On today's episode. If I didn't know, maybe you didn't either. I'm gonna start with something personal. On May fifth, twenty twenty four, I lost my mom. She was complaining about her stomach hurtain, so we took her to the er. Hours later, she was still in pain and they finally moved her upstairs to the ICU. Forty five minutes later, she was on a breathing two. Her organs were shutting down because of sepsis, and just like that, she was gone. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't know. I didn't know.
Maybe I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. Well, let me tell y'all, losing your mom is hard enough, but when you're black, you have this extra layer of PTSD. Why because you know, Black women are often dismissed in the medical field. They're overlooked, ignored.
And it's not just a feeling, it's facts. There's a book Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington, and it lays out the long dark history of how black folks, especially black women, have been used, abused, and experimented on in the name of science. From slavery to right now, let me break it down for you. Did you know there's still this misconception that black women have a higher threshold for pain.
And I know Mama made miracles every Thanksgiving, every Christmas and every birthday, but their white doctors were thinking black women were superheroes for real, or she's black, she can take it. What And if you want to know how deep this rabbit hole goes, let's talk about Henrietta Lax.
Since went to the doctor in nineteen fifty one for cervical cancer and without her knowledge, they took her sales then named them healer seals h e LA And those sales turned out to be immortal, like they could survive and multiply in labs which had never been done before. They helped develop vaccines, cancer treatments IVF. Heeler sales have saved millions of lives. But here's the part that'll make your blood boil. Henrietta Lax never gave consents and her
family never saw a dime. Pharmaceutical companies made billions off those seals while her kids and grandkids were struggling to pay for health care. It made a bunch of dollars, but a damn sure don't make no sense. So when we talk about black folks in the medical field, we're not just talking about distrust. We're talking about a system, a system that has dismissed us, stolen from us, and experimented on us without shame. And for me, every time I think about my mom's last hours, it's hard not
to wonder if she wasn't black. Wol They have taken her pain a little more seriously, but they have moved faster. These questions hunt me, and I know I'm not alone. That's why it's so important for us to know our history and advocate for ourselves, because if we don't speak up, who will. Medical Apartheid a book by Harriet Washington. It was something that I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either,