A couple of days ago many of us found out that Black newborn babies in the United States are three times more likely to die if they are cared for by white doctors.
The study that revealed the research created shock and horror. However, I was not surprised.
I took to Twitter to share my own experience of close escape during my pregnancy when, having been left unattended for hours, ignored and dismissed yet in pain, a Black doctor who just happened to walk past my room questioned every single clinical decision made about my care.
I was in the theatre five minutes later. The baby was breech (lying bottom-first in my uterus) and in distress. Hours of ‘nothing to see’ and hardly any monitoring ended with me being rushed off for an emergency, premature birth seven weeks early after the intervention of a Nigerian obstetrician with minutes to spare before tragedy hit.
Clearly, racism starts to impact children in-utero. Mothers who are Black or BAME are likely to have infants with significantly lower birth weight and, like I did, to give birth before they are full term.
We also know that Black women in the UK are about five times more likely to die during pregnancy and after childbirth than their white counterparts. For mixed race women the risk is threefold and it is doubled for Asian women.
We do not like to think of racism. We particularly hate to think of racism when that happens in infancy and childhood. Yet, it’s not just newborn babies we have to worry about.
I recently took to social media to share the experience of a client who had left a nursery job because, as she told me, Black babies were not being picked up and were being left in dirty nappies.
Hundreds of people replied with their own stories of witnessing racism happening not just to their infants, but to toddlers in nurseries and other early year settings.
They saw a lack of care, attention and compassion. Children were left in pain. Children were ignored. They were treated with hostility and stereotyped.
In one story I read, a mother came to pre-school to collect her child and found him distraught. His eyes were so swollen from hay fever, he could not see. She had not been called.
The parents were also left in distress, often feeling powerless.
Just last year, I wrote about my daughter being admonished for her ‘big’ Afro hair by her teacher, and then one of her braids getting mysteriously cut. A few years prior, my son was called ‘monkey’ in school.
I challenged the teaching staff each time with no success. Speaking out frequently means leaving our children vulnerable to victimisation and exclusion when we leave the school gates.
The risk to mothers and the abuse children of colour face will not abate until we are prepared to tackle racism in all its manifestations head on
Children of colour and Black children are not spared violence within the system of white supremacy that dominates our society.
That violence is overt, as demonstrated by parents’ tales of their children being neglected. It is also indirect, which means that when parents experience racism, their children are harmed, and vice versa. This leads to cycles of harm and intergenerational trauma.
By around the age of three, children become aware of skin colour, often much sooner. They start to show evidence of racial biases and preferences consistent with general societal attitudes. They begin to identify with a particular racial group.
By age four most can recognise racial differences and what they signify for them, including awareness of the differential treatment they are afforded by people around them because of the colour of their skin.
While this and the findings of this week’s research are unjust it is hardly surprising when inequality begins at birth and follows children into educational settings.
We can all be at a loss about how best to support children when it comes to racist experiences and tackle racial injustices that are so ingrained in our society.
Looking the other way is easy, as is rationalising racism away or keeping silent. However, the risk to mothers and the abuse children of colour face will not abate until we are prepared to tackle racism in all its manifestations head on, and see what we’re still too afraid to contemplate and tackle.
The legacy of centuries of racist violence, associated structural inequality means that our society still groans under the weight of on-going power abuse and endemic white apathy.
To date we have not systematically linked these adverse experiences to attainment gaps, even though we know racism in childhood impacts cognitive and intellectual development.
We cannot reasonably expect our children to perform optimally while under constant assault. It’s becoming urgent that we connect the dots. And we need to do it now.
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