People thinking “but how does race contribute to poor health outcomes? Isn’t it genetic?” come sit down on uncles couch for a second. C’mon, grab a cup of tea, I got a story for you.

My sister had her first ever migraine when she was 20something. I got the call in the middle of a work day, your sister’s in emergency, two blocks away. She’s alone. Come now. Naturally, I did. Dropped everything. Arrived while she was still in the waiting room.

My mother arrived some hour later, while the staff kept talking about scans that btw never happened and morphed into observation, but my father? Refused to come down.

Where was the D man? Some might argue, uncaring. They’d be wrong. What my father had refused to share until that moment is that he is deathly afraid of hospitals. He believes that every time he visits a relative in hospital, he brings death on that relative.

So he refused to come in and see his daughter while she was being investigated for brain problems, because he was afraid that she might drop dead. Odd idea, right? Wonder where he might have got it from? Well, let’s go back a bit further, to Before He Was Born.

Around the 50s, Aboriginal people still weren’t allowed to travel or formally marry without written permission. Pastor Nicholls was travelling the land advocating for rights such as uh food and deinstitutionalisation. In that era, hospitals were still segregated.

So the black hospital was generally a horrible fucking place, staffed by a single doctor and nurses who were either overworked or uncaring. Or both. Healthcare basically consisted of “walk it off, sweetie” and deaths during childbirth and from infection were rampant.

In that era, there was a second kind of death associated w hospitals, though: the fake one. It was common practice until the mid-70s for the authorities to identify a black mother that had taken ill and deem her an unfit parent. If she was a young mum, she might have been told...

...that her baby had died during childbirth. Women had ways of preventing this, mostly with help from family to ensure children are never left alone. However, this isn’t foolproof, and social workers would bring a van full of police to separate the children.

Young black mothers have an obvious reason to avoid the medical system until their child reaches school age or older. Imagine having limited medical treatment for the first six years of your life? These are people in the same generation as me (late parents raise the roof)

Their children learn to avoid the medical system. So now we have two generations of people who instead tough out highly treatable, sometimes curable conditions. Life expectancy who? Don’t know her. And when they do seek out medical treatment, it’s serious.

We’re talking late stage illness, chronic pneumonias, bad injuries, and don’t @ me about secondary infections. So now these generations are entering the medical system at a disadvantage, and often reap little benefit. Also, sometimes due to presentation, not taken as seriously.

So now you’ve got a high proportion of mob dying in hospital (or jail, or the streets...) and they’re dying young. You see a relative in hospital, might be their last time. So many people refuse to go unless it’s serious... confirmation bias in effect but anyway.

Then along come my sister and I in the 90s. She’s very healthy, I spent most of my first two years in the RCH, Dad has a highly energetic child on his hands cause my mother is the one doing all of the hospital visits. What does he teach this highly energetic child?

I call it self sufficiency.
My doctors don’t find that very funny for some reason.
Anyway, more confirmation bias. Now you’ve got a third generation who’s terrified of medical settings. I get panic attacks in hospitals, so does my sister, and we both put off medical care.

Wait, I hear you say (lol get it? cause I’m deaf) isn’t mental health an axis of, you know, health? And to you I say yes! And mine, my father’s, and my grandparents (they’re dead) is an absolute shambles. Anxiety is a family trait. Also sleeptalking. Sleep screaming. Same thing.

Back to my sister’s migraine. My sister was admitted at around noon on a ... day. But the night before, she had been experiencing symptoms and instead of calling a health professional, called her family (who fwiw told her to go to the ER) and made the decision to wait it out.

I coulda lost my sister a couple times over my life. But that one, boy. You wanna talk responsibility? Illness prevention? Maybe expecting people to use the exact services that have led to serious, body-held trauma is... not that. Not that at all.

thx for lissening pay a Black person in your city or state about it. cash is king