Racism is a Distraction That’s Costing Us All
This article is a transcription of the talk I gave at Aspen Ideas Health in 2022 during a session presented by Johnson & Johnson titled: The Point of Care: Stories from the Heart of Health
My life’s work is committed to fighting against and combating racism in healthcare. But if I’m being really honest, I have to say that while I am passionate about the work I do, and while I am 1000% committed to it, I also deeply resent it.
In the rare moments when I have quiet time to just sit and think, I find myself wondering what else I could be working on and pursuing if I didn’t have to fight against a system designed to oppress women like me. Would I be an author? Would I pursue a career in the arts? When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with poetry and lyricism, and you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t going to be the second coming of Lauryn Hill! Maybe song writing could have been my contribution.
But no, I spend my hours, which are my days, which add up to my life, fighting for racial justice within our healthcare system. One of my favorite writers, Toni Morrison, once said, “The very serious function of racism is a distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”
The first time I came across this Toni quote, I started questioning what work racism had been distracting me from…and today I stand here to question what work is racism distracting us from…
First a few facts to ground you, and then I want to share a story.
Black women are more likely to experience barriers to obtaining quality care and often face racial discrimination throughout their lives. In fact, one in five Black women report experiencing discrimination when going to the doctor or clinic.
Only 87% of Black women of reproductive age have health insurance, and many more experience gaps in coverage during their lives.
More than one in four Black workers report that there was a time in the past two years that they needed or wanted to take time away from work for parental, family or medical reasons, but could not.
I feel burdened by the many Black women who’ve died avoidable deaths because of their inability to access the care they needed and deserved. I wonder what their hopes and dreams were…I wonder what we’ve lost as a society, as a global community because they are no longer among us. This unshakable burden is why I do the work I do.
One story that is etched in my memory is a woman who used Health in Her HUE in dire need of a gastroenterologist — a Black gastroenterologist, because the one she was seeing was not taking her chronic pain seriously. She asked her primary care doctor and gynecologist for a referral to a Black gastroenterologist, and neither of them could find one locally to make a referral. She was able to find one on Health in Her HUE though — three hours away from where she lived. Still, she drove three hours to see this doctor. The doctor noticing how far the woman’s address was from her practice asked her how she found her and why she chose to drive so far to see her…she told the doctor she found her on Health in Her HUE and decided to make the trip with her husband, because she needed to be seen by a doctor who she felt would actually listen to her and take her chronic pain seriously.
This is just one example of the lengths Black women are going to in order to find doctors and healthcare providers who will see their humanity and take the time to listen to their concerns and adequately address them. When the doctor who saw this patient shared this story on instagram and tagged Health in Her HUE’s account in the post, I was happy at first, but then I couldn’t help but think about the time that woman and her husband lost having to go out of their way to find a doctor who would simply listen…
When I think about the undue burden Black women in particular have to carry as they navigate healthcare in the U.S., I think about how much we as a society have lost and continue to lose because so much of the energy Black women have to create and contribute to this world is spent just trying to survive…if we look at all of the things Black people, and in particular, Black women have contributed, and continue to contribute to this world in spite of oppression, imagine…just imagine what we would be able to create and contribute without oppression. Imagine what we, as a collective society, would gain if we could just see what oppression and marginalization is costing us and distracting us all from.
