Didactic Panel:

There exists a great disparity in infant mortality in Kalamazoo with respect to race. Black infants are currently 4.5 times more likely to die than white infants. While infant mortality rates in Kalamazoo have improved overall in the past ten years, the black infant mortality rate has almost tripled in the past twenty years. This exhibition is intended to strengthen the identity and illustrate the stigma experienced by women affected by black infant mortality in Kalamazoo. In giving the stigma character representation, the exhibition highlights personal stories to elicit a motivated response from the audience. The quotations are from women in Kalamazoo who have been affected by black infant mortality. The images are of models representing each quotation. I encourage you to consider the deep roots of this experienced stigma and consider your personal role in its elimination.

“I lost my baby, and I’m sitting in a room and all I hear are babies crying. That is traumatic. Because you’re trying to figure out: What would my baby’s cry sound like?” “My daughter just turned twenty-five—may she rest in peace…I think about her every day of my life, especially on her birthday. I’ve still got pictures of my baby. I got her hat. I got her bracelet. I got her certificate of baptism because I still got her baptized after she was stillborn.”

“The psychiatrist is putting you on these other pills but you can’t be on this medication when you got this baby because then you’re gonna have a neglect charge because you fell asleep on the baby. The baby could have choked—you don’t know how the baby died now because you’re doped up on what they gave you.”

“They throw your babies out in the street like ‘Who gives a damn about you? Another black baby gone—Bye-bye. We ain’t gotta worry about that baby growing up, carrying a gun or being a hoe on the corner.’ Because if it was a Caucasian baby, a middle class baby, that baby would have been taken care of.”

“Didn’t nobody help me. It was my mind that carried me and God carried me into the resources or finding somebody to talk to about my situations. That’s, that’s all—that’s all. And I just thank God that I’m one of those that made it.”

“After a while you can’t show a sign of weakness because there are so many things that are already built and designed to break you. So you can’t let the things that you can control break you.”

“I honestly feel like: it takes a village to raise a child. We need to come together as a community.”