Is Childbirth Racist?

Everything else is, so why not? This question is prompted by the revelation that the University of Minnesota paid a diversity consultant more than $200,000 to develop an online anti-racism training course for the University’s hospitals and maternity centers.

Does anyone seriously think that the University of Minnesota’s hospital system is racist? Of course not. This course is meant to combat “implicit bias,” which means that no one in these overwhelmingly liberal institutions is actually biased. No one takes this language seriously, it’s just a business transaction.

So why is this being done? Last year, Minnesota’s legislature passed (unnoticed by me and everyone else) a “Dignity In Pregnancy And Childbirth” law that mandated it. Where did Minnesota’s Democrats get this idea? As usual, they copied it from the wonderfully successful state of California:

Diversity Science collaborated with UMN’s Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity to modify courses already created for California’s Dignity in Pregnancy and Childbirth Act.

What is the justification for this boondoggle? The anti-racism consultant explains:

The courses were established as “part of an initiative whose goal is to ensure that Black and Indigenous women and birthing people [Two different categories, apparently] achieve their full potential for healthy and productive lives,” according to Diversity Science’s website. …

“In the US, Black and Indigenous people are twice as likely to experience a preterm birth (PTB), give birth to a low birth weight (LBW) infant, or experience the death of an infant before age 1 compared to white women. Similarly, Black and Indigenous women in the US are more likely to die during or in the year following childbirth. Current estimates are that a full 80% of these deaths are preventable,” the website reads.

So, why are premature and low birth weight deliveries more common among black and Native American mothers? Is it because the University of Minnesota is racist? Obviously not. Fetal alcohol syndrome and illegal drug use are common causes. Why do such infants die more often than babies born to white mothers? (As usual, Asians go unmentioned, but I will hazard a guess that their infants are faring well.) Presumably the same conditions that give rise to low birth weight and premature delivery are involved. In any event, the solution certainly does not lie in online anti-racism courses for hospitals and maternity centers.

Similarly, why is it that black and Native American women are more likely to die in the year following childbirth than white (and, no doubt, Asian) women? A rational explanation would begin by asking what these women died from. Homicide? Drug overdose? Car accident? I can guarantee that not a single such mother died on account of racism in the University of Minnesota hospital system.

So the diversity racket trundles along, making no sense and doing no good, but raking in countless millions for its practitioners. It is probably the greatest corruption of our time, but the powers that be have no interest in blowing the whistle on the scam, as they are nearly all, in one way or another, in on it.