How Our Conversation Around Breastfeeding Hurts Black Infants

For too long, the dialogue around breastfeeding has been a deeply privileged one that erases and ignores Black women.

R acial inequality in the U.S. is so entrenched, so debilitating, that even Black babies—even, sometimes, within their first hours of life—are impacted by it.

Consider, for a moment, these chilling facts:

The infant mortality rate for Black babies is 2.4 times higher than it is for white babies in the U.S.

Black infants are two times more likely to die from SIDS and SUID than white infants.

Black infants experience nearly four times as many deaths related to short gestation and low birth weight.

Black preterm infants, compared with white infants, are three times more likely to suffer from necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), and twice as likely to die from the condition.

Not surprisingly, bigotry plays a critical role in this disparity; research shows that racism-induced stress can have adverse effects on the health of Black women and, subsequently, on their babies. Lack of access to quality care also contributes to the mortality gap.