Resistance and Gendered Racism: Middle-Class Black Women's Experiences Navigating Reproductive Health Care Systems.

This article examines how middle-class Black women experience and navigate gendered racism within reproductive healthcare systems, situating these experiences in the historical context of slavery and its legacy in American gynecology. Using qualitative interviews and a Black feminist framework, the study reveals that participants perceive their encounters with gynecologists as haunted by historical trauma, characterized by dismissals, violations, and coercive reproductive prescriptions rooted in racialized and gendered stereotypes. Despite leveraging their middle-class status and employing coping strategies such as roleflexing and emotional disengagement to protect themselves, these women still face psychological burdens from anticipated and actual gendered racism. The findings underscore the need for anti-racist training in medical and psychological care, emphasizing the intersection of race, gender, and class in reproductive justice and health inequities.