimination & replacement of the Black midwife with white nurses.
Whiteness was central to the planning, implementation, growth and marketing of the profession. This is not hyperbole this is fact. It still continues today. The 87% white workforce looks exactly like the 86% midwifery directors who determine who teaches & studies nurse midwifery.
CPMs are no more diverse and make up only a tenth of the midwifery profession. So to suggest @ACNMmidwives@MANAcommunity with their white leadership, white educators & white workforce can reduce mortality driven by 🤰🏾🤱🏽isn’t naive it’s white supremacy in action.
Wrote a little poem. Bet y’all didn’t know I was an artist. Like to here it; here it goes.
Resilience Training is for White Folks
By Michelle “Auntie Chelle” Drew
Dear HR: about that mandatory Resiliency Training:
I’m a have to say nah.
Black women don’t need to learn resilience.
We invented it in the belly of slave ships
Perfected it when we watched our lovers and babies ripped from our arms and sold off the plantation never to be seen again.
Books/articles that should be required reading for antiracism in MCH
Policing the Womb @michelebgoodwin
Medical Apartheid @haw95
Killing the Black Body & Fatal Invention by @DorothyERoberts
Medical Bondage: Race, Gender & the Origins of American Gynecology @drcooperowens
Birthing, Blackness, and the Body: Black Midwives and Experiential Continuities of Institutional Racism by @keishagoode8 or as I call it: Killing Me Softly Part 2.
A primer on the lived experience of Black birth workers in PWIs
Now why in the nurse’s note about my new pregnant patient contain only one sentence about her pregnancy outcomes but a whole paragraph that she uses marijuana; was “incarcerated” instead of the fact that she has a condition approved for medical marijuana & needed cash bail? Z60.5
Thanks for all the supportive comments. A few points.
As health professionals our job isn’t to judge patients but to help. There are important things to ask, know, do if you’re really concerned about the health and safety of a pregnant person who discloses social information:
Do you need help?
What can I/we do to get you to a safe place?
Do you know where the resources are to get help/can I help you find them.
If it doesn’t contribute to the patient getting good care why write it in their permanent medical record? Save judgement for courts & Jesus
Today’s tweets will be a series of Billable ICD10 codes you can use in the care of Black mamas and babies birthing and being born in today’s AmeriKKKa:
Z60.5 Target of (perceived) adverse discrimination and persecution.
i.e. Racism
I use it almost every day that I work.
Victim of bullying l-Z65.8
Can also be applied to Black femme health workers in the culture of systemic and institutional racism that burns us out at unprecedented rates
Unstable housing, couch surfing, living in hotels, shelters