Is there an expectation that black people should work harder to earn the benefits of your social responsibility?

I’ve been consistently dismayed by the responses I’ve seen from high profile leaders when it comes to addressing disparity in morbidity for people of African descent in the COVID19 Global Pandemic. Phrases like #SavingOurselves in the Puff Daddy campaign make it sound like people of African descent have been negligent in taking care of ourselves despite the number 1 risk factor contributing to comorbidity in black populations being something as dumbfounding as structural racism. This new breed of “Personal responsibility” politics lauded by the wealthiest and most influential blacks in the world is slapping us in the face as if we asked for stress induced high blood pressure, type II diabetes inducing packaged goods from Walmart and had first pick at the slaughter house during slavery and chose to establish a culture where eating pig intestines and boiled hog heads as cheese for shits and giggles. Hundreds of years of racial oppression and modern age structural racism does shit to people.

‪If you are black and you are using victim blaming language directed to the black community when referring to the COVID19 crisis then I’m going to ask you to sit down for this one ☝🏾.

To be black and alive in America is to have survived centuries of institutional oppression in medicine, education and professional industries — you probably know this already. You also have probably personally overcome a myriad of obstacles and some might consider you a unicorn. If you have achieved unicorn status without experiencing extreme levels of stress leading to high blood pressure or risk of high blood pressure, surviving some form of cancer, avoided high consumption of alcohol, and reaching a BMI above the average standard then you’re not just a unicorn, you are a unicorn with wings. Congratulations but surviving and thriving through racial oppression isn’t something our society should be proud of — it’s something we need to face is tragically unscalable and unsustainable.

‪To be the single person of African descent on your team, on the floor of your office, in your department, in your company doesn’t mean every other black person can or should even want to do it. For those of us who have skated by — it means we were lucky enough to not get blocked by bias on hiring day and we’ve been shucking and jiving ever since. Even Obama, Oprah, Beyoncé, and Jay-Z level power has it’s share of shucking and jiving involved, so it’s not something to be ashamed of — it’s something to be aware of and not set a standard for if we ever want to create a truly equitable society, especially pertaining to race

‪We cannot talk about personal responsibility without also making it clear that people who are not negatively impacted by anti-blackness need to take personal responsibility for their concious and unconscious bias that impacts treatment of black folks in emergency rooms across America. 😤‬

‪Last year on a visit to the ER — I was so sick that I could barely move yet I got dressed in my Sunday’s best because I knew the only way I would get treated well is if I walked into the ER looking like a CEO. I looked like I was ready to walk on stage and deliver a keynote.

When the intake nurses asked me what I did for a living I proudly said “Artificial Intelligence”. I know people treat smart people better.

‬ They took me out of the ER waiting room within 15 minutes and placed me in a separate room, treated me, checked on me regularly and definitely treated me differently than the other very sickly looking patients most likely because I looked different. I felt bad knowing I got better treatment & even worse knowing why. 😕‬

‪Later in the year when preparing for the birth of my son my midwives told me I would be unlikely to get good treatment in the hospitals where I live due to race. They don’t treat black people very well here because they think they are uneducated. My midwives were experienced white professional women who were focused on my getting the best medical care possible and they knew exactly what they were going up against when they took my case. They said many medical professionals don’t listen or explain things to black people and that I needed to be careful and leverage referrals as much as possible. 😫 #medicalapartheid‬

‪Many (even black) medical professionals inherit both unconscious and conscious bias from our structurally racists society, leading them not to believe what black folks say about our symptoms, take our pain less seriously than white patients, & assume preexisting conditions on sight leading to racist prioritization of patient care! ‬ 😣

‪Furthermore poverty and low education that is often correlated with poverty produces additional intersectional bias in care when family members do not have the ability to articulately advocate, organize & hold accountable those who are making decisions on treatment for care. ‬There is a reason why white ladies ask to speak to the manager and white men threaten to call their lawyers — it’s their way of getting to the front of the line for the utmost accountability in care — they use the aura of white privilege to scare hospitals into giving them better treatment such as getting tested earlier for COVID when many people of color are denied and getting better treatment!😷‬

‪Us black folks have to take care of ourselves, yes, I’m not arguing that at all — and we must take care of each other. As a person who has rushed to the bedside of ill family members to advocate for life saving care, we must not pretend that the solution is simply “not eating so much fried food”, “exercise”, or to “Stop drinkin and smokin” because it’s SO MUCH bigger than that‬. 🙄

‪I would be full of shit if I sat up here and didn’t recognize my privilege, living comfortably in isolation, working from home, with little stress of economic insecurity on the horizon how challenging the behavior design problem is for poor black people to overcome the myriad of obstacles before us.

I won’t sit here and compare my life experience to a person who stocks groceries or delivers packages today. The tech worker experience is so difference. We often deeply understand the systems used by nurses and doctors, and know how to subtly trigger increased accountability by requesting certain things be documented within our charts, we do similar things with in professional circles as well like with our CPAs. And on top of that are far less exposed on a day to day to potential carriers and face less severe environmental stressors that could lead to weaker immune systems. The list of differences goes on and on. 🤭‬

‪We need to check our privilege before we speak on these topics and create campaigns that we hope will help but will further drive inequity and failure. We need to advocate for data transparency and research conducted by sociologist & epidemiologist with experience & deep empathy around black populations who face structural racism. And we need to ask better questions before offering answers. ‬We need to believe that black peoples deserve social responsibility in medicine, law enforcement, education, politics and everywhere else whether or not they win the in the unicorn olympics. We need to stop blaming the victims and start helping by holding systems and people accountable for the equitable treatment and care of black people in America.