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This is crucial. And generalizable to every instance; not just medical.

Financial, educational; housing; anywhere that white supremacy and the institutions and individuals it touches can negativity affect and effect outcomes for black and brown people.

This is why it is important, so important to find the power you have in your intersections and leverage it like a mofo to the benefit of marginalized.

Yes, you have power. Yes, you have influence. Yes, you can change outcome on both the micro and the macro level.

The author does not mention it, but I will Using power involves a measure of risk; at any point during the time she was being shut down, she could also have been censured; this could have had both long and short term effects on her. Nevertheless, she persisted, and to a both a moral victory and a physical victory for her patient.

So put away protestations of impotence; of distance. If you want to move the needle, you can indeed move the needle. Full stop.

The question is not if you possess it; the question is if you will use it.

Use your capacity; use your volition, use your will.

On the presenting point; what I wrote about the medical aspect on Rebecca Littlejohn’s original thread:

What I said on Rebecca Littlejohn’s original thread:
As a black woman who was recently hospitalized, after no less than three turnaways at er’s until someone actually listened to me, i can attest that it is absolutely true.

I have found that having dominant culture people at my side helps outcomes. That is in itself concerning.

The implicit bias (I will use the polite term) that is simply in the soup of racism and white supremacy that we all swim in, does not magically disappear when one changes into scrubs. It’s there.

Black people are assumed to lie; assumed to be addicts; in short our character is impugned by virtue of melanin.

What is important to note here is that while the surgeon here was a black woman, sadly, most of the time people of color have the same implicit biases as their white counterparts.

I don’t have the study/article at my fingertips, but I do remember seeing something where non black POC are often less amenable to black people than their white counterparts.

Very quietly said, studies aside, I have also experienced *that*.

I dress up to go to my appointments. Talbot’s/Ann Taylor level. I do my best to do that when i go to urgent care and or ER as well. Because I know how I present, and I do my best to mitigate and control for that.

It’s real.

Adding this as well: when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, it took them forever to find the correct diagnosis. They tested me for STD’s including HIV, even when I affirmed that I was celibate and had been for years. Took a hippie osteopath to finally listen, take his time, believe me, and start from scratch.

We are not believed.

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