Traumatic Repercussions: Black Women and Obstetric Racism

Recorded on March 7, 2024, this video features a lecture entitled “Traumatic Repercussions: Black Women and Obstetric Racism,” by Dána-Ain Davis, Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College, and a member of the faculty of the PhD Programs in Anthropology and Critical Psychology.    This talk charts the way two Black reproducing bodies are shaped by obstetric racism. Davis shares the birthing experiences of two women and thinks through their medical encounters by considering how Black bodies are degraded, ushering them toward mistreatment. Here, Davis argues that obstetric racism produces traumatic repercussions weighed down by disposability, neglect, and medical abuse.

The talk was moderated by Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, the Medical Anthropology Program, the Department of Sociology, the Maternal, Child, and Adoloescent Health (MCAH) Program in the School of Public Health, the Center for Race and Gender, the Center for Social Medicine, the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, and the Diversity and Health Disparities Cluster in the Othering and Belonging Institute.

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/traumatic-repercussions.

Recorded on March 7, 2024, this video features a lecture entitled “Traumatic Repercussions: Black Women and Obstetric Racism,” by Dána-Ain Davis, Professor of Urban Studies at Queens College, and a member of the faculty of the PhD Programs in Anthropology and Critical Psychology.    This talk charts the way two Black reproducing bodies are shaped by obstetric racism. Davis shares the birthing experiences of two women and thinks through their medical encounters by considering how Black bodies are degraded, ushering them toward mistreatment. Here, Davis argues that obstetric racism produces traumatic repercussions weighed down by disposability, neglect, and medical abuse.

The talk was moderated by Andrew Wooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor of Biological Anthropology at UC Berkeley.

Co-sponsored by the UC Berkeley Department of Anthropology, the Medical Anthropology Program, the Department of Sociology, the Maternal, Child, and Adoloescent Health (MCAH) Program in the School of Public Health, the Center for Race and Gender, the Center for Social Medicine, the Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, and the Diversity and Health Disparities Cluster in the Othering and Belonging Institute.

A transcript of this event is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/traumatic-repercussions.