For my text review, I am choosing to analyze the show Altered carbon. In this show it is a Dystopian society, where essentially you can upload your consciousness to a disk, and if you want to live forever. Your body only serves a purpose as a sleeve, and you can also choose to upgrade your sleeves if you want to, but only if you have the means, and most people don’t. In this show people of higher power, and more money are also able to live amongst themselves basically in the clouds. This show displays the injustice in the society very prominently, because they will also exploit working class members for their entertainment. For example the whole premise of the show was built off of one of the characters, who is the richest man of their society, who chose to take the disc of technically a former terrorist, and put it into a different sleeve just so he could have help with a case he wanted solved. Society is also very divided because there are people who don’t believe that discs should be a part of life, and that people should die naturally. It causes issues between society members, and it also causes issues for society members, because the government is much more controlling behind the scenes than is depicted. In this society the concept of the master slave dialect. The master in this society is this man who holds all the power and money, and with his power no matter how many people dislike him, he still gets everything he wants, because without him many other people wouldn’t have their roles either, and they want to keep their jobs, etc. In this society it is also very hard to work your way up, especially with the discs because it adds a whole extra level of wealth one needs to have in order to live or not the way they want to. 
Author: levin.2017
Yo Is This Racist…
“Do no harm” is the oath all medical practitioners swear when becoming a doctor, why is it that for women of color that oath may not always apply?
Having the right to medical treatment, and the best possible medical treatment should not be a privilege, especially if it is only for people who are white. In this country women of color are oftentimes not taken as seriously in hospitals or places of care. This is not only instilled racism, but it is extreme negligence. Not only is this known by listening to experiences of women of color who have been treated awfully by doctors and hospitals, there is statistics to prove it. According to the CDC women of color are two times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women are. It also states that pregnancy related deaths per 100,000 live births for women of color are also 5x as high as it was for white women. This is because of these doctors and care-takers instilled racism and microaggressions. A very noteable and public example of this is Serena Williams. She opened up about her birth and shared her experiences whilst in the hospital. She had to undergo an emergency c-section with her daughter, the next day she didn’t feel that well and noticed she had shortness of breath, and also made the doctors aware about her history of pulmonary embolisms. Even though she detailed this all to the doctors, instead of them running tests, they told her she was confused from the pain medicine. She then asked them to just run a CT scan, and instead they ran different meaningless tests. Sure enough when they finally ran the original test she asked for, they found small blood clots in her lungs. Thankfully in this instance she ended up being okay, but a lot of times these women do not end up okay. Serena Williams is a world class athlete that knows how her body works inside and out, and doctors didn’t even listen to her or take her seriously. Why is this happening, and why are we giving doctors leeway to act in this manner.
Not only are there severe cases of mistreatment of women of color, there are also many microaggressions displayed as well that usually end up leading to severe damage. A lot of times while giving birth women of color are shouted at or may be forced into a treatment plan they don’t agree with. A lot of women of color said they have just been ignored or shouted at for no reason at all. A woman named Paress Salinas who gave birth in 2007 experienced microaggressions during her birthing experience that leaves her with scars to this day. Her doctors tried to give her a c-section although she did not want one, and it was not obligatory for her situation. She was then ready to deliver within 45 minutes, and since the doctors nor nurses listened to any of her wishes, and neglected her, they also neglected her preparations to give birth which resulted in a physical scar due to damage along with a lot of mental scarring. This left her feeling very scared and nervous of hospitals, and it took a toll on her mental health. Going into something with expectations on how it should go, and then having to endure all of this maltreatment during one of the most painful experiences in your life, really can have a negative impact on someone’s mental state.
This is an issue that is not a quick fix and ties into reform of systemic injustices overall. With that being said there are ways to start at a lower level in order to start bringing this reform to the healthcare field. I believe that in order to help to put an end to this, and to help combat this issue this needs to be a nationwide approach. Many hospitals and healthcare institutions will have bias training programs, but there are not usually anything of significance and are obviously not actually educating these professionals. Instead of just giving a software program to complete that people can just skip through, there should be interactive events and seminars that these healthcare professionals should have to attend. I also think that diversifying the healthcare force would also be beneficial. I think it is important for women to feel completely comfortable when needing healthcare and giving birth, and I think that women of color may feel more comfortable if they have someone treating them that better understands their experiences and emotions than someone who is white could. There also needs to be more accessible healthcare to help combat this issue of systemic injustice in the healthcare field. This can range from insurance so women of color have the resources they need when they do need to seek treatment, from making midwives and things like that more available. Although there are also many mistreatment cases seen with midwives, sometimes it is easier to personalize your experience. There are also some midwives or midwife groups that specifically practice with women of color. This is beneficial because if they specialize in this, they are highly educated on the topic.
This is also something that I think needs to be looked at from a legislative level as well. If there is more funding that can come from the government in order to help establish more inclusive programs in healthcare it can also help with better educating people, and reducing the injustices that I have written about. If there were to be more funding there could also be so many more resources for women of color before,during, and after birth. This means that items like prenatal vitamins can be universally given. There is also not enough talk about postpartum depression, which is very real. It is very common to be depressed after giving birth and it can sometimes lead to a mother feeling incompetent, which isn’t the case at all. These women just spent nine months with their hormones fluctuating, their body going through major changes, and producing a life, it is normal to experience some highs and lows and to feel depression afterwards. Not only is it not really de-stigmatized, but for women of color who already may have had a very traumatic birthing experience, now may be sent home with not a single asset on how to help their mental health post giving birth. What is extremely unfair a lot of times for women of color is they may have postpartum depression because of an incident that may have happened while giving birth, so why is it okay to just send them home with no help for the after part?
There are a lot of ways that help to determine what the causes were when there is a pregnancy related death. They look at the mother’s age at death, timing of the death in relation to the pregnancy, race and ethnicity, and they will compare this data with previous data. There are an extensive number of ways to determine a cause of death, but there are not extensive amounts of ways to prevent these deaths in the first place. If they are able to gather all this research to study this problem, and to determine causes, there should be more done for a fix. What also frustrates me is that there is a starting place, and there are a million articles with ways to reform these systemic injustices, but for the most part none of these procedures have been put into place.
No one should have fear when they are in need of medical attention. The point of healthcare is to save your life, not to put it in danger. After nine months of growing another life inside of you, you should not have to face negligence because of the color of your skin. There are many ways and ideas people have researched to help to combat this problem, it is time to really start educating people, and actually putting these new procedures in place. Women of color should not be experiencing life long negative influences from a moment that is supposed to be one of the best in life. Anyone who gives birth should have the access to proper care, and deserves to be treated with the absolute best care possible.
Diary of Systemic Injustices
One of the classes I am in this semester is about terrorism. We have discussed topics like 9/11 and many other international terrorist events. What is not normally talked about is the fallout for muslisms or anyone thought to be muslism or middle eastern during the years following. I also watched an SVU episode this week that is related to this. In this episode a man ended up dying at an age of about 50 because of the abuse he endured in previous years. US intelligence tortured him and destroyed his central nervous system just because he had a distant relative in his home country that was one time flagged and thought to maybe be related to a terrorist organization, but it was never confirmed. This man in the United States who had no relation to this distant relative and never knew him was tortured for information he didn’t have just profiled because he “fit the mold” of a terrorist according to the United States. They ruined this man’s life and his families, along with thousands of people just because they had a certain appearance. They profiled so many people and put so many people through abuse. Americans all over the country harassed muslims verbally and physically along with the government. They faced injustice just because of the way they looked and being profiled. It reminds me a little bit of the topic from this week and The Leavers, in the sense that constantly I feel like people are coming to the United States to live a good life, and do no harm and they are constantly being ridiculed and given a million obstacles where it is hard to do that. This example relates to our topic of The Leavers because in The Leavers self and other is very prominent and we see with Deming he struggles to find himself because immersed in a white-washed culture and has never been able to explore his own self and identity. In this SVU episode and also in the climate of America post 9/11 many musilms were targeted just because they were muslim. They were treated as others and it reminds me of Deming because it shows how in both these situations Americans treated these people as others because they looked different, or may have grown up differently than them. It is something very interesting and I don’t believe it is discussed enough.
Here is an article from the Huffpost where it discusses a twitter thread where Paul Krugman insensitively tweeted about there being a lack of anti-muslims hate and violence post 9/11, and many Muslims and and other groups targeted after 9/11 tweeted out against him sharing their stories and proving him wrong.
Here is a video where people share their experiences and discuss post 9/11 from PBS.
Persepolis Context Presentation
Persepolis is a graphic novel in the form of a memoir written by Marjane Satrapi. It is written from her perspective about her life growing up in Iran during the Iranian revolution into the establishment of the Islamic republic.
This book was set up in chronological order to really emphasize how Marjane matures, and how as she gets older some of the things she couldn’t understand when she was younger all make sense. From a young age she started to pick up on inequalities and the negative treatment of women especially. Throughout the book, and especially when Marjane is younger she details her love for American culture, ranging from clothes to music. This is what makes her start to realize the changing political climate (because of ways she begins to be treated) and question the political regime overall. When it was instilled that women must be covered by a veil, Marjane struggled with this because she didn’t understand it. She didn’t know why she couldn’t just wear what she wanted, especially after having her mom smuggle in sneakers and a jean jacket for her from Turkey. Veils becoming mandatory was a turning point in Marjane’s life, it was the first time she realized to what extent she didn’t have freedom, especially as a woman.
What really struck me while reading was the idolization of American culture when Marjane was younger. I think this is because often times I feel like a lot of my classes or assignments will focus so much on what needs to change in America or all the bad that is the United States, and the United States is definitely a mess in its own ways, but I think reading this brought me back to reality, if that makes sense. I think that part of the reason there was this theme of admiration for all the “cool” things America has to offer is because we as Americans like to seem like we are better than oftentimes, so I think we frequently are imposing the feeling on others like we are superior, and that we should be looked up to. I also think part of this also came from her age, and that as she got older she realized it is not so much America or Western places that are so great but just the social freedoms they are granted.
Satrapi, M. (2017). Persepolis. Paris: L’Association.