We’ve read the history. We’ve heard the stories…stories about Black women (and Black men) whose bodies have been used for experimentation. We know that they think Black women don’t feel pain. We are not their delicate, examples of femininity. We ask for medication because we are addicted. This, along with the general mistrust of the system, makes finding a primary care physician in whose hands we will feel comfortable entrusting our health a bit of a challenge. Is feeling safe and protected when we are most vulnerable, (laying naked, often with our legs spread apart, in a room that feels more like a refrigerator, in front of strangers), too much to ask? Are we better able to believe in a doctor who is female? Black? Black and female? I am of the belief that they have all been educated at the same schools, indoctrinated and trained by the same medical philosophies and systems. And as such, they are all suspect.
We are fed up with doctors who treat Black women like children…like we aren’t reasonably intelligent, like we don’t know what pain feels like, like we don’t have health insurance. We want doctors who will treat us, all of us, with dignity and respect. When we say, “I feel something here that I’ve never felt before,” take the time to examine it… to feel it the way we do. Treat us as though we are human…with compassion. Let us not be your next experiment. Trust us when we say, “I’ve cut back on eating that, I am exercising more, I am doing all the things y’all say we don’t do to deserve adequate care.” Care. Try that bedside manner thing. And give, at the very least, a damn.
SPITTING OUT BONES 