Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black American

A new book by Berkeley Center for Social Medicine faculty affiliate Khiara Bridges explores the persistence of racism in reproductive healthcare in the US—and why even affluent Black women are imperiled by substandard care. Expecting Inequity (MIT Press) reveals that not only are black people three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause, but racial disparities in maternal mortality persist across income levels. Bridges, whose previous work exposed how race and racism are embedded in maternal healthcare for the poor, draws on two years of participant-observation to show how wealthier black people try to leverage their class privilege to avoid some of the negative effects of their blackness—only to discover that in a country that has never reckoned with its horrific racial past, there is no escaping racism’s reach.