Republican Racism On Display: Louisiana's Maternal Mortality Not So Bad If You 'Correct Our Population for Race,' Sen Says
“It’s no mystery why maternal mortality rates are so high among Black women,” public health expert says
Just days after a gunman murdered 10 people at a Buffalo NY, grocery store after listening to racist conspiracy theories regularly spewed by figures on the political right, Louisiana's Republican senior senator committed a stunning act of racism by declaring that his state’s high rate of maternal death wouldn't be so egregious if only one would “correct our population for race.”
Sen Bill Cassidy, who has represented the Pelican State in the US Senate since 2015, was immediately called out for the obvious racism in his remarks to a reporter.
He made his jaw-dropping statement during an interview with Politico reporter Sarah Owermohle, who asked Cassidy about a variety of health-related subjects, including the Justice Samuel Alito-authored draft opinion that would overturn the constitutionally right to abortion should it become final.
“About a third of our population is African-American. African-Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it would otherwise appear,” Cassidy said. “Now, I say that not to minimize the issue, but to focus the issue as to where it would be. Um, for whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. Now, to be sure, there’s different definitions of maternal mortality.
“Sometimes maternal mortality includes up to a year after birth and would include someone being killed by her boyfriend. So. So in my mind, it’s better to restrict your definition to that, which is the perinatal, if you will, the time just before and in the subsequent period after she has delivered,” he added.
Michelle Williams, the dean of Harvard’s School of Public Health, was quick to call out the obvious racial bias in Cassidy's declaration.
“It’s no mystery why maternal mortality rates are so high among Black women,” Williams said in response. “They are high because of the devastating impacts of structural racism and individual bias.”
As Politico notes, Black mothers are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white mothers in the United States, which has the worst mortality rate among developed nations and where “17 mothers die for every 100,000 pregnancies in the country.” In Louisiana, Black mothers are four times as likely to die than white mothers.
The gunman in Buffalo specifically sought out Black Americans to murder after listening to the racist “replacement theory” which holds that people of color are somehow replacing white people.
It's a racist doctrine which Fox News host Tucker Carlson has long promoted on his top-watched program.
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