This quote from Callaghan and the interpretations from D’Ignazio and Klein’s quote shows how much value we put on one’s status. The apparent sentiment permeating through the healthcare system highlights the intersection of power and race. If Serena Williams was not a tennis superstar, her voice would not have heard as much as she so simply put it in an interview with Glamour. “If I wasn’t who I am, it could have been me,” she told Glamour, referring to the fact that the privilege she experienced as a tennis star intersected with the oppression she experienced as a Black woman. How often are black women silenced when asking for help?
The CDC’s official report of information on the disparity between white and black mothers shows how rotted the system is for black women going through the stages of pregnancy. Examining power and then redistributing it back to marginalized communities must be the next step to make a difference in the society. Creating commissions that talk and examine problems is the preferred method of organizations. Goals that lead to deliverable results are necessary. This reminds me of the news that was just released in the New York Times about how most vaccines in cities are being administered to white people at way higher rates than Blacks, and the vaccines in poorer neighborhoods are being mostly given to affluent white people. In a pandemic that is killing Black people at higher rates than whites, the societal structures need to reimagine equity. A quote from the previous chapter explains this perfectly ‘“pernicious feedback loop,” amplifying the effects of racial bias and of the criminalization of poverty that are already endemic to the United States.”’ Much might wonder how we are still at this point when the Civil rights act enacted into law in 1964. But the past is always with us.
For example, “ Joy Buolamwini, was working on a class project using facial-analysis software. undefined But there was a problem—the software couldn’t “see” Buolamwini’s dark-skinned face (were “seeing” means that it detected a face in the image, like when a phone camera draws a square around a person’s face in the frame). It had no problem seeing her lighter-skinned collaborators.” The systemic racism is the problem that needs to be down by redistribution of the chief roles. Creating software that understands blackness and its every shade should be the goal.
It is really unfortunate that there isn’t a fair system where everybody is treated the same. There is always privilege present in anything created. From health care systems, schools, through digital devices, they all are created to benefit one over the other. As described in the text, black women don’t have the same priority while giving birth than the white. In the digital world, black men are also misclassified in facial recognition because they are important and so less data collected. Clearly, the issues surrounded racism and gender discrimination as well as oppression are reflected in everything around us in ways we may notice but not that clear most of the time.