A while ago, there was a viral video about a Black woman who was in active labor, and was not being helped by the staff, but questioned. It was clear that she was in distress, meaning that she was making sounds and she had experience with labor and came in when she came in because she understood that she was in labor. Rather than help her do what needed to be done, the white healthcare worker decided that it was a priority to complete the battery of questions required to enter a hospital and receive care in the United States. None of the other staff around the situation offered to help that woman, even as they saw what was going on, and everyone was nervous, but nobody did anything. That woman eventually gave birth in a room, thirty minutes after entering, and basically the second she entered the room, the baby was being born. Everything that happened served as a reminder that hospitals hate Black women, and we should always be wary upon entry.
First of all, since we demand that insurance companies stand as a barrier to care, most emergency rooms are notoriously overworked and understaffed. In an emergency room, the only questions that should be allowed to be asked pertain to healthcare, but once the ailment has been “treated”–not fully restored, not even necessarily stable, but treated–that patient is attacked by questions about insurance because the main issue in hospitals is how the system is going to be paid. Just like the horrendous situation in Georgia in which the woman was biologically dead but kept alive to “birth” a baby, all the patients are required to pay before even considering whether they have received adequate healthcare or have a safe enough discharge situation. Without the barrier of insurance companies, perhaps the patient would have simply received care, and the hospital would not be liable for a lawsuit.
Secondly, because the world hates us, nothing is scarier to a Black woman than being in a hospital. We are allowed to die in childbirth, people did not think we felt pain for the longest time, and it seems that liability is the only thing people worry about with us, not our health. At my fast food job, my boss genuinely hated me, and I was so stressed out one morning that I literally passed out because the general manager and a minion were deliberately asking me to do different tasks at the same time, not bothering to see if I was available. The only thing I thought about when I awoke from passing out was not being taken to the hospital, both for the money and the racism. Luckily, after sitting in a chair for three minute–they had a big order and a break was “impossible”–I was able to complete a six-hour shift, and I never got a break until it was time for me to go. The idea of a potentially expensive ambulance visit, waiting room stay, and hospital stay was so terrifying that I made sure that I was not in a position to be charged.
The same year that affirmative action was abolished, an Asian doctor had a study published in the Journal for the American Medical Association stating that Black people had higher attrition rate in research programs–which would further discourage Black people from applying and encourage programs to reject them. Nothing about any of these things will change under the dominant narrative because to respect and care for Black women is a denial of the dominant narrative. We cannot expect that entities based on profit will take the interests of people designed to die for the empire into account. There is neither historical precedent nor does there seem to be any national initiative to do better, even after the horrific event. All I can say is that the best thing Black women can do is hope that we can get jobs in other countries, or hope that no one needs us.
Chasing A Dying Empire 