I have a confession, and I am not particularly proud of it, but here goes: The way that people have pivoted away from anti-racism work over the last year has me in a constant state of low-grade rage. Yes, part of it is because it has made my day job extraordinarily harder than it already was. See, without funding to pay the staff—myself included—it’s hard to stay focused. And right now, most of my energy is geared toward finding funding. Which, to be clear, wasn’t easy to begin with—now it’s making it that much harder to do the actual anti-racism work.
Prior to 2020, very few foundations wanted to fund our work. After all, our mission is dismantling white supremacy, which can also shine an uncomfortable light on the racism embedded in the philanthropic world. Who wants to fund the people working to dismantle their cushy setup?
Our work has always been funded primarily by individual donors and, sadly, many of them have gone AWOL. Calls and emails that used to be answered largely go unanswered and the only reason our doors haven’t closed is because the upside of growing up on the intersection of poor and working class is that I can run a very tight ship. Thankfully. No raises. Bare-bones staff, which is unfortunate for me, since my skills as an admin assistant to myself are horrible. Oh, and I suck at using Google Drive without someone keeping things tidy and organized, but I digress. These are hard organizational times but we are still standing until I can no longer make payroll.
No, it’s more than my professional struggles. It’s the fact that things are still bad for Black people (yes, and others but I am a Black woman, so that is my lens today) and they are getting worse.
A few days ago, a story broke that Jessica Pettway, a 36-year-old Black beauty influencer, died of cervical cancer. Her death came less than a year after being misdiagnosed with fibroids. Based on what she publicly shared of her health struggles, her misdiagnosis is damn-near criminal. For over a year, Pettway was subjected to numerous blood transfusions and fainting spells that her healthcare providers chalked up as normal because she had fibroids, which more than 80% of Black women will develop in their lifetime, so it “wasn’t a big deal.”
According to The Guardian, by the time this woman actually received her diagnosis, she had undergone 20 blood transfusions and no one stopped to think: This isn’t good; maybe we got it wrong?
I would almost be surprised if my own mother hadn’t spent months coughing up blood, and barely being able to breathe after being misdiagnosed with bronchitis and pneumonia before finally being diagnosed with lung cancer. My mother was a lifetime smoker, who smoked two packs a day of Newports. Even I knew back in 2003, when Google was still in its infancy, that my mother’s symptoms seemed congruent with lung cancer.
Black women are twice as likely to die from cervical cancer than their white counterparts. The thing is, cervical cancer when caught early is quite treatable. A friend of mine caught it in her late 20s and she just celebrated her 50th birthday a few weeks ago.
The preventative treatment for cervical cancer starts with an annual pap smear and follow-up procedures. Of course, this starts with having several things: access to healthcare to get that pap smear, access to the follow-up if warranted (which is a cervical biopsy), and follow-up from there. This also requires a provider who listens to you and actually treats you as a person and not an assumption, Oh, and money is also helpful, or at least the ability to afford good insurance that actually covers things. Or being low-income enough to take advantage of programs for lower income people.
Last fall, I actually had to have a cervical biopsy, which even with my insurance left me with over $500 in out-of-pocket costs. It wasn’t a fun procedure and having to pony up that cash right before the holiday season wasn’t fun. The upside is I don’t have cervical cancer.
Jessica Pettway’s death is hitting home for me on a deeper level because I recently had to get a CT scan as part of my preparation for upcoming hernia repair surgery. Turns out that some of my abdominal issues may not be because the hernia surgery that I had done almost 16 years ago needs to be redone. Turns out that at the ripe old age of 51, I have a large fibroid in my uterus, large enough that my belly enlargement of the past several years may not be because of midlife spread or this hernia. It’s America, so I have to wait several weeks to see my lady doc, primary care doc, and the surgeon. Thankfully, being good friends with a physician is quite handy.
It is also baffling why I had no idea I had a fibroid this large that no one noticed. I have been actively working out for years, I eat pretty well but even I was mystified over why I wasn’t losing any of my belly. While I don’t have many of the common symptoms of fibroids (like anemia), there is a family history of fibroids and yeah I am a Black woman.
I like my healthcare team, and for the most part, I find them to be decent and fairly well-versed on cultural differences. But given the racial differences, someone might have noticed since I was the one who last fall said I think my hernia must be back because my stomach really seems larger than it should be.
See, what I am getting at. Even when Black women advocate for ourselves and have insurance and access to healthcare, the things that get disproportionately missed and no doubt disproportionately impact our health adversely. In my case, everything in recent years has been chalked up to perimenopause. While these things happen to all women, it is Black women who end up sicker and dying earlier than we should.
The thing is, in our current climate, things may not get better anytime soon. As the ongoing assault on diversity, equity and inclusion continues, did you know that House Republicans want to ban medical schools that receive federal funding from promoting diversity or talking about race and medicine?
Given how backwards healthcare is a lot of times around racial differences already—and the real impact if this were to happen—what do you think will be the impact on BIPOC people and their healthcare? Even more adverse consequences and early deaths. Lest you think it’s just our wacky politicians, even medical groups such as the American Academy of Dermatologists recently grappled with whether to get rid of their DEI initiatives.
The majority of dermatologists in the United States are already white and despite what people think, Black people can and do get skin cancer. Sadly we are also more likely to be diagnosed with more deadly forms of skin cancer by the time we get diagnosed because even after years of research showing dermatologists do badly identifying lesions on dark skin, they haven’t really gotten better at it. So, I don’t have to tell you where it goes from there if you stop talking about diversity again.
The quiet retreat from anti-racism work is not just about people like me in the trenches; it has real-life implications for Black and brown people everywhere—from loss of jobs and lack of access to worse illness and early death. To watch people move on from anti-racism and diversity efforts as if we have reached the mountaintop—at a time when the quiet things that are happening are actually inching us ever closer to a modern-day Jim Crow reality—is heartbreaking. Despite my personal struggles of late, it is what actually keeps me grounded in the work, because I understand the stakes are bigger than lost speaking gigs or consulting work. Especially at a time when attention spans are short.
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Image by Gabriel Ramos via Unsplash
