Week 8

I enjoyed reading the interview with Barbara Smith, especially because much of what she had to say was directly related to my movement. Just as with black women being deliberately rejected or not considered from the feminist movement, especially in the foundational years, black women were the backs of the gynecology system in America yet still get underfunded, overlooked, and neglected when seeking health care. Black women had to fight to be accepted into women's liberation movements, and even when they worked twice as hard, they were still afforded less opportunities and shunned by the people within their own activist groups. This article speaks to the lack of access given to black women in the medical system, which leads to higher rates of undiagnosed and untreated disease, ailment, illness, and death. It is demeaning and exploitative for one group of people to do the majority of the work and still be neglected by those who are benefitting from or profiting off of said work. Additionally, when black women are failed by the medical system, all women are failed by the medical system -- but it is easy to ignore that when you are not facing the discrimination first-hand. The more activists furthering a movement, the more positive change that can be made, but historically and in modern times black women are left out of the conversation. Black medical professionals, especially black women, are a disproportionately low percentage of overall medical professionals. This furthers the othering felt by black women seeking healthcare and allows for more medical racism to go unnoticed and not called out, harming and killing black women.