Author: longbottom.14

Text Review: Get Out

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In Jordan Peele’s film Get Out he attempts to tackle many of the same ideas that we learned and read about in this course. Focusing mainly on the topic of race and slavery his story confronts major theories such as the concept of the Other as well as the discussion of being heard that was prominent in Recitatif. In the film, a young black man is meeting his white girlfriend’s family for the first time. Over the course of their visit there, he constantly noticed strange behavior from the family’s housekeeper and groundskeeper, who are both black as well. After an intriguing hypnotherapy session with Rose’s mother, he is deeply concerned and expresses his desire to leave to his girlfriend, Rose. He discovers that the family and many of their wealthy white friends use Rose to attract African Americans to the isolated home where they switch their brains into their bodies.

Throughout the plot, the concept of Otherness is consistently shown as the wealthy white family have set up African Americans as the others. They do not even look at them as humans, more as a collection of various aspects that they want to improve in themselves. They use Rose to lure people into their family and then switch themselves into their bodies in order to possess those traits. For example, one of the wealthy characters wants to switch with the main character, Chris, because he is a photographer and is seen as an avenue for better sight and photography skills. This relates to the concepts discussed as Chris is part of the Others and is being treated as nothing more than a means to an end for a wealthy man who believes that his life is more valuable than Chris’.

The concept of being heard is very prominent in the film. One of the main ways that this is conveyed in through the hypnosis that sends Chris into the Sunken Place. This is described as a place in which the conscious goes while the host’s body is being used by the white transplant. While in the Sunken Place they are conscious but powerless to do anything. This relates to the plight of African Americans across many generations as they were suffering and conscious of all the injustices against them, but they were powerless to do anything to change that. This also shows in how Chris escapes, using cotton to plug his ears so that he can not be hypnotized, flipping the script in a sense. Making it so that he can not hear them, he keeps the power and ability to save himself.

Yo Is This Racist

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Hey, what is up this is another special edition of the “Yo, Is This Racist” column. Guest writing for us today is me, a third-year nursing student from Cincinnati, Nick Longbottom. Now I know what you are thinking, “what is some middle-class white guy from suburban Cincinnati going to teach me about racism?” And you would be correct in assuming that my upbringing and background did not lead me to many problems with racism firsthand. However, I am not blind, and I am not going to sit back and ignore something when I know it to be inherently bad and evil.

Now through my studies, I took a course on the issues the plague the healthcare system across the world. This course looked at everything from the big cities of wealthy countries to the food deserts of developing nations. In the process of doing some background research for this course, I came across an interesting statistic that ranked the state of Ohio as the third-worst state in the country in the category of health disparity based on a patient’s skin color and wealth. Now, this was a tough pill to swallow. First of all, it was hard enough for me to wrap my head around the fact that we are in the twenty-first century and we still have issues with inequality in healthcare just based on race alone. Like is there not some type of standard that medical professionals should have to hold themselves to? Was this really a field that I wanted to go into? And second of all, how could this have happened here in Ohio? I had grown up here, known so many different people both medical professionals and not. None of them were racist. At the very least not outwardly.

Therein lies the problem. Despite the Civil Rights movement being mainstream almost 60 years ago, we as a country have not eradicated racism. The racism that exists today in our society is so dangerous and deadly because of how it shows itself. It is ingrained in our society and does not often appear in the traditional ways that we tend to think about. It is ingrained in the very bones of our society and snakes through the foundations of our country like roots. So as I dove deeper into the topic I realized just how big of an issue this was.

A large reason that the inequality in health care and patient outcomes stems from an individual’s environment and socioeconomic status. For example, a wealthier person is much more likely to have access to clean water, healthy food, and a safe shelter. They do not have to worry about having enough healthy food or affording a healthy and nutritious meal for their children. Poor people on the other hand do not get to enjoy this perk. Many people also live in what is known as a food desert. This is any area where the residents do not have access to affordable, healthy food options, specifically fruits and vegetables. One statistic that blew my mind was how over 2 million people in the US live over a mile from a grocery store and do not own a car. How are they supposed to have access to food? Food is such an important denominator in overall health and patient outcomes.

Now, this bleeds over to racism as Black Ohioans are more than two and a half times more likely than white Ohioans to live below the poverty line. So, we have just learned how detrimental that poverty can be for health, and Black Ohioans are poor at more than double the rate of white Ohioans. That is a recipe for disaster. It is massive gaps such as this that lead to African Americans also being thirty times more likely to die of heart disease. And the facts do not stop there. In America as a whole, black children have a 500% higher death rate from asthma-related issues than white children. It is heartbreaking to know that even children are unable to escape from these disparities. They are caused by a multitude of issues that are completely out of their control, and yet they are the ones that suffer the consequences.

To get to the root of these issues, we must look at why there are massive gaps in class and socioeconomic status in the country.  These all stem back to systemic issues that plague our society. The simple fact that not all people today are given the same opportunities for success is hard to understand for some. Many people that benefit from this racism tend to not even know it. The healthcare disparities could also be helped by expanding more opportunities to both women and minorities to have positions in healthcare. For example, a white, male doctor does not have any idea about the daily struggles and responsibilities that a young black mother could have. Because of this, he may not be the best person equipped to be making the healthcare decisions for that particular young woman. By bringing in people from all different backgrounds and walks of life, we would also open up a more diverse discussion for a good exchange of ideas. This would undoubtedly push us in the right direction as a society and help to minimize many of the health disparities that we have discussed here today.

There is a clear issue that needs to be addressed. The only question is how. I believe that we need to make healthy food more affordable and accessible to everyone. Doing this would make it so that struggling families do not feel the need to get cheap and unhealthy food just to survive. Also, by providing more social programs to allow access to healthcare, we could ensure that more people are able to see a doctor regularly to decrease their chances of severe diseases developing. In relation to the class content, I keep thinking back to the short story “Recitatif” and how it tackles the idea of speaking and being heard. There is clearly a large issue with healthcare disparities in America, and yet I had no idea until I took a class on the subject. This is an issue with being heard and speaking out about social injustices that need massive change to undo centuries of unfair and unequal treatment that is systemic in our society.

Diary of Systemic Injustice: Healthcare Disparities in Ohio

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For my showcase on systemic injustices in the US today, I decided to focus on the differences in hospital treatment that people can receive just based on their skin color. While researching for another class I came across an article that had Ohio as the third-worst state in the country for health disparities based on a patient’s skin color and wealth (Ingles, 2018). I was very surprised to learn that this type of health disparity still existed at this point in our society. Despite the Civil Rights Movement being mainstream almost 60 years ago, we as a country still have issues with treating everyone equally. A large part of this disparity comes from a person’s environment and socioeconomic status. A wealthier person has easier access to clean water and healthy food and a safe shelter. On top of this, black Ohioans are more than two and a half times more likely than white Ohioans to live in poverty (Ingles, 2018). This is a massive gap that plays a role in African Americans also being thirty times more likely to die of heart disease (Ingles, 2018). The causes for this inequality run very deep in the society that we live in and are ingrained in minorities, who suffer the most. One statistic that I found to be troubling about overall disparities in America was that black children have a 500% higher death rate from asthma-related issues than white children (Williams). There are a wide variety of reasons that lead to this including environment and wealth. When families do not have adequate access to resources and healthcare, these are the devastating results. Even this year, as Black Ohioans make up 13% of the population, only 5.6% of the vaccines have gone to them (Health Disparities).

There is a clear issue that needs to be addressed. The only question is how. I believe that we need to make healthy food more affordable and accessible to everyone. Doing this would make it so that struggling families don’t feel the need to get cheap and unhealthy food just to survive. Also, by providing more social programs to allow access to healthcare, we could ensure that more people are able to see a doctor regularly to decrease their chances of severe diseases developing. In relation to the class content, I keep thinking back to the short story “Recitatif” and how it tackles the idea of speaking and being heard. There is clearly a large issue with healthcare disparities in America, and yet I had no idea until I took a class on the subject. This is an issue with being heard and speaking out about social injustices that need massive change to undo centuries of unfair and unequal treatment that is systemic in our society.

 

Links to Referenced Articles

https://radio.wosu.org/post/ohio-ranks-among-worst-country-health-disparities#stream/0

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/health-disparities-between-blacks-and-whites-run-deep/

https://www.healthpolicynews.org/daily_review/health-disparities/

Lahiri – Interpreter of Maladies Context Presentation

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Jhumpa Lahiri officially published Interpreter of Maladies in 1999 but had been working towards this accomplishment all her life. The collection of nine different stories encompass the lives and experiences of various Indian Americans. They often take on the challenges of relationships and dynamics between couples and families at difficult times in their lives. The rich history and diversity of Indian culture play a huge role throughout the stories, some of them focusing on religion, some using the food traditions of the country.

Lahiri was able to draw from her own experiences for much of the context of the stories as she is the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her family moved from London to the United States when she was very young. Growing up with a mixture of cultures greatly influenced her life, specifically her writing, as these themes of characters trying to balance their heritage and their new life in America appear frequently. When the collection of stories was published, America’s growing economy led to a peak of foreign immigration and the Indian American population was steadily growing. Her experiences growing up in the United States, but frequently visiting India allowed her to draw from personal experience to pour into her work.

While there are many factors that play into the immigration of Indians to America the main driving force in the 20th century was the Partition. The history of the Partition goes back to when England first colonized India in the 1600s. This ended when India gained their independence in 1947, and divided India into two independent countries of India and Pakistan. This division was not easy or peaceful and was largely based on religious grounds. With widespread violence across the country, the Partition displaced millions of people and eventually lead to the mass emigration of Indians to the Western world in the 1960s. Many of them were chasing opportunities and advancements in the growing American economy, such as Lahiri’s family. Some of her short stories even directly refer to the Partition, specifically “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine” in which a man and his family had been displaced in Pakistan.

 

Sources:

Jhumpa Lahiri Biography. (2006, October 31). Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://www.chipublib.org/jhumpa-lahiri-biography/

Lahiri, J. (2019). Interpreter of maladies: Stories. Boston: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The Partition of India: What Happened? – BBC Newsround. (2018, December 6). Retrieved March 19, 2021, from https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/46428985