Dr. Khiara Bridges — professor, lawyer, and author — spoke to Washington University members about race, class, reproductive rights, and the intersection of the three during a keynote lecture as part of the Anthropology Department’s First-Year Ampersand Program “Medicine and Society,” Oct. 4. 

Dr. Bridges speaking to her audience about Race, Gender, and Law (Lara Marco Marquez | Student Life)

After graduating from Spelman College, Bridges received her J.D. from Columbia Law School and her doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University. She is the author of three books, and is currently working on another titled “Expecting Inequality: Race, Class, and Reproductive Justice,” slated for publication in fall 2025. 

The book explores how pregnant, class-privileged Black women navigate and experience their pregnancy during a time known as the “Black maternal crisis.” 

“To be pregnant and to be Black is to embody a crisis,” Bridges said. 

At the event, Bridges discussed how racial disparities continue to affect maternal death and infant mortality rates within the United States.

“Black people are much more likely to die than their white counterparts on the path to motherhood, as the Black people are three to four times as likely as white people to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or shortly thereafter” she said.

Dr. Bridges has conducted interviews and participant observations for nearly two years at a San Francisco Bay Area hospital. Her participants include middle- and upper middle-class Black women, medical providers, and staff. 

 “I’ve been asking [pregnant Black people] banal questions about their experiences navigating healthcare systems, but what I am trying to get at is how they’re experiencing living, being pregnant, [and] reproducing during a time of the Black maternal health crisis,” Bridges said. 

According to Bridges, interlocutors do not conceptualize themselves as embodying a crisis. While they remain aware of their Blackness and understand that it puts them at a higher risk for negative outcomes, “Higher-class individuals can deploy their class privilege in order to select the provider they want.” Individuals of lower income, who rely on Medicaid for their healthcare are seen by whichever practitioner may be on-call at the public hospital.

“Choosing a Black person [to be your doctor] is such an insignificant, minor, small thing to do in order to achieve something as profound as survival.” 

She further emphasizes that pregnant Black individuals have different ideas about how their provider’s race will work to deliver them the care that they wish for. 

One research participant said, “A Black provider’s Black race would work to guarantee that biomedicine operates as it should and, in the process, [grant] her a healthy pregnancy, safe childbirth, and a happy newborn.” 

Another one of Bridges’ research participants views Black physicians as means of shielding her from the structures of biomedicine. 

Within a healthcare setting, the notion of being Black is conceptualized differently across individuals, Bridges said.

“Black people want Black people to care for them,”she said. She spoke about how stereotypes of Black doctors impact the ways they are seen by other members of that community.

An additional takeaway Dr. Bridges left her audience with is the fact that class privilege can be used as a tool that allows middle- and upper-middle-class Black women to choose their medical provider, helping them navigate the Black maternal crisis. 

According to Bridges, the problem of Black maternal health is a problem of divestment, healthcare institutions, residential segregation, and implicit biases — among other systemic issues. 

“Huge macro-processes are producing the Black maternal health crisis today, and we’re just leaving it to individuals, right? — to choose a provider in order to navigate a structural problem.”