Reproductive Health, Harlem, and Research

Abstract

Men and women were gathered at the local public hall for a regular meeting sponsored by the community policing unit of the local police precinct. The group was diverse in age and occupation, but it was united in its concerns for the safety and well-being of the neighborhood. They engaged the police representatives in a forceful discussion of their needs and offered many suggestions for improving police procedures. There were two special guests that evening: ethnographers from the Harlem Birth Right Project. The ethnographers described the project and its significance, and lively debate ensued about the causes of infant mortality and the best focus for research. Some argued that research that was narrowly focused on women’s bad behaviors (substance abuse and smoking, for example) was not useful because it just reinforced the negative portrait of Harlem that residents had to confront all the time. Others acknowledged that the problem of infant mortality was a grave one (one woman said, “Every week in my shop someone buys a card for a baby’s funeral.”) but wondered why the project did not examine other pressing issues such as lack of employment.