Dying Hard
Disability, Blackness, & the Politics of Desire/Ability in American Healthcare
Chaniece Wallace was a fourth-year pediatric chief resident at the Indiana University School of Medicine. Wallace was thirty-five weeks pregnant with a baby girl when she began to develop symptoms associated with preeclampsia (D’Ambrosio).
Preeclampsia is a serious medical condition that can occur around the midpoint of pregnancy. Preeclampsia causes high blood pressure, protein in the urine, swelling, headaches, and blurred vision. It can also affect other organs and is often extremely dangerous for the mother and the unborn child. Preeclampsia is usually diagnosed during routine prenatal appointments (“Preeclampsia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatments and Prevention”).
When Wallace developed signs of preeclampsia, doctors decided to deliver her baby via C-section. While the baby was delivered successfully, Wallace would suffer from complications subsequent to the surgery, including a ruptured liver, lack of kidney function, and high blood pressure, all of which required her to have additional surgeries. She would die just four days after the birth of her daughter (D’Ambrosio).
At just thirty-six years old, Shalon Irving had ascended the ranks of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As an epidemiologist, Irving was focused on trying to understand the role structural inequalities play in public health. Her Twitter bio read “I see inequity wherever it exists”, and according to her mentor at the CDC, she wanted to expose how limited health options led to poor health outcomes as well as expose the victim-blaming that so often accompanied biases against families with lower income and communities of color (Montagne and Martin). In a similar story to Chaneice Wallace, Irving gave birth to her child and just three weeks later she died of complications related to high blood pressure. In a tragic twist of irony, the public health official who had dedicated her work to eradicating health care disparities became another case study in the disparities facing Black women in the U.S. healthcare system.
The pathologizing of Blackness and disability in Western medicine and science has a historical connection to religious rhetoric, rhetoric that influenced the moralizing of medical issues most often related to the Black community. Ethnic minority groups in the United States are an underserved population when it comes to adequate healthcare. This is due to a variety of reasons which include the lack of cultural competence from healthcare providers as well as stereotyping, racial and ethnic bias, and discrimination (Peterson-Besse et al.). In addition, people with disabilities also experience a number of logistical and social barriers to adequate healthcare, and those who belong to both groups, minority and disabled, tend to have significantly more challenges with stereotyping and racial discrimination (Peterson-Besse et al.)
Over the next few weeks, we will explore the influence of Christian religious rhetoric and practices and the subsequent influence it has had on the moralization of medical issues commonly experienced in Black and disabled communities.
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