Demand ICAN and TBN Trust BLACK Women

Good luck, Hope you Remember the Racist Joe Biden’s famous quote "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you Ain't Black," translation, If You Don’t Vote for Me, ‘You Ain’t Black’, So you “ain’t” black if you vote for Trump? That’s embarrassing and a slap in the face to any black voter, that said, All Black Americans should also wake up and challenge the ill-educated anti-American BLM to explain HOW looting and rioting, arson attacks on private businesses , rampant violence and lawlessness protesting, stomping and burning the U.S.A. flag, vandalizing and toppling Civil War statues and monuments, there by Erasing the History of the Pro-slavery, Spread Hating, and currently the True Racist Democratic Party which was Proudly Known Historically as The Slaveholding Confederate States of America, stop blacks from murdering each other in record numbers every weekend in Democrat-run cities and states ONLY? Why does BLM believe black lives ONLY matter when they are harmed or killed by a white person, especially a white cop and not by black hoodlum? (Think) Where are the multitude of protesters, mourners, and televised funeral services from BLM for the deaths of Black men, women, children, and cops killed by black thugs across America's major cities? The truth is BLM does not care about black people killing other black people, because it does nothing to advance its political power agenda and they know more Black Americans are killed by blacks then by cops. Well, the fact is, All Lives Matter (ALM). It is Sad, Insulting, and Degrading that Black Americans Today after all this Years have Forgotten (Think) who the Real Racists have Been and Continue to be, namely, the Democrats. Pass it on!

There is NO place in the birthing room for racism. I am tremendously disappointed in Gaskin’s racist, misinformed and damaging comments.

This is a disgrace. Enough supporting racist white people. Time to lift up Black birth workers.

7 years ago Featured

My midwife ignored my pleas for help and told me my abdominal pain was “just gas” and prescribed me GasX. Turns out I was in labor and my son was dying what was considered in a healthy third trimester pregnancy. He was stillborn. I delivered him naturally.

I uphold this article.

We must correct the wrongs being done to black women and unlearn the victim-blaming attitudes shown by Gaskin.

Ina May should be ashamed of her words. As a midwife, I am appalled and saddened. Racism is alive and well, folks...even amongst the midwives, I'm afraid....

This is why white supremacist views need to be NAMED AND SHAMED

I want to see balance of diversity within the doula world, unlike now where it seems to be mainly middle class white women who are highlighted.

She was asked to answer from her perspective and experience and she did. Ina Mae Gaskin is getting excoriated for her remarks at the end of this conference about health care outcomes for WOC. As an Hispanic woman this is what I have learned from this- when someone asks you a question about POC, just decline to answer. Don't answer from your past experiences, don't try to answer epidemiologically, or with anecdotes. Just keep your mouth shut and say you don't know or you can't answer because any attempt on to answer honestly, earnestly, good naturedly and respectfully is going to be misconstrued somewhere, sometime, by someone. Lesson learned.

9 years ago Featured

I am a white birth/postpartum doula and I am embarrassed that these are the attitudes shaping the popular culture's view of birthing in America. We need intersectional birthwork with the same urgency we need intersectional feminism.

It is deplorable that one of the key thought leaders in the current landscape of women's rights & birthing justice should hold such racist, toxic, & deplorable views. Black women's bodies have long been subject to the white gaze & malformed theories of those in power. To reduce our very real death rates, caused & perpetrated by the same women who serve in Gaskin's function as health care leaders, to our needing to be more religious & engage in more prayer shows ideology laden in colonialist & patriarchal frameworks. There are too many of us who are doing the actual work, who will never be heard, to allow a pass for Ms. Gaskin, who's voice - due to her station & privilege - will be heard & revered the loudest. Asking Black women what we need to help address our mortality rates & addressing her fellow whites for being active agents in perpetuating systems of our demise would have been a much sounder move, instead of pretending to be an authority on our bodies. Unfortunately, in this instance, Ms. Gaskin is simply following in the footsteps of her foremothers.

Thank you for shedding light on this important issue!

Trust, center, and compensate Black women as community leaders and advisors. Stop speaking for Black women. Stop lecturing Black women. Instead, start listening to Black women. Start encouraging Black femme involvement and leadership. Start asking if help is wanted. Accept supporting roles.

Ina May Gaskin needs to get off The Farm and get in touch with reality. Many African-Americans are upwardly mobile, with far more education (including advanced college degrees) than Ina May. Not all African-Americans live in poor sections of inner cities. Those that do live in poverty are stymied by the lack of so many things this country denies them (healthcare, access to good food, good housing, etc.). Despite that, most are doing the best they can to raise productive and functional families. Ina May Gaskin is an ill-informed, arrogant, entitled bigot.

Racism needs to go somewhere and die, not be perpetuated by one of the loudest voices in the birthing community.

appalling

This is absolutely disgraceful.

This woman... The sheer fact that she's touted as the "mother of modern midwifery" and is perfectly fine accepting that title should tell you something about her level of racial consciousness or concern. Midwifery is not a white hippy phenomenon and the fact that she and other white women were able to leave San Francisco University in the early 70s to start a commune in Tennessee and practice natural homebirth is based entirely in white, cishet, academic, monetary privilege. I could go on and on about my feelings on Ina May Gaskin... Given her TERF ideology around childbirth and the level to which she was willing to assert her transphobia, these racist comments are unfortunately unsurprising. The consequences her opinions and sharing of them could (and I'm sure already do) have on the culture of childbirth and pregnancy... I just kind of don't know what to say.

Please stop featuring Ina May. She has done some good work for midwifery but her choice to align herself with the homophobic and anti-trans letter from last year and now these racist, myopic views expressed in public make her out of step at best. I'm allergic to her celebrity and she has no excuse to have failed so miserably to educate herself with anti bias and anti racist work. Time to retire Ina May.