When studying the health care provided at Alpha Hospital in New York City, anthropologist Khiara Bridges documented health-care professionals referring to black women as "primitive" and stating that black women were better able to withstand pain than white women. Where did these attitudes stem from?

These attitudes stemed from prejudice and customs in the medical professions, where there were widespread stories about bodies of black women.

Khiara Bridges is an American anthropologist who specializes in the intersectionality of race, law and reproductive justice. The aforementioned study comes from her research on women's prenatal, natal and post-natal experiences. These experiences are widely influenced by race and class.

She published her research in the book called Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization.