Black Women's Oppression from the Sea to the Hospitals

Health care is rarely something I spend time thinking of. I like watching medical shows but Ive never had much interest in becoming a doctor or understanding what the medical field is like. After watching Mr Carsons talk and the two videos I was really interested in how much it made me think about my experience with the health care system and how my experience may be different the other people. In the first videos, the story of the wife who died after giving birth to her second child because no one would help her until it was too late was really horrific to me. If someone had stopped to talk to them or help them earlier they most likely would have saved her life. I was really moved by how her husband decided to dedicate his life to trying to fix the health care system for people of color and using his families story to speak about a change that needs to happen in Americas health care system. The story Mr Carson told in his talk about the women who was told she needed to leave right after her surgery even though she was worried about an infection was also shocking to me. I haven't spent much time in hospitals but the point of being there is to get help and support for your body and this women was ignored and disregarded because of the color of her skin. The statistic of African American physicians being only 5.7 percent of our nations physicians was also something I had not noticed until now. My doctor is white but I do not think this was a conscious decision my parents made and more due to the area my doctors office is located in. But thinking about these things in a different light has opened my eyes to problems in our health care system.

Another topic I found interesting in Mr Carsons talk was when he talked about the slave trade and specifically what would happen to black women who were on these ships. Many of these women were rapped by white men and used only for their bodies. They were seen as weak and unimportant except for the use of their bodies. While we learn about African Americans during slavery and how horrific it was, we rarely take a focus specifically on black women and what they specifically were going through. Women's bodies are their own and should not be violated but instead protected. I thought this talk was very meaningful and opened my eyes to things I had never stopped to really think about. Being able to identify discrimination in systems like our hospitals and health care will help prevent discrimination and be able to help people regardless of their ethnicity because that is what truly matters.