美国国家公共电台 NPR How Racism May Cause Black Mothers To Suffer The Death Of Their Infants

 

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

African-American women are more likely to lose a baby in the first year of life than women of any other race or ethnicity. Doctors and researchers have been trying to understand what makes black infants so vulnerable, and now they think it has to do with how their mothers are treated in this country. NPR's Rhitu Chatterjee has this story as part of our series on discrimination, You, Me And Them. And a warning here - there is a racial slur¹ in this story.

RHITU CHATTERJEE, BYLINE²: It was 2009, and things were going really well for Samantha Pierce.

SAMANTHA PIERCE: I was newly married. I had a son. I was a higher-up in my company. I had a lot on my plate.

CHATTERJEE: Pierce lives in Cleveland, and she worked at a small nonprofit that helped people deal with predatory lenders.

PIERCE: That was the company that I was in charge of. And when I tell you I was kick-ass community organizer, I was - I was pretty kick-ass.

CHATTERJEE: Life was good, and it was about to get better.

PIERCE: Hey, we're pregnant (laughter).

CHATTERJEE: Pregnant with twins. Pierce thought she was a poster child for healthy pregnancy³. She had a college degree. She was taking prenatal vitamins, had great health care and everything was going smoothly⁴, until one day...

PIERCE: I was about five months pregnant with the twins when I discovered that I was leaking fluid.

CHATTERJEE: After a week in the hospital, her water broke, and she gave birth to her twins.

PIERCE: They lived for about five minutes each of them, but they couldn't breathe. They didn't have lungs. We got to hold them, talk to them. I could see them breathing, but I could also see when they stopped breathing, you know.

CHATTERJEE: Pierce was devastated⁵. She says for months she couldn't bear to look at her stomach. It felt like a cemetery⁶.

PIERCE: A walking tomb. It was just walking evidence of loss, of failure. I couldn't even do the one thing I was put on this planet for, which was bear children.

CHATTERJEE: What she didn't know then was that her twins were part of a chilling statistic⁷. Arthur James is an OB-GYN in at The Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.

ARTHUR JAMES: Black babies in the United States die at just over two times the rate of white babies in the first year of life.

CHATTERJEE: That's because black mothers like Samantha Pierce are more likely to give birth prematurely⁹, and James has seen countless¹⁰ black mothers lose their babies. He says it just doesn't seem right.

JAMES: You ask yourself what is it about being black that places us at increased risk for that kind of experience.

CHATTERJEE: Neonatologist Richard David says scientists used to think high levels of poverty and lack of education are to blame. David's of the University of Illinois at Chicago and has been studying this for decades.

RICHARD DAVID: We knew that African-American women were more likely to be poor and that fewer of them had completed their education by the time they were bearing children.

CHATTERJEE: But that doesn't explain it all, he says, because of this - a college-educated woman like Samantha Pierce is more likely to give birth to a premature⁸ baby than a white woman who didn't even finish high school.

DAVID: That's exactly the kind of case that makes us ask the question, what else is there? What are we missing?

CHATTERJEE: He says some people asked, was it genetics? Now, if genes¹¹ were at play, women from Africa would also be more likely to have premature babies. So David and his colleague looked at the babies of immigrant women from Africa. It turns out that their babies were more like white babies - bigger, more likely to be full term. David says it clearly wasn't genetics. Then many years later, he discovered something startling. The next generation, the grandchildren of those African immigrant women, were more like African-American babies - smaller, more likely to be premature.

DAVID: So there was something about growing up black in the United States and then bearing a child that was associated with a lower birth weight.

CHATTERJEE: He says there is something different about growing up black in America - discrimination.

DAVID: It's hard to find any aspect of life that's not impacted by racial discrimination in this country.

CHATTERJEE: David and other scientists have found that African-American women who say they've faced discrimination are more likely to have preterm deliveries and therefore more likely to lose their babies. Samantha Pierce didn't know any of this when she was pregnant back in 2009, but she did know discrimination. She was 7 or 8 the first time someone called her the N word. She was with a mother in Murray Hill, Cleveland's Italian neighborhood.

PIERCE: We were just driving through, and we were called niggers just going up the hill.

CHATTERJEE: The memory still makes her blood boil.

PIERCE: You know, it does not matter that my mother owned her home. It does not matter that we owned that car 'cause we did. It did not matter that I went to private school 'cause I did. When I was riding up Murray Hill, I was a nigger, and so was my mother.

CHATTERJEE: Pierce says it wasn't the only time she was made to feel inferior for being black. It happens even today, like having to fight for a promotion¹² over a white colleague or when she's shadowed at stores by the staff even when she's with a white friend.

PIERCE: So when I say, Deb (ph), did you see that clerk? She was watching our every move. And my white friend will be like, no, she wasn't. (Laughter) I'm telling you she was, and now she's watching you 'cause you're with me. And those types of things, they happen every day.

CHATTERJEE: It's frustrating¹³, she says, and stressful. Arthur James says when someone's stressed out all the time, their bodies are flushed with stress hormones¹⁴. And for pregnant women...

JAMES: Higher levels of stress hormones increases the incidence of preterm labor¹⁵.

CHATTERJEE: When Samantha Pierce first learned about this a few years after her twins died, it was as if a light bulb went off.

PIERCE: So stress leads to labor, and African-American women live a more stressful life, and so we hit preterm birth at an alarming rate.

CHATTERJEE: That understanding changed her life. She became determined¹⁶ to fight back against all that stress for herself and for other black women.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CHATTERJEE: So she turned to exercise as a buffer¹⁷ against the stress. Now she spends a lot of time working out here at this gym in Cleveland, and she's also a personal trainer. Her clients are mostly African-American women. She says exercise could also provide social support, something a lot of black women say they don't have.

PIERCE: You know, we really are hard on ourselves, and so we actually really need other women, especially other black women, to say, I see you. You're doing fine. Keep going.

CHATTERJEE: Pierce says she can't change how society treats black women, but she wants to change how black women cope with their stresses. If they can make their bodies more resilient, she hopes it will give the next generation a better chance of surviving. Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF ANDREW BISSELL'S "POUR IT UP")

1 slur   

v.含糊地说；诋毁；连唱；n.诋毁；含糊的发音

参考例句：

• He took the remarks as a slur on his reputation.他把这些话当作是对他的名誉的中伤。
• The drug made her speak with a slur.药物使她口齿不清。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 pregnancy   

n.怀孕，怀孕期

参考例句：

• Early pregnancy is often accompanied by nausea.怀孕早期常有恶心的现象。
• Smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage.怀孕期吸烟会增加流产的危险。

4 smoothly   

adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地

参考例句：

• The workmen are very cooperative,so the work goes on smoothly.工人们十分合作，所以工作进展顺利。
• Just change one or two words and the sentence will read smoothly.这句话只要动一两个字就顺了。

5 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

6 cemetery   

n.坟墓，墓地，坟场

参考例句：

• He was buried in the cemetery.他被葬在公墓。
• His remains were interred in the cemetery.他的遗体葬在墓地。

7 statistic   

n.统计量；adj.统计的，统计学的

参考例句：

• Official statistics show real wages declining by 24%.官方统计数字表明实际工资下降了24%。
• There are no reliable statistics for the number of deaths in the battle.关于阵亡人数没有可靠的统计数字。

8 premature   

adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的

参考例句：

• It is yet premature to predict the possible outcome of the dialogue.预言这次对话可能有什么结果为时尚早。
• The premature baby is doing well.那个早产的婴儿很健康。

9 prematurely   

adv.过早地，贸然地

参考例句：

• She was born prematurely with poorly developed lungs. 她早产，肺部未发育健全。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• His hair was prematurely white, but his busy eyebrows were still jet-black. 他的头发已经白了，不过两道浓眉还是乌黑乌黑的。 来自辞典例句

10 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

11 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

12 promotion   

n.提升，晋级；促销，宣传

参考例句：

• The teacher conferred with the principal about Dick's promotion.教师与校长商谈了迪克的升级问题。
• The clerk was given a promotion and an increase in salary.那个职员升了级，加了薪。

13 frustrating   

adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's frustrating to have to wait so long. 要等这么长时间，真令人懊恼。
• It was a demeaning and ultimately frustrating experience. 那是一次有失颜面并且令人沮丧至极的经历。 来自《简明英汉词典》

14 hormones   

n. 荷尔蒙，激素 名词hormone的复数形式

参考例句：

• This hormone interacts closely with other hormones in the body. 这种荷尔蒙与体內其他荷尔蒙紧密地相互作用。
• The adrenals produce a large per cent of a man's sex hormones. 肾上腺分泌人体的大部分性激素。

15 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

16 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

17 buffer   

n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲

参考例句：

• A little money can be a useful buffer in time of need.在急需时，很少一点钱就能解燃眉之急。
• Romantic love will buffer you against life's hardships.浪漫的爱会减轻生活的艰辛。