Re: Staggering Death rate for black pregnant women

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Actually, I think black women have more problems with pregnancy than
comparable white women regardless of income level.  More low-birth
weight babies, for ex.
  I think black people, no matter their income level, live with a lot of
stress that is race-related. Like being followed around stores, or
having storekeepers not open the door to you at all, and cab drivers not
picking you up, and never quite knowing if you didn't get a job because
of racism. There's still tremendous racism in the real estate market, in
admission to gifted and talented programs, in being consigned to special
ed, all that.
 Another factor some people argue is related to poor pregnancy outcomes
in black women is that the black women, even if now "middle-class" were
often themselves the children of poor women, who didn't have good
nutrition during pregnancy etc. If you were a malnourished fetus/child,
that can have longterm effects.
  As for poor blacks, I think they are in some ways worse off than
whites of same income level.  for instance, they live in racially
segregated neighborhoods, which, as Kelley noted, have worse public
services and are more isolated--from jobs, public transportation, from
the larger community. And white policemen are always stopping them.
 Poorer  whites -- not always but often -- have better access to better
schools, other public services.  Plus they have the joy of knowing
they're not black! In a racist society, that means something.
   Dana Frank has an interesting article about the "wages of whiteness'
for white working class women in earlier part of the century.  turns
out, even working class  white women could afford to hire black maids,
could refuse to work with black people and make their bosses heed them,
lived in better neighborhoods (like where the houses and apts had indoor
plumbing, and where the municipality removed the garbage).

Katha