Tamika Mallory talks Ma’Khia Bryant on ‘Red Table Talk’: ‘She’s a child and we saw her laying on the ground’

“She deserves the same care and attention and for someone to advocate for her and her situation, even though she may have had a knife," Mallory says in an exclusive clip.

This week’s episode of Red Table Talk will focus on how Black women’s invisibility affects their mental health, access to reliable health care, and even how their lives are valued by others. 

Jada Pinkett Smith, Willow Smith, and Adrienne Banfield-Norris aka “Gammy” will be joined by social justice leader Tamika Mallory who reveals that feeling invisible led to her own struggles with addiction. 

We will also meet a pregnant college professor who was treated like an “incompetent Black woman” by her doctors and a physician whose confrontation with a flight attendant went viral. Plus, Gammy shares the troubling way she was treated by doctors while pregnant with Jada.

Red Table Talk thegrio.com
(Photo Credit: Lucy Snow)

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Considering it’s Black Maternal Health Week and Black women continue to die during or after childbirth at disproportionate rates, this is a conversation everyone should be paying attention to. 

The CDC has reported that Black women experience maternal mortality at a rate two to three times higher than that of white women.The estimated national maternal mortality rate in the United States is about 17 per 100,000–but is about 43 per 100,000 live births for Black women. 

Moreover, data from the CDC Pregnancy Surveillance Study showed these higher rates of Black maternal mortality are due to higher fatality rates, not a higher incidence of cases. 

Hence, the data indicates that the higher maternal mortality rates among Black women are not due to a higher number of high-risk cases. This same study found that the gap between Black and white maternal mortality has increased over the past few decades.

A 2019 New York Times article reported that between 2000 and 2015, the national maternal mortality rate fell, while the Black maternal mortality rate increased.

Ma'Khia Bryant thegrio.com
Ma’Khia Bryant (Photo: Family of Ma’Khia Bryant)

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The ladies will also tackle the notion of the “perfect victim” and how that damaging narrative works to undermine our efforts for justice for victims like Ma’Khia Bryant, the 16-year-old girl who was recently gunned down by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio. 

“People don’t wanna talk about Ma’Khia Bryant…I attended her funeral and the reason I went is because I know if she was 16 years old and perfect, the perfect victim, everyone would be all over it. People would have been there to support,” Mallory says in the exclusive clip. 

“She deserves the same care and attention and for someone to advocate for her and her situation, even though she may have had a knife. She’s a child and we saw her laying on the ground.” 

Check out the exclusive clip of Tamika Mallory discussing Ma’Khia Bryant.

Check out the full episode of Red Table Talk on Facebook Watch on Thursday, May 13 at 12pm PT/3pm ET.

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