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Paper short abstract:

Our person-centered ethnography asks how pervasive structural racism shapes the experience and subjectivity of Black mothers at high risk of infant death. Centering their lived experience is a crucial project of a decolonized, antiracist psychological anthropology.

Paper long abstract:

In Cleveland, Ohio babies born to Black mothers die at three times the rate as babies born to White mothers in their first year of life. Structural racism from myriad angles, breadths, and depths gives us the “why;” our person-centered ethnography asks how pervasive structural racism shapes the experience and subjectivity of Black pregnant women as they at once embody their baby and the (socially imposed) responsibility for its survival. We interviewed 17 women at their homes up to 6 times each over a 9-month period, spanning at least one trimester of their pregnancy and into their baby’s first year. The women’s narratives paint complex, fluid perspectives on what motherhood means and mothering entails, what they expect of themselves, their partners, and their communities, how Blackness and racism shape their lives and children’s futures, and how they see Cleveland as a constraint and companion in their journey. Black motherhood has long been a flashpoint for White supremacy with fervent hatred in the form of stereotypes, brutality, and desire to control. With this dark legacy of negativity and pathology, extreme care must be taken to center the lived experience of Black mothers, whose subjectivities are undoubtably shaped by structural racism, but demonstrably not reducible to it. In this effort, this paper brings together psychological anthropologists who locate lived experience at the intersection of subjectivity and structure (notably Jenkins and Csordas 2020) with the work of Black feminist anthropologists who center the experience and subjectivity of Black mothers (notably Dána-Ain Davis 2019).