AntiBlack racism is making us sick
Transcriber: Sadly I’m Not Jimmy Page
Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Being Black in Canada is making me sick.
Now, immediately, about 25% of you
shut down and tuned out.
Either you thought this was irrelevant
to you as soon as you heard the word Black
or “Not this again,
she must be some type of militant.”
So let me offer you
something more palatable.
Times have been tough,
and together we can get through it.
Much better wasn’t that?.
This is what I as a Black
woman do constantly -
sanitize the story to present
the more tolerable pleasant zone.
And I’m here to tell you that this type
of forced assimilation make people sick -
literally physically and mentally ill.
So allow me to reintroduce myself.
My name is Joi -
Lydia-Joi Louise Marshall,
proud daughter of the African diaspora
by way of parents
from Barbados and Bahamas.
My work focuses on health disparities
and people who have been marginalized
by the social construct of race.
My graduate work was in human genetics,
and I continue to study
what makes us unique
and how to maximize these differences.
As president of the board of directors
of the Black Health Alliance,
I lobby decision makers to enact policies
that have equitable treatment
for all people,
and I empower communities
to advocate for their rights
within the health care system.
Now, racism is one of the social
determinants that make us sick.
This manifests in some
pretty significant ways
with us taking a day-to-day
toll to combat it
and suppressing our experiences
within the midst of it.
For example,
people of Caribbean, West African,
and East African descent in Ontario
experience a 60% increased
risk of psychosis.
Black people have higher rates
of kidney failure,
yet are 50 to 70% less likely
to receive a living organ donation.
This means we die more.
And currently, we’re seeing
about a nine-fold higher rate
of COVID 19 in Black people
compared to their neighbors.
Now, how are these disparities
reinforced within health care?
Well, Black bodies are not routinely
included in research,
which means we don’t know
what differences do exist.
White bodies are often counted
as the default,
which means that diagnosis
cross-culturally can be difficult.
I’ve still seen dermatology textbooks
that describe healthy skin as being pink,
and often healthcare presumes that Black
people have higher pain tolerance.
This means that our chronic illnesses
are misdiagnosed or worse;
our cries for pain relief are accused
of being drug-seeking habits.
Now, if any of this information
is surprising to you,
it may be because you have the privilege
of never having had to experience it.
Every day in our society,
one narrative is reinforced as normal,
and when that’s not you, you feel it.
Take my 18-year-old self, for example,
entering Western’s campus
ready for my freshman experience.
I soon realized this did not apply to me
as I walked into a poster
for an invitation to a lecture
on the virtues of white women,
proudly hosted by a local
white supremacist group.
Was this some type of academic irony?
Unfortunately, my undergrad
was peppered with such experiences -
having racial slurs written
on our Black Students Association locker,
having police accuse us
of trespassing on our own campus,
or having a skinhead order me
to get his groceries while shopping.
I felt nauseous.
The Pepto-Bismol for me was heading
to Howard University in Washington, DC.
“HU” - the Mecca.
Now for those of you who don’t know,
Howard was founded in 1867
and remains one of the most prominent
historically Black colleges
in North America.
Walking the yard at Howard
was like putting on a superhero cape
and having the ancestors confer
their knowledge on me.
I felt the lightness
of being in the majority
of having my identity
and my failures be my own.
I had the privilege
of studying in a place built
to be supportive of and not hostile to
my experiences, my history.
The nausea subsided,
and as I proudly walked out
of my graduation with my degree,
they charged us to pick up the mantle
of change, and I took this to heart.
This privilege would soon end
when I was back in my first
interview back in Toronto
as a white physician turned over my CV,
sweetly leaned in, and said,
“I know you came in
for this research position,
but I don’t know what it is about you.
You just have this presence that makes me
feel like you should be my assistant
or some type of patient guide.”
As I suppressed what I
really wanted to say and said nothing,
the nausea returned.
My CV said superhero; had she missed that?
Years later, now much deeper
in the health care system,
things would actually get much worse.
A frustrated director
in a meeting said to us:
he didn’t care how we felt - he owned us.
I mean, he did apologize a few days later
when he learned that this was offensive,
but this triggering experience pushed me
past nausea to physically vomiting.
Every day in our society,
one narrative is reinforced as normal,
and when that’s not you, you feel it.
This is why I do the work that I do
with the Black Health Alliance.
Clinical negligence and diseased social
interactions make people sick.
Black people are constantly having
an internal dialogue to combat this.
They ask themselves questions like:
“Will it make a difference if I speak up?
Am I willing to lose
my job today if I do?”
And what I especially see with my
work with health care is:
“If I call out my discomfort,
will it impact my treatment?”
And last year, we experienced
the dual pandemics of COVID-19
and the global witnessing
of anti-Black racism
with a lynching of a Black man
named George Floyd.
Now, as the world watched George
Floyd being murdered,
I also had to have the horrible pain
of having my six-year-old son ask me
why that officer’s foot
was on that man’s neck.
I had no answer.
Black people’s communal trauma
is put on repeat each time we are asked
to ease the public discomfort
with this and countless other events.
You might think
that because I work in health care
there’s a specialized solve for this.
Now, while it’s important
that we routinely correct
the segregated, race-based data
and have clinically
and culturally competent guides
and diverse representation at every level,
there’s no easy prescription.
Just like COVID-19, racism has infected
every part of our society,
and we must have
a collective solution to solve it
because just like COVID 19,
your health, my health,
all our health depends on one another.
So what can you do?
Well, first of all, check yourself.
Being woke does not mean
that you’re not part of the problem.
You may be still reinforcing
negative stereotypes.
You may be not calling out
inequitable power dynamics.
You may not normalize
or even recognize experiences
that are different than your own.
For example, the Caribbean is not
a vacation spot for me - that’s my family.
Normally, healthy Black skin
does not look pink.
And if you overhear my playlist,
especially on a rough day,
you may be surprised
that this “academic articulate”
listens to music considered
even much more ratchet
than the most earliest Jay-Z.
Think about the ways
in which your thoughts, your speech,
your behavior, oppress other people.
Acknowledge this current reality
so that it can be changed.
Times have been tough,
and together we can get through it
if you recognize
that being Black in Canada
is making me and many others sick
and it needs to be treated today.
Esta.