Reducing race disparities in breastfeeding has become a health objective in the United States, spurring research aimed to identify causes and consequences of disparate rates. This study uses critical discourse analysis to assess how Black women are constructed in 80 quantitative health science research articles on breastfeeding disparities in the United States. Our analysis is grounded in critical race and intersectionality scholarship, which argues that researchers often incorrectly treat race and its intersections as causal mechanisms. Our findings reveal two distinct representations. Most commonly, race, gender, and their intersection are portrayed as essential characteristics of individuals. Black women are portrayed as a fixed category, possessing characteristics that inhibit breastfeeding; policy implications focus on modifying Black women’s characteristics to increase breastfeeding. Less commonly, Black women are portrayed as a diverse group who occupy a social position in society resulting from similar social and material conditions, seeking to identify factors that facilitate or inhibit breastfeeding. Policy implications emphasize mitigating structural barriers that disproportionately impact some Black women. We contribute to existing knowledge by demonstrating how dominant health science approaches provide evidence for health promotion campaigns that are unlikely to reduce health disparities and may do more harm than good to Black women. We also demonstrate the existence of a problematic knowledge set about Black women’s reproductive and infant feeding practices that is both ahistorical and decontextualized.

减少母乳喂养中的种族差异已成为美国的健康目标，从而推动了旨在确定差异发生率的原因和后果的研究。这项研究使用批判性话语分析来评估美国80篇有关母乳喂养差异的定量健康科学研究文章中如何构造黑人妇女。我们的分析基于批判种族和交叉性奖学金，该研究认为研究人员经常错误地将种族及其交叉作为因果机制。我们的发现揭示了两种不同的表示。最常见的是，种族，性别及其相交被描绘成个人的基本特征。黑人妇女被列为固定类别，具有抑制母乳喂养的特征；政策含义着重于改变黑人妇女的特征以增加母乳喂养。较不常见的是，黑人妇女被描绘成一个多元化的群体，她们由于相似的社会和物质条件而在社会中占据着社会地位，试图找出促进或抑制母乳喂养的因素。政策含义强调减轻对某些黑人妇女的影响不成比例的结构性障碍。我们通过展示占主导地位的健康科学方法如何为健康促进运动提供证据，来促进现有知识，这些运动不太可能减少健康差异，对黑人妇女的危害可能大于弊端。我们还证明了有关黑人妇女生殖和婴儿喂养方式的问题的知识是既有历史意义的，也具有脱机化的背景。