Hospitals don’t have evacuation plans in place to care for fat and disabled patients in the most disastrous moments. TW: mention of “ob*sity,” murder, and general anti-fat anti-Black violence Earth’s climate is changing. Drastically and rapidly. Glaciers are melting; ecosystems are shifting; temperatures are changing and sea levels are rising. But what is perhaps most...
Tag: medical racism
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What A Black Woman Medical Provider Sees Watching The COVID-19 Pandemic Unfold
Medical racism persists beyond historical fact to become current tradition, and inequalities can only be magnified by the circumstance of an emergency. How many more opportunities for widened healthcare disparity has COVID-19 given us? By Racquel Reid, MD As the population of the United States trudges doggedly through endless months of uncontrolled COVID-19 spread, my...
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Understanding COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy In The Black Community
Vaccine hesitancy is growing in the Black community, and this is a valid response to the long history of mistreatment by medical institutions. By Rachel Jones The recent announcement of two viable COVID-19 vaccine candidates has brought the close to a seemingly endless pandemic into view for many. However, a cultural temperature check on vaccine...
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Gene Editing Cannot Be Separated From The Violent History of Eugenics and Medical Racism
For all the promises of gene editing, its study cannot be divorced from eugenics and a larger racist history that has inspired many of its endeavors. By Jude Casimir Henrietta Lacks visited John Hopkins Hospital in 1951, complaining of vaginal bleeding. A mother of five children, Lacks was diagnosed by gynecologist Howard Jones with cervical...
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‘Project Power’ Delves Into The Scientific Exploitation Of Black Women’s Bodies
‘Project Power’ imagines a world where Black women can get free and remove the shackles of scientific racism that have attempted to bind us for centuries. CN: This article contains spoilers for the film “Project Power” and mentions anti-Black experimentations on Black women’s bodies. By S.R. Toliver Set in the poorest part of New Orleans,...
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Not All Fat Black Boys Know How To Eat
Fat Black boys are failed by their doctors, failed by nutritionists, failed by a society that doesn’t see us as deserving of treatment and therapy. CW: mentions of eating disorders, medical discrimination, ob*sity, and more. I vividly remember multiple visits to my pediatrician that were centered solely around my eating. As with any parent, my...
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Minority Health Month: A Wear Your Voice Reading List
For Minority Health Month our reading list illustrates how settler-colonialism is an ongoing project dependent on ensuring that health inequities affecting BIPOC continue to thrive. April is National Minority Health Month. Like many different iterations of white supremacy and systemic oppression, “good health” is discussed in ways that put the onus of health on the...
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We are Witnessing The CDC’s Violent Eugenicist History in Real-Time
To this day, the CDC continues to refer to “obesity” as an epidemic, and has even gone as far as to say that fat people are at “higher risk” of contracting and dying from COVID-19. CW: This essay explores anti-fatness and eugenics, and mentions death, medical genocide, and more. Towards the end of February, many...
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“Black People Don’t Go to Therapy” and Other Myths Our Parents Told Us
Different fears are now morphing into even more ridiculous, and dangerous, myths that we’ve begun spreading to our children. TW/CW: Mentions of depression, anxiety, learning disabilities, and ableism. By Adrie Rose If you’re Black, there’s a very good chance that your parents are lying to you. Your grandparents too. They’re all lying to you and...
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The History of the Medical Industry’s Role in Oppression is Well Documented
Social media is reshaping the medical industry’s abuse or, at least, the extent to which that abuse can be shared. It also provides a platform where workers can reinforce dangerous beliefs. By Vanessa Taylor Tyra Hunter. 1995. Dead after EMTs withdrew medical care upon realizing she was a transgender woman. Barbara Dawson. 2015. Dead from...