Let Black Women Live — A Lawsuit Against A Maternal Health Program Exposes The Violence Of ‘Colorblind’ Care [Op-Ed]
Silvia Lopez-Navarro, a white woman with a Hispanic last name, filed a federal class-action lawsuit because she was not allowed into a program that supports Black mothers and their babies. The post Let Black Women Live — A Lawsuit Against A Maternal Health Program Exposes The Violence Of ‘Colorblind’ Care [Op-Ed] appeared first on MadameNoire.
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The audacity is both breathtaking and infuriating.
Last week, we held space for Black mamas—celebrating our magic, our resilience, and our right to exist in a world that often feels designed to erase us. While we were honoring the sacred work of Black birth workers and doulas during Black Maternal Health Week, Silvia Lopez-Navarro, a white woman with a Hispanic last name, filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the city of Pasadena in California.
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To be clear, Lopez-Navarro isn’t trying to improve maternal health in California by suing for better care or safer hospitals. She is suing because she wasn’t allowed into the Black Infant Health (BIH) program—a statewide initiative providing culturally specific group support, social services, and health education designed to lower the disproportionately high rates of death and disease among Black mothers and their babies.
Using the language of “discrimination” to attack a program meant to keep Black babies and Black mothers from dying is a particular kind of violence. It is the height of white grievance—a demand to be centered in a space specifically carved out to address a crisis that doesn’t touch her. White women enter the birthing space with a suite of invisible protections. They are seen as “naturally” maternal and fragile. Their pain is believed. Their concerns are addressed. They don’t have to worry about a medical system that views their bodies as impenetrable or their lives as disposable.
When a white woman walks into a hospital, the institution sees a life worth saving by default. For Black women, that worth is something we have to argue for and prove while in active labor. And many times, we don’t make it out of that argument alive.
Lopez-Navarro and her attorneys claiming “reverse racism” is a lie. Full stop. Racism is about power—the marriage of prejudice and institutional authority. Because Black women do not hold the systemic power to marginalize white women through law or healthcare policy, the concept of “reverse racism” is a sociological impossibility.
The post Let Black Women Live — A Lawsuit Against A Maternal Health Program Exposes The Violence Of ‘Colorblind’ Care [Op-Ed] appeared first on MadameNoire.
