Day: April 6, 2019

I read an article titled “Birthing while black: African American women face disproportinate risks during pregnancy.” In this article, the writer mentions how in Virginia, black women are three times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related death. The writer interviewed Courtney Glenn, who is the co-founder of a group that helps provide culturally-centered support in Virginia. Glenn said that the reason for this could be due to a lack of care and racism by doctors. She said that often doctors do not take African American pregnant women seriously when they complain about pain during their pregnancy. The writer also includes a study from the University of Virginia in 2016 that showed that racial bias played a role in how soon-to-be doctors treated patient pain.

It is disappointing that someone could receive different treatment by their doctor just because of their race. People in the hospital for their pregnancy deserve to be treated well and supported throughout the process. If doctors are knowingly not providing the best care they can, they are endangering the mother and also the baby. The fact that the statistics show such a disparity between the treatment received by a pregnant woman based on their race shows that there is discrimination involved. Groups like Glenn’s and also other groups are working hard to fix this problem, but it needs to be addressed quickly to prevent unnecessary health problems and even deaths.

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2019/03/05/birthing-while-black-african-american-women-face-disproportionate-risks-during-pregnancy/

-Brian Lief

I recently read an article about Lori Lightfoot, who became the first gay and black mayor in the history of Chicago. The article mentioned how Chicago is the largest city to elect an African American woman as the mayor. The article later describes how even though Chicago has had a large African American population for much of its history, only two out of the 55 mayors in the city’s history have been African American. Lightfoot won with almost 75 percent of the vote, and won in all 50 of the cities wards.

This was surprising to me. I know about the lack of diversity in politics, but I did not know that a city as big as Chicago had never elected an African American woman or gay mayor. Growing up in Cleveland, I often read about former mayor Carl Stokes, who was the first African American mayor of a major United States city in 1968. It is disappointing that it took over 50 years after that for a major city like Chicago to elect an African American woman as mayor. This shows that there is still much progress that needs to be made. Hopefully this will help the country realize the importance of diversity in politics, and cities will continue to elect diverse mayors. Congress also has started to become more diverse in recent years, but there is also much work that still has to be done. If work is done to continue this at the local level, then it is possible that it will happen at the national level as well.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/04/02/chicago-mayors-race-history-black-woman-lori-lightfoot-toni-preckwinkle/3339248002/

-Brian Lief