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Aug. 25th, 2008 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyOk doke. The news item I linked to earlier, Racism may affect infant mortality rates, is based on this journal article:
Let me try my best to summarise the reviewers' findings. Very briefly: there's evidence that African American women's experience of discrimination is stressful enough to shorten their pregnancies, leading to higher infant mortality.
Infant mortality in the US is surprisingly high for all groups, and has been getting worse for half a century, with Black rates rising faster than White rates. Researchers are looking for a "pre-term birth gene" in African Americans. However, the evidence the reviewers looked at points to social causes, not genetic causes. (It's "more to do with racism than with race", as Science Daily put it.)
African Americans of all ages are more likely to die than their White counterparts; of the ten leading causes of death in adults, Black people are more likely to die of eight of them. Black infants are more likely to die from each of the major causes of infant mortality, the worst being "short gestation" (indicated by low birthweight) where the death rate is 3.9 times higher. It's "very unlikely" that any group could be carrying enough deleterious genes to explain this.
The reviewers state: "Most of the Black—White gap in first-year mortality is attributable to the higher rate of Black infants born at very low birthweight (less than 1500 g; 3 times that of White infants), essentially all of whom are preterm... Researchers point out the persistence of a racial birthweight disparity after having controlled for various social or environmental risk factors. Do population patterns of birthweight support a genetic basis?" No. In recent decades, changes in average birthweight have happened (for example) in Japan, Pakistan, and amongst both White and Black Americans; such changes are happening much too quickly to be the result of genes.
More compellingly, studies compared Black mothers born in Africa or the Caribbean with Black mothers born in the US. If the difference is genetic, then these two groups should have similar birthweights. Instead, the African and Caribbean women's children had higher birthweights - almost identical to those of White mothers. (This was true even when other factors were considered.) "Most strikingly, these first generation Black girls grew up in the United States and went on to have daughters whose birthweights were lower on average than their own weights had been at birth." (The birthweights of European immigrants went up.)
Stressors affecting Black mothers included pollution, neighbourhood violence, the incarceration of their partners, and similar factors which we might be inclined to blame on poverty rather than race. However: so far, four studies "demonstrated similar deleterious effects on the interpersonal level. These studies showed an adverse impact of perceived racial discrimination on the birth outcome for Black women." (I should be able to get my hands on those studies too; I'll summarise their findings here. Hold off on saying "Couldn't they just be imagining it?" until then, please!)
If you're White like me, it can be really hard to accept that POC's experiences of racism are real. If these studies are right, we have tangible, powerful evidence that they are real - and that they do real damage.
David, Richard and James Collins Jr. Disparities in Infant Mortality: What's Genetics Got to Do With It? American Journal of Public Health 97(7) July 2007 pp 1191-1197.(AJPH is a major peer-reviewed journal published by the American Public Health Association. The article is a "review" - that is, a survey of recently published research.)
Let me try my best to summarise the reviewers' findings. Very briefly: there's evidence that African American women's experience of discrimination is stressful enough to shorten their pregnancies, leading to higher infant mortality.
Infant mortality in the US is surprisingly high for all groups, and has been getting worse for half a century, with Black rates rising faster than White rates. Researchers are looking for a "pre-term birth gene" in African Americans. However, the evidence the reviewers looked at points to social causes, not genetic causes. (It's "more to do with racism than with race", as Science Daily put it.)
African Americans of all ages are more likely to die than their White counterparts; of the ten leading causes of death in adults, Black people are more likely to die of eight of them. Black infants are more likely to die from each of the major causes of infant mortality, the worst being "short gestation" (indicated by low birthweight) where the death rate is 3.9 times higher. It's "very unlikely" that any group could be carrying enough deleterious genes to explain this.
The reviewers state: "Most of the Black—White gap in first-year mortality is attributable to the higher rate of Black infants born at very low birthweight (less than 1500 g; 3 times that of White infants), essentially all of whom are preterm... Researchers point out the persistence of a racial birthweight disparity after having controlled for various social or environmental risk factors. Do population patterns of birthweight support a genetic basis?" No. In recent decades, changes in average birthweight have happened (for example) in Japan, Pakistan, and amongst both White and Black Americans; such changes are happening much too quickly to be the result of genes.
More compellingly, studies compared Black mothers born in Africa or the Caribbean with Black mothers born in the US. If the difference is genetic, then these two groups should have similar birthweights. Instead, the African and Caribbean women's children had higher birthweights - almost identical to those of White mothers. (This was true even when other factors were considered.) "Most strikingly, these first generation Black girls grew up in the United States and went on to have daughters whose birthweights were lower on average than their own weights had been at birth." (The birthweights of European immigrants went up.)
Stressors affecting Black mothers included pollution, neighbourhood violence, the incarceration of their partners, and similar factors which we might be inclined to blame on poverty rather than race. However: so far, four studies "demonstrated similar deleterious effects on the interpersonal level. These studies showed an adverse impact of perceived racial discrimination on the birth outcome for Black women." (I should be able to get my hands on those studies too; I'll summarise their findings here. Hold off on saying "Couldn't they just be imagining it?" until then, please!)
If you're White like me, it can be really hard to accept that POC's experiences of racism are real. If these studies are right, we have tangible, powerful evidence that they are real - and that they do real damage.
