Reproductive Justice: A positive approach to Sexuality, Health and Human Rights
February 16, 2017
Blog
2016 NAACP National Conference Data Collection
February 16, 2017
Blog
Brian Eiler, PhD Psychology student
Reflections on my time as TCP Program Coordinator
February 16, 2017
Blog
By Elaina Johns-Wolfe
About two years ago, I began my assignment as graduate assistant for the Kunz Center for Social Research, of which Dr. Jennifer Malat was director. The Cincinnati Project was only in its infancy at the time — more of an idea than a cohesive research center. Over the course of the next year and a half, it was my privilege to serve as its first project coordinator and to help it grow into a stand-alone research endeavor. As a sociologist-in-training, involvement with The Cincinnati Project enriched my education in the following ways:
Reproductive Justice is more than just Birth Control and Abortion
February 16, 2017
Blog, Social Movement
By Mary Siskaninetz ’19
Sociology 2099, a course on Reproductive Justice, has been the most life changing class in my college career so far. It made me realize that I do not just have to sit by the sidelines on issues about women’s rights and reproductive justice. This class was specifically important to me because it made me rethink my whole career. I never thought of pursuing or looking up a job in reproductive health. Now, I am considering changing majors in order to be qualified to do reproductive justice work.
I think everyone should take this class. Not only to educate people on reproductive justice issues, but to eliminate wrong and shameful misinformation that circulates American media and culture. Environmental, racial, socio-economic issues can all play into how you receive healthcare.
Voices of Cincinnati
February 16, 2017
Blog
By Steve Carlton-Ford
This past summer, I started to get involved with the AMOS supported project “Voices of Cincinnati.” That project is focused on identifying people whose voices are rarely heard and helping them identify their strengths and capabilities. Many of these folks simply don’t have steady jobs and steady incomes and need help getting into the job market. For others, English is a second language, a fact that makes adjusting to life in Cincinnati difficult.
Jim Crow Geography and HIV Disparities
October 30, 2016
Blog
I’m super excited to be apart of the first Cincinnati Project cohort of scholars. My scholarship has always focused on the health and wellbeing of African American women. Currently I’m partnering up with Caracole House to extend on my existing research that takes into account how gender, race, sexuality and space intersects and the impact of these on health outcomes for Black women.
Community vs Individual Behavioral Factors when Studying HIV
In the past, researchers studying HIV have mostly focused on individual behavioral factors to assess risk. The problem with this approach is that it tends to overemphasize individuals’ sexual proclivities as a predictor of HIV disparities and personal risk. One of the most exciting implications of my current work is the elucidation of how macro processes (including structural policies like Jim Crow) create spaces (communities and neighborhood environments) that are more vulnerable for risk of illnesses (from sexually transmitted infections (STIs) to everyday chronic illness).
STIs then become more pervasive and more prevalent within confined spaces and among populations that are already heavily compromised.
And ain’t this the legacy of Jim Crow?
1904 caricature of “White” and “Jim Crow” rail cars by John T. McCutcheon.
The spatial confinement of Blacks within Jim Crow geographies often meant living under extremely poor conditions, which not only worsened, but accelerated infectious diseases and diminished prenatal care, which resulted in much higher infant mortality rates and much shorter life expectancies. These antagonistic circumstances, alongside limited access to medical services, still largely reflect the continuity of racial health disparities between African Americans and whites. My current research traces back the Cincinnati Jim Crow history with regards to spatial reserves for African American residents. I’m interested in exploring the particularities of how spatial confinement impacts Black women’s health and wellbeing.
I see this project as being in conversation with a sparse body of work on Blacks in Cincinnati. Specifically, Dr. Nikki Taylor, author of Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati Black Community 1802-1868, Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, author of Race and the City: Work Community and Protest, Dr. Zane Miller’s Changing Plans for America’s Inner Cities: Cincinnati’s Over-The-Rhine and Twentieth-Century Urbanism and several journal articles, book chapters and reports authored by Dr. Charles F. Casey-Leininger. All are key texts that inform this project, specifically by addressing how Jim Crow borders came to be drawn, and the emergence of the Cincinnati urban reservation.
Reproductive Justice: Creating Change in the greater Cincinnati area
October 27, 2016
Blog, Social Movement
Photo courtesy of www.forharriet.com
What is “reproductive justice”?
The word “reproduction” might conjure ideas about medicine and health care services, especially the ways we care for pregnancy and birth in the U.S. “Justice,” on the other hand, often evokes legality and smacks of legal battles, especially the contentious struggles over abortion nationally and right here in Ohio. These two frameworks – commonly referred to as “reproductive health” and “reproductive rights,” respectively – are critically important to insuring the autonomy, equality, health, and well-being of women and their families, but we can’t achieve reproductive justice by focusing just on medicine or the law or adding the two together. Reproductive justice is both complementary to these two frameworks and broader than them.
Photo courtesy of africanakaleidoscopes.com
Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (now Forward Together) defines reproductive justice as “the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, social, and economic well-being of women and girls, based on the full achievement and protection of women’s human rights.” Perhaps it is no surprise that Black women (through the organization SisterSong) originated this term, since they and other women of color have long been devalued as mothers and disproportionately subjected to involuntary sterilization, interference with their parenting, and other challenges that have led them to prioritize not only the right to abortion, but also the rights to have children and to parent them.
UC Honors Class Researches Inclusive Social Movement Practices
Drawing from their experiences, Loretta Ross insists that a truly inclusive movement must reflect the fundamental tenet that “a woman’s societal institutions, environment, economics and culture affect her reproductive life.” Legal rights and appropriate, respectful health care are necessary, but so too are efforts to address poverty, racism, environmental degradation, militarism, and other oppressions.
Our class (Sociology 2099) is taking this mandate seriously this fall. We are:
- learning about infant and maternal mortality, both nationally and here in Cincinnati.
- discussing the public debates about birth, abortion, and surrogacy, as well as the facts and perspectives that are sometimes occluded in those debates.
- studying both past reproductive injustices and recent social movements’ successes in our efforts to identify lessons for the future.
Service Learning with Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission
Across all of these topics, we will pay particular attention to issues of inequality: Whose parenting is valued and whose is not? Whose mothering is encouraged and supported and whose is not? Whose children flourish and whose cannot? And we won’t do it alone. We will be joined by expert guest speakers, many of whom are working to improve reproductive conditions in the greater Cincinnati area.
We are also delighted to partner with Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission (NKCAC) for service learning this fall. Service learning helps us to understand these issues from a slightly different perspective, and it also allows us to be part of the solution. It also helps us engage holistically, as the reproductive justice framework requires: NKCAC fights poverty by providing a range of services that support individuals and families and helping them gain skills and independence.
I can’t wait to see what this fall holds for us, not least because this course is for the first time part of the UC Honors program. From time to time, students will post blogs from our class, reporting on the work we are doing. I hope you will follow our journey!
The Value of Community Partnerships in Academic Research
October 27, 2016
Blog
By: Leila Rodriguez
Early on in our training as anthropologists, we learn that ethnographic fieldwork is the pillar of anthropological inquiry. To best understand a community from their own perspective, we immerse ourselves in their lives, and use a host of research methods including participant observation and interviewing to learn about their worldview.
Photo taken by Amanda Rossman for the Enquirer.
Penetrating a social group to which you do not belong is not easy, and we are taught the value of gatekeepers and key informants.
Gatekeepers are those individuals who formally or informally have the ability to allow us access to their community. In a tribe, a formal gatekeeper could be a chief. In a high-crime neighborhood, an informal gatekeeper could be a gang leader. I have encountered both in my own research, and without their consent I could not have conducted research in their communities.
Key informants facilitate research too. They are experts in their own culture and help us to interpret what we observe, and navigate the social landscape in their communities.
Partnering with Su Casa, a local migrant-serving organization
My current research examines the local integration of unaccompanied, underage Central American migrants who left their poverty and violence-stricken home communities. Rather than simply relying on gatekeepers and key informants for this project, I decided to do something very different: to partner with Su Casa, a local migrant-serving organization that is involved in all stages of my research.
Su Casa has helped or will help:
- craft my research questions
- give input into the specific research instruments I employ
- provide logistical support
- interpret the research results
Although my project is still in the earliest stages, I have already noticed how transitioning from the reliance on gatekeepers and key informants to a community-based, participatory research project is improving the quality of my work.
My current project involves the most vulnerable population with which I have ever been involved. While there are multiple ethical concerns and challenges in working with such a population, I believe that precisely because they are so vulnerable they cannot be excluded from our research. Our collective understanding of the integration of immigrants, and forms and processes of social inequality will be incomplete without consideration of the experiences of these minors.
My partnership with Su Casa has given my project additional legitimacy in the eyes of the community, as the organization is well-known and trusted. If gatekeepers open the doors to a community, my community partnership has blasted them open. It has expedited communication and cooperation with schools and other community institutions that care about the welfare of these minors, which adds a layer of protection for them. It has refocused my project so that it not only addresses scholarly questions, but so it will provide practical data for local organizations that provide services to, and advocate in favor of, these young migrants.
As my project advances, I anticipate that the benefits of partnering with a community organization will continue to reveal themselves.
Ferguson, Baltimore and Cincinnati
October 2, 2016
Blog, News, Social Movement
On Tuesday, October 4, I will participate on a panel discussion on the implications of the Department of Justice reports on Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland titled, “DOJ Reports on Policing in Ferguson and Baltimore: What They Mean for Cincinnati and the Country.” During the few minutes I have to talk I will focus on two matters:
- connecting the findings of the recent DOJ reports to an American history of policing that dates back to this nation’s years of reconstruction
- advising the leadership in Cincinnati to use the findings from the DOJ reports proactively to provide leadership on issues of policing and, more importantly, to learn from the mistakes of police militarization as the trial of Ray Tensing nears and the decision on his guilt or innocence lay in the balance.
Black Codes
In 1903 sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about the shadow slavery program that followed the ‘peculiar institution.’ During these years “Black Codes,” de jure and de facto laws severely governing the lives and freedoms of Black Americans, were established. Examples of punishable offenses include the gathering of two or more Blacks in a public area, and being unemployed. Having little to no protection under the law, thousands of men and women were unjustly jailed, some for simply not being gainfully employed. Their labor was literally sold to the highest bidder in the region. The successful bidder (i.e., plantation owner) then legally controlled the (slave) labor of the persons whom he purchased from local officials. This was practiced during the early twentieth century.
What say we today?
This practice is still in play today. One can look at laws connected to the American drug war that has led to a supply of able bodied persons whose ‘talents’ have been and continue to be utilized in private and government prisons for the production of various products at minimal expenditures. As it relates to Ferguson, Missouri, government officials purposely used the criminal justice system to extract monies from its primarily Black citizens to supplement the local budget.
The targeting of Blacks in this manner is eerily similar to that of years past. This gives one pause to raise the question, “How far removed from the reconstruction era are we?”
Militarized Use of Force
In Ferguson and Baltimore the world witnessed how the militarization of an institution sworn to “serve and protect” the members of its community engaged in militaristic tactics designed for combat against enemies of this nation and in locations far from our borders. The militarized use of force against the members of ones community should not occur, unless the force employed against the policing community are also militarized. Notwithstanding the latter, the military rule over American communities must not be allowed.
What has the city of Cincinnati learned?
As the city of Cincinnati prepares for the trial of the University of Cincinnati police officer charged with killing Samuel DuBose one must ask the question, “what has the city of Cincinnati learned from the tactics of community engagement observed in other cities?” One can only hope that the powers that be in this city and region have carefully and clearheadedly examined the best practices in community engagement and policing. For if they have not then the name Cincinnati may, again, be added to the string of other cities whose citizens expressed displeasure with their treatment via the criminal justice system in ways that some may deem unpleasant. In order to prevent such unfortunate situations some of us at the University of Cincinnati are participating in a unit, The Cincinnati Project, that may serve as an intermediary between residents and the policing community.
The Cincinnati Project Serves as a Bridge
The Cincinnati Project (TCP) was established in 2014 to serve as a bridge between community stakeholders and institutional units at the University of Cincinnati such that those relationships can be (re)established and/or improved. The primary goal of TCP is to offer the skills and talents of members of the university community to the larger Cincinnati community whereby specific research needs of grassroots members of the community can be met. Moreover, TCP engages with community stakeholders as equal partners, not as a body of scholars single-mindedly focused on exploiting members of the community for our personal gain. However, as it relates to matters of social justice broadly and this panel discussion specifically, the goal of TCP is to serve as an intermediary whose efforts are useful in the maintenance of a prosperous and forward moving Queen City.
Completing a community-partnered project has been one of the highlights of my academic career
September 7, 2016
Blog
By Jenny Zhen Duan
Being part of the Community Psychology class and completing a community-partnered project has been one of the highlights of my academic career. Most often, students are only presented with theoretical information on how to promote positive social change. I was glad that part of the course involved hands-on experience by joining a community partner (Cincinnati Health Department) and using our skills as researchers for a greater good.
Jenny Zhen Duan was a student in the UC Community Psychology class Spring of 2016
Initially, I thought that it would be difficult to make decisions because the class was large and multidisciplinary. However, I found that the opposite occurred. Students worked very well together and built on each other’s strengths, very similar to true community-based efforts. For example, during the planning process, we were deciding whether to recruit undergraduate students or community members as research participants. While recruiting students would have been probably easier for us as a team, we felt very passionately about going to the community and reaching out to those who would benefit from the sexual health information we were providing. We found it to be important to “give voice” to members who are less represented in research. Therefore, my classmates and I worked with their contacts in order to recruit participants out in the community. These contacts, or organizations, included social service agencies, churches, and residents from a low-income neighborhood in Cincinnati.
I believe that by doing this, we enriched our research quality while also making us feel more ownership of the research project itself, which is another crucial component of community-partnered research. It was satisfying to apply the same principles that we were learning in class towards a project aimed at improving sexual health. It was even more rewarding to work and network with other like-minded individuals committed to bridging the gap on health disparities and feeling that the community will benefit from this work.
