“Yo, is this…?” Podcast by Carly Caldwell and Rachel Etnyre

 

 

 

RE: I’m Rachel Etnyre 

 

CC: I’m Carly Caldwell 

 

RE: So we’re gonna be talking about if this is racist, intersectional, or both. The thing about systemic racism is that it can appear in very different scales, and for my example I’m gonna be talking about the smaller, less noticeable ones. So when I was in my hometown, I was at the gas station, and I was in line to check out, and I looked at the door, and, like, two friends came in. One was a young white kid, the other was a young black kid, both boys, and they went to different sections of the store, yet the worker went, like followed, the black kid with his eyes right as he walked in and didn’t take his eyes off of him. And from there, the black kid kind of noticed and I could tell he felt, like antsy, so he went and like found his white friend, and this wasn’t a big deal because it’s not like the kid got in trouble or the store clerk said anything, but the big deal is the effect it has on the black kid from there on out, and the effect the gas station clerk is giving off to other people that this kid is more dangerous or would steal.

 

CC: Yeah. Just, like, making him feel uncomfortable when there’s no reason for him to be uncomfortable, especially when, like, his white friend felt completely fine in the situation.

 

RE: Yeah, and it’s like things like petty crime, which is just like theft, it can result in people, like, associating black people with being guilty of more crimes even more serious, and that’s when it gets even worse.

 

CC: Right. So the topic, or the case I will be talking about is more of a broader sense, um, and the case I was to talk about is racism in healthcare. As a pre-health student this form of systemic injustice is personal to me and it wasn’t really something I knew much about until recently, and my were opened to the magnitude of this issue when I saw Ohio State medical students protesting earlier this year, um, rallying for equality in health care during the Black Lives Matter movement, and through further research I found out a lot of different ways that racism is present in healthcare, uh, most of these racial issues come specifically from personal biases that eventually turn systemic. Statistically, black people are more likely to be refused care, or given inferior care, than a white person. Examples of this include refusing care because medical professions think that an individual is faking in order to get pain killers, even if this isn’t something that isn’t pointed to from past behaviors, … believing certain races have higher pain tolerances, or just blatantly not helping people in need. Um, so how is this systemic racism if it is based on personal biases? Well, the primary goal of doctors is to help people get better, obviously, and they are supposed to be healers, and they take an oath when they become doctors to help people equally, and everyone’s entitled to healthcare, I’m not talking bout politics or insurance or anything like that,

 

RE: Yeah

 

CC: But, if someone comes into a doctor’s office or a hospital seeking help, they’re entitled to be treated to the best of those doctors’ abilities, and if someone gets less care than their white counterparts, then that means that the system is failing to do its job, which is equal health care for all. Um, and in class we learned about how people get discriminated against for things they can’t control whether it be immigrants feeling out of place or minorities feeling mistreated. The idea of “other” has typically been reviewed in class as how people feel or how people get treated, but as we can see from the example of racism in healthcare, along with other large scale problems, this idea of “othering” people happens in broad senses nationwide and occurs because of those smaller prejudices like you talked about Rachel, talking about, you know, those more personal things happening day to day and they end up adding up to be large systemic issues.

 

RE: I think, like, with that issue specifically it just, like, strikes me that it seems like such a problem that we would all know about, but before you told me about this I had no idea

 

CC: Exactly

 

RE: And the fact that doctors are allowed to like have this prejudice when it should be equal healthcare for all

 

CC: It just passes so easily, like people don’t even know it happens, it’s just…

 

RE: Yeah

 

CC: Yeah, it’s crazy

 

RE: And then, so obviously these cases are very different, but there is one similarity that could be a factor in both of them, and that’s where the intersectional things come in. And that’s with, uh, social class and race combined.

 

CC: Right.

 

RE: So with my case, the gas station I was at was in a less nice neighborhood, it wasn’t the best neighborhood, and there is a good chance that if I were in a nicer area, or a more wealthy area, that the gas station clerk would not be worried about that, and wouldn’t be looking at these people. And the fact that this kid was balck and was in a less wealthy area could have made him more, like, victim to this.

 

CC: Right, yeah. And something I looked into too while I was looking at racism in health care was, um, there was a big discrimination against black pregnant women, um, because that is obviously multiple minorities adding up, so like you said there’s social class, but there could also be race and religion that also, you know, add up to give someone an even bigger disadvantage. So these things, I mean that’s kind of what makes intersectionality what it is, it just kind of his those minority groups adding up to make, you know, honestly the odds just get stacked up less in their favor than someone else with less of those groups.

 

RE: Yeah I think intersectionality is just more common than people realize, and it is usually is an addition of different groups being suppressed that adds up to like, the overall results of the like, experience. It usually is more than one issue.

 

CC: Yeah, and a lot of people know, like, oh women are minorities, or people of color are minorities, but what about the women of color? Like, you know, there’s certain religions that are less common or are seen as this or that and when you put that in with also being a person of color, or also being a woman, or also coming from a low economic class, like that kind of just all adds up and people don’t really realize, like, the effect of having multiple of those stereotypes or titles on you can have.

 

RE: Exactly, and I think with, like, systemic injustice it makes it harder to fix and to get to the result of the problem when there’s so many factors that can be contributing to it.

 

CC: Right, like it’s just so hard to get to the root of it, honestly, and like when it’s such a large scale happening nationwide and in so many different aspects, it’s like… where do you even start to fix, you know? And it probably, I mean in my opinion, you just need to start by addressing the small issues, like when you realize you’re stereotyping someone, tell yourself you’re wrong and then fix it, or ya know it’s even harder to tell your best friend or your dad or someone but like when you see those small issues you have to king od like nip it in the bud and fix it right then and there because like, you were talking about that small scale example and how it adds up to my case of the bigger scale, but like if we don’t fix those smaller scale issues then the larger scale ones will never be changed. 

 

RE: Yeah exactly and it just like, it like, intills the same mindset for both the victim, who is the minority group, as well as the suppressor to keep the stereotype going, and then the black person is going to be more susceptible later on.

 

CC: Right, right. 

 

RE: Yeah, like it reinstates it, like if they never experience the small things, they wouldn’t have to feel scared to be criminalized when they aren’t. 

 

CC: Like somebody that wasn’t discriminated against when they go into the store, or a gas station, they probably wouldn’t feel like if they went into a hospital they would be discriminated against, but the fact that they can’t go to the gas station to buy a bag of chips, or they can’t even walk down the street, or be in an airport, you know things like that, like when they have a run in with the police, they’re gonna be scared, if they have to go to the hospital, they’re gonna be scared, because they know those smaller scale examples just like are gonna carry over. 

 

RE: I want to go back to “othering” because you brought that up earlier. 

 

CC: Yeah.

 

RE: And how that relates to systemic injustice, because I think that concept is one of the ones that stuck with me the most over the course because it applies so well.

 

CC: Me too. Yeah. So I was just kind of talking about how the concept of “othering” comes into play when you have multiple groups and then one kind of gets cast out as the lesser one. I think a really interesting thing we read was the story about the two girls, and they left the races anonymous, you just knew that one was white and the other was not. 

 

RE: Oh, yeah, Recitatif?

 

CC: Yes, and we talked about, I know a lot of the discussions were about, you know, which one did you think was which, and everyone was kind of in agreement, at least in my discussion group, because you could tell that one was being othered and the other was getting treated differently. Um, so you could just kind of tell which one was which based on the fact that one was being discriminated against blatantly and it’s terrible that it’s like that but it’s just like the way that our society is treating people you can just somehow tell who the “other” is.

 

RE: That’s true. In all those points, it’s not even implicit bias, but it is, because we’re all choosing who we thought was which race without actually knowing any hints to what race they were, besides being mistreated. 

 

CC: It’s just become so subconscious, that we don’t even realize it. 

 

RE: Yeah, and we just assign ourselves as One, and other the other group without even realizing it. 

 

CC: And then something else interesting about intersectionality, is like, it’s all relative, because in some scenarios you can be one, and in some scenarios you can be other. Like in this scenario they’re both minorities because they’re both female, but I mean they’re also orphans, you know, they had multiple things that made them feel inferior to others, but then there’s that other layer of race, and also you had Maggie who was the disabled girl, like there were all of these different layers that made people feel like they were at different levels, like almost in a subconscious hierarchy. Like that’s kind of where the intersectionality came into play because there are those certain titles and stereotypes but then they get layered with the other ones. 

 

RE: Wait, question. For overall, in general, for like this systemic injustice and othering and intersectionalities and all these disadvantages we talked about, how do you think it can be fixed, like through policies or through people themselves. 

 

CC: Um, I think, because as much I want to wish that a policy would fix all of it, I think that personal education, person to person basis, I think that, like, it’s only going to be through fixing ourselves, and like learning and changing those stereotypes in our minds, that’s the only way we’re even going to get to a point where we can make different policies, because without that, without having to rewire our brains, or you know, try to fix those mistakes that we subconsciously make, I don’t think we’ll get to a place where like a policy will fix it. 

 

RE: I agree. And like I was saying earlier with the intersectional different minority groups, it’s hard to attack all the problems that we have in our system against them all.

 

CC: Right.

 

RE: Like there are so many little things that add up, so it’s hard to address directly.

 

CC: Right.

 

RE: And I also think in a weird way, this class is like going at the problem, because we just need to educate people on it, and this is almost a forced education so we can see the implicit biases we have and we can see the problems with it. 

 

CC: Right, because even if you-, ’cause like you can fix the racism, but then there’s still, like, the sexism and the discrimination against religion, or you could fix the sexism but the racism is still there, it’s just like, all of the different layers, so I think by just kind of opening your eyes to the different layers of it, like I said. And I agree with you that this class has really done that, I’ve learned more, and like especially with the diaries of systemic injustice,

 

RE: Yeah.

 

CC: I learned so much about what’s going on like, in Columbus, on our campus, just like in general, you know, like it’s in our backyard. 

 

RE: It did, like, open a lens, that I wasn’t looking for earlier.

 

CC: Yeah, right. I agree with you. 

 

RE: And it did help me identify my own bias, that I just-, like I’d like to say that I do not have any discriminatory beliefs, but just little things that I had stored in my brain, even just deciding who the characters were in Recitatif.

 

CC: Yeah, and just acknowledging the privilege and that kind of thing. Especially with what’s going on in the world right now. I feel like taking this class in 2020 is just like, you know?

 

RE: It’s like ironically really good timing.

 

CC: Right! Right right, I agree. 

So in conclusion, I think we both agree that this is not only racist, but there’s also issues with gender, race, religion, social class, economic class, and all of these things add up to it being intersectional. 

 

RE: So basically, identify your own implicit biases, and do your own job to educate yourself.

 

CC: Well said.

 

RE: Thank you for listening!