IGX

Gorbachev wrote:Poor article and the usual watery group-think follow-on comments from the IGx brigade. The idea that the black experience in natural childbirth might have been overlooked and is worthy of examination is precisely the sort of idea that suits a dissertation. There is no critical analysis or counter-point in the article. Instead, it's emotive hyperbole. Lapped up here.

Romanticising blue collar jobs and decrying academic pursuit for lack of real-world application is a strong theme here. As is mixing in a bit of gratuitous "fuck blacks" speak. Doesn't it all get tiresome? Isn't it all quite embarrassing?

Women in Africa and the African diaspora have rich traditions of midwifery and “motherwit”, rooted in the Southern states of the U.S., and in Africa and the Caribbean, that have empowered many thousands of women to give birth naturally without control and supervision by (male) medical professionals. Yet almost a century of scapegoating of “granny” and immigrant midwives, and aggressive efforts to control childbirth by the medical industry, has left many black women in the U.S. unaware of these traditions and unable to access alternatives to a medicalized and often disempowering birth experience. Far from improving maternal and infant health, the massive expansion of physician-supervised hospital births has arguably resulted in extremely poor maternal outcomes in the U.S., when compared to other industrialized nations. Black women in particular have maternal mortality rates 3 to 4 times that of white women. In Africa and the Caribbean, the adoption of a colonial obstetric model has also undermined women’s indigenous birthing knowledge. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world due to a complex mix of factors, however development approaches to this problem frequently involve training of midwives/sage-femmes in contested Western medical practices. Black women’s experience of the medicalization and regulation of childbirth is unique, because it has been characterized by both malign neglect and by overt state coercion. Exclusion and control have not been met passively, but have spurred both grassroots activism and covert resistance within communities in Africa and the diaspora.

Birthing Justice will be an anthology of critical essays and creative non-fiction that explore African American, African, Caribbean and diasporic women’s experiences of childbirth from a radical social justice perspective.

Gorbachev wrote:Poor article and the usual watery group-think follow-on comments from the IGx brigade. The idea that the black experience in natural childbirth might have been overlooked and is worthy of examination is precisely the sort of idea that suits a dissertation. There is no critical analysis or counter-point in the article. Instead, it's emotive hyperbole. Lapped up here.

Romanticising blue collar jobs and decrying academic pursuit for lack of real-world application is a strong theme here. As is mixing in a bit of gratuitous "fuck blacks" speak. Doesn't it all get tiresome? Isn't it all quite embarrassing?

Gorbachev wrote:Disagree with basically zero respect, Turd.

Outside of pure science or mathematics, a university education is about lighting the fire of academic curiosity, instilling some sort of rigour and intellectual framework and launching the graduate into "the real world" to start a job and hone their skills to do it. So business, journalism, law, banking, administration and a thousand other professional positions have recruiters who look at academic pedigree not as providing a ready-made skill set but as a marker of application and ability.