Black Women Research Articles

Book Review: God is a Black Woman

Book Review: God is a Black Woman

Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women's Survival in Antebellum New Orleans

Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women's Survival in Antebellum New Orleans

Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee

Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee

49478 The Effect of Styling Practices on Scalp Health In Black Women

49478 The Effect of Styling Practices on Scalp Health In Black Women

Aunt Sarah (The Process of Storage or Place of Exchange or Sarah’s Pedagogical Pan/Orama): Excerpt from Four Black Women’s Science (Four Pieces): Breaking the Ad/Diction to the Commodified Consumption of Black Women’s Bodies

Aunt Sarah (The Process of Storage or Place of Exchange or Sarah’s Pedagogical Pan/Orama): Excerpt from Four Black Women’s Science (Four Pieces): Breaking the Ad/Diction to the Commodified Consumption of Black Women’s Bodies

It's Our Movement Now: Black Women's Politics and the 1977 National Women's Conference

It's Our Movement Now: Black Women's Politics and the 1977 National Women's Conference

The Haunting of the Antebellum South: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate as a Gothic Memory Archive

In Appropriate (2014), Branden Jacobs-Jenkins unearths the buried horror of the antebellum South by crafting a story about the white, dysfunctional Lafayettes, who visit their family house in Arkansas for an estate sale. In the process, they discover the secret of their deceased patriarch – that he collected photos and body parts of lynched Black men and women as souvenirs. Following the trend established by American Gothic scholars who read the American house as a metonym for the United States and its haunting entanglement with slavery, this article explores how Appropriate uses specific traits of the genre to critique its racialized conventions, particularly the portrayal of slavery as the haunting “dark” guilt of the past. I read the Lafayette family’s collective obsession with lynched body parts across three generations as a form of Gothic doubling. Furthermore, I explore how Jacobs-Jenkins reveals the Gothic horror of the past through the trope of the unseen and repressed Other – mainly through the sound of cicadas – which emphasizes the dismembered body in active pain rather than frozen and preserved in time. Through these interventions, Jacobs-Jenkins disturbs buried and repressed discourses about transatlantic slavery and white supremacy that still haunt the United States today.

The Black (W)hole of Dysphoria

This essay returns to Evelynn Hammonds’s field-changing essay “Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality,” with a focus on the labor of knowledge production under fraught institutional conditions, characterized in this essay as languaging. The simultaneous desire for and impossibility of accurate language to describe racialized, gendered, and sexual subjectivity drive Hammonds’s essay as well as a number of other key texts in Black feminist sexuality studies. This essay (re)introduces the diagnostic category of dysphoria to speak to this paradox: here, dysphoria describes the affective and psychic condition of institutional illegibility and fungibility for racialized and gendered people. Using the analytic of dysphoria to characterize and connect the political economy of Black feminist knowledge production and the life narrative of A. Dionne Stallworth, a Black trans woman activist, this essay directs urgent attention to the simultaneously material, spiritual, psychic, and affective dimensions of self-, knowledge-, and world-making.

Predictors of gamete donation: a cross sectional survey study.

In 2015, assisted reproductive technology (ART) accounted for 1.7% of all U.S. births, donor eggs accounted for over 17,000 started cycles in 2015, and donor sperm accounting for 6.2% of all cycles started in 2014. With increasing utilization of donor gametes as a method of assisting patients with infertility, the number of babies born each year utilizing gamete donation will also continue to increase. This study aimed to elucidate factors impacting decision to donate, amongst a representative national population. A survey was distributed via the internet utilizing SurveyMonkey Enterprise with HIPAA compliance. Univariate regressions and frequencies were conducted between each demographic and personal characteristic and the willingness to donate. Log Binomial and linear regression was used categorical and continuous variables, and Risk ratios were calculated. In this large survey study, 64% of men and 50% of women reported they would be willing to donate gametes, with the majority desiring monetary compensation. Men with a high Consumer Financial Protection Bureau score were less likely to report that they would consider donating sperm compared to a medium high CFPB score. No other financial indicators were associated with considering donating sperm. There were no associations between CFPB score and egg donation outcomes. Black or African American women were less likely to consider donating their eggs compared to other groups, and more likely to desire > $5000 in compensation. In this large survey study, a small minority of participants reported they would be willing to donate to an unknown infertility patient for reproductive purposes. High and very high CFPB scores were associated with willingness to donate games, but not with desire for monetary compensation or amount.

Differences in Advanced Therapeutic Modalities for Overactive Bladder in the United States by Race

ObjectiveTo investigate the impact of race on prescription patterns of therapies for OAB. MethodsThe TriNetX Diamond network was queried to identify adult females with a diagnosis of urinary urgency incontinence (UUI) or OAB, excluding those with stress incontinence or mixed incontinence. Treatments were defined as behavioral, medical, or minimally invasive in accordance with American Urological Association (AUA) guidelines. Propensity score matching for multiple covariates was performed using the greedy nearest-neighbor algorithm. Cox proportional hazards regression analysis was employed to compare the matched cohorts. Rates of treatment by three-digit zip codes were compared through chi-square tests or Fisher’s exact tests and geographic distribution maps were generated via STATA 17.0. ResultsWe identified 2,687,316 adult females diagnosed with OAB; 767,159 identified as White and 108,464 as Black. Within these cohorts, 16.6% of Black patients and 20.4% of White patients received OAB treatment. Twenty-six-point three percent of US zip-codes contained data for both White and Black patients, and in all these zip codes, White patients received significantly higher rates of prescriptions compared to Black patients. After propensity-score matching, significant differences in prescriptions persisted between the two groups with White patients exhibiting higher rates of any prescription. ConclusionsOur results demonstrate a significantly lower rate of prescriptions of medical and minimally invasive therapies for Black women. These racial differences in prescription of advanced therapeutic modalities for OAB may not be secondary to diagnosis but are likely secondary to prescribing disparities. Further research is needed to understand these differences.

Social Determinants of Health and Disparities in Pregnancy Outcomes

OBJECTIVE: To examine the extent to which racial and ethnic disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes between non-Hispanic Black women and non-Hispanic White women may be explained by social determinants of health (SDoH). METHODS: This study was a secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study (nuMoM2b [Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study: Monitoring Mothers-to-Be]) that enrolled 10,038 nulliparous individuals with singleton pregnancies. This analysis included only individuals who identified as non-Hispanic Black or non-Hispanic White. We used the nonlinear extension of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition based on logistic regression to estimate the percentage contribution of SDoH to racial and ethnic disparity in preterm birth (PTB) and preeclampsia. Eleven SDoH variables in the models covered various SDoH domains (ie, sociodemographic, psychological, behavioral, social relationship, and health care access and quality). RESULTS: Of 10,038 individuals, 1,321 non-Hispanic Black and 5,762 non-Hispanic White individuals composed the study population. Compared with non-Hispanic White individuals, non-Hispanic Black individuals had 3.9% (95% CI, 2.0–5.7) and 4.1% (95% CI, 2.2–6.0) higher frequencies of PTB and preeclampsia, respectively. A large proportion of disparities between non-Hispanic White women and non-Hispanic Black women in PTB (56.4%; 95% CI, 2.9–100.0) and preeclampsia (71.2%; 95% CI, 17.5–100.0) may be explained by SDoH. CONCLUSION: A large percentage of the racial and ethnic disparities between non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White individuals in PTB and preeclampsia were explained by SDoH. These findings underscore the contribution of SDoH to racial and ethnic disparities in adverse pregnancy outcomes and point to intervention targets to reduce racial health disparities.

Experiences of Care, Racism, and Communication of Postpartum Black Women Readmitted After Delivery

OBJECTIVE: To explore the contribution of psychosocial factors, perceived barriers to care, structural racism, and experiences of care to disparities in postpartum outcomes for Black patients, as measured by emergency department (ED) visits and postpartum readmissions. METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with women of color who were readmitted or had an ED visit related to perinatal outcomes within 30 days of delivery hospitalization. We created an interview guide based on patient, community, and health system factors, asking questions about care and lived experience through delivery, discharge, coming home, and ED visits or readmission during the postpartum period. Patients were identified through the electronic medical record system. Interviews ranged from 30 to 60 minutes and were transcribed, and medical charts were reviewed for delivery and postpartum outcomes. We coded interviews through deductive engagement with the interview guide, which was validated through double-comparative coding between researchers, and used content analysis to delineate themes surrounding barriers to and lack of quality postpartum care for birthing people of color. RESULTS: Principal themes that emerged from the interviews with participants were: perceived lack of communication about the complications they experienced; structural racism described through examples of not being listened to or believed; a perceived lack of respect for Black women's bodies by doctors and nurses, which became embedded in inappropriate verbal and nonverbal communication practices by clinicians and staff; and mismatches in care for participants were noted from the care provided and chart documentation compared with what patients understood to be happening with their health. CONCLUSION: To counter the increasing rates of morbidity and mortality among postpartum Black patients, stronger efforts are required to address the needs of Black patients during the postpartum period through documenting and acknowledging patients' lived experiences, addressing communication needs, and understanding the consequences of structural racism.

When high right-wing authoritarians report elevated empathy toward a Black woman victim of police violence: “inclusive victimhood consciousness” from police mistreatment experiences.

When high right-wing authoritarians report elevated empathy toward a Black woman victim of police violence: “inclusive victimhood consciousness” from police mistreatment experiences.

Cellular Self-Making: Octavia E. Butler, "Childfinder," and the Hypno-Psionic Impulse

Abstract: "Cellular Self-Making" connects Octavia E. Butler's first (and last) short story with her early interest and practice of hypnosis. The essay suggests that to understand Butler's narrative endeavors to unsettle conventional representations of the human, one should turn to her archive, which is particularly revealing. "Cellular Self-Making" argues that readers can understand Butler's breakdown of the traditional (and exclusionary) Cartesian subject by attending to her translation of hypnosis into recognizable science fiction concepts like telekinesis and psionics. Presenting Butler's narrative engagements with mind-body connection, "Cellular Self-Making" reveals new readings of humanity and presents new Butlerian methods of survival and self-making for Black women.

Abstract P151: National Estimates of Lifetime Risk of Hypertension in the US

Background: Although lifetime risk assessments provide valuable insights into disease burden, to our knowledge, there is only one study estimating the lifetime risk of hypertension in the US, using the current definition (≥130/80 mmHg). However, that study used data from three research cohorts not representative of the US population and lacks data on Hispanics. Aim: To estimate lifetime risk of hypertension in the US, using the contemporary definition and nationally representative data. Methods: Using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1999-2018 (N=44,056) and vital statistics, we estimated the prevalence and incidence of hypertension (i.e., ≥130/80 mmHg or antihypertensive medication use) at each year of age from birth to age 80 years) by sex and race/ethnicity (Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics). We, then, estimated the cumulative incidence of hypertension up to 80 years using Monte Carlo simulations. Results: The lifetime risk of hypertension reached ~80-85% regardless of sex and race/ethnicity ( Figure ). However, the patterns of reaching this level of lifetime risk of hypertension varied considerably by race/ethnicity, with the age reaching the cumulative incidence of 50% ~40 years in Blacks vs. ~50 years in Whites and Hispanics. Black women exhibited a higher cumulative incidence of hypertension than White and Hispanic men at any point in life. Conclusions: Four in five Americans develop hypertension in their lifetime, regardless of sex and race/ethnicity. However, Blacks develop hypertension much earlier than Whites and Hispanics. These findings emphasize the need for public health interventions to prevent hypertension in the US, and such an intervention should reach Black youth and younger adults.

Maternal perceived stress, household disorder, eating behaviors and adiposity of women and their children

BackgroundStress is associated with physiological and behavioral adaptations that increase the risk for obesity and related diseases in adults and children. Mechanisms linking stress to chronic disease are diverse and not fully elucidated, but research suggests stress may impact eating behaviors and increase food intake and thereby, risk for obesity. ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to test the hypotheses that women's perceived stress and household disorder are associated with more uncontrolled and emotional eating among women, more food responsiveness and emotional overeating among their children, and greater adiposity in both women and their children. MethodsWomen (n = 86) completed the Perceived Stress Scale, Confusion, Hubbub and Order Scale, Three Factor Eating Questionnaire, and Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire. Total body fat (%) was measured via dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry. Linear regression models evaluated associations of perceived stress and household disorder with eating behaviors and adiposity of women and their children (4–10 years old). ResultsIn a sample of predominantly non-Hispanic Black women (84.9%, n = 73), more perceived stress and household disorder were associated with more uncontrolled and emotional eating (p < 0.05). Women's perceived stress was not associated with their children's eating behaviors; however, household disorder was positively associated with children's food responsiveness and emotional overeating (p < 0.05). Perceived stress and household disorder were not associated with adiposity of women or their children. ConclusionsThese findings suggest household disorder may be a factor for home-based interventions to consider when addressing eating behaviors among families with children.

Inside the Black (W)hole: A Queer Black Feminist Retrospective

This essay introduces a spirited cross-disciplinary and intergenerational queer black feminist dialogue about what Evelynn Hammonds’s 1994 differences essay “Black (W)holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality” has meant, and continues to mean, for queer black feminist knowledge production and (academic) subject formation within and beyond the United States. Across ten essays and one poem, contributors to this special issue of differences interrogate what it means for queer black feminists to labor in a field under constant erasure; to argue for the possibilities for queer and trans and sick black women’s erotic agency in the context of hostile institutional formations such as the academic and medical industrial complexes; and to analyze the relevance of empirical black holes for theorizing polymorphous black female sexualities and erotic freedoms. From inside the black (w)hole, contributors chart the history, present, and futurity of Hammonds’s “Black (W)holes,” and, by extension, the black diasporic feminist, lesbian, queer, and trans intellectual and sociopolitical life-worlds in its wake.

A retrospective cohort study examining the outcomes of patients who present for fertility care and exceed a set body mass index threshold for treatment

ObjectiveTo evaluate the characteristics of patients who exceeded the BMI threshold for fertility treatment at their initial visit and identify those for whom treatment would be constrained. DesignRetrospective cohort study SettingAcademic medical center PatientsAll new patients who presented for infertility treatment at an academic center between January 2020 to December 2022 and had BMI measured and recorded. Main outcome measuresLikelihood of weight loss and treatment initiation for patients who exceed a set BMI threshold of 40 kg/m2. ResultsOf the 1,268 patients who had their BMI recorded at initial visit, 48% identified as non-Hispanic White, 15% as non-Hispanic Black, 13% as Asian, 11% as Hispanic, 0.2% as Native American, 4% as other; 9% were of unknown race/ethnicity. Overall, 6% of women exceeded the 40 kg/m2 cutoff. Among Latino women, 7.5% exceeded the cutoff; among non-Hispanic Black women, 12% exceeded the cutoff. These percentages were greater than the percentage of non-Hispanic White women who exceeded the BMI cutoff (4.8%). ConclusionBMI thresholds disproportionately affect the ability of ethnic minorities to utilize fertility treatment and could potentially be worsening barriers to care these population of patients already face.

HOLD: SPACE

This article takes up the sonic slippages between black hole, black hold, and Black hold as a threshold for thought. Taking Evelynn Hammonds’s query “what is it like inside a black hole?” as an opening, the author explores the way geometric properties of space shaped not only the material dimensions (volume and capacity) of the hold of the slave ship but also the metaphysical violences that captive Africans underwent in the hold. Through poethical meditations on the hold of the ship, the essay offers Black holds as a practice of Black women’s sexuality. The essay concludes with an analysis of Rivers Solomon’s The Deep and its speculative imaginings of what holding and touch might offer us.

Strategies for Liberation: A Conversation with Katherine McKittrick

Abstract: This is an interview with Katherine McKittrick, Canada Research Chair in Black Studies at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists program. McKittrick discusses Demonic Grounds , her pathbreaking study of Black women’s geographies, on the advent of the twentieth anniversary of its publication.