Bryan Stevenson is a lawyer that also owns his own firm called Equal Justice Initiative. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson is a personal narrative of some of the cases he has witnessed during his time as a lawyer. The stories he tells are all of his firsthand accounts of individuals he’s encountered on death row. Stevenson travels to death row to meet with individuals who he believes did not get the representation that they deserved. He chose clients that he believed were wrongly convicted or given wrong sentences. The majority of the clients he targeted were Black individuals who did not receive a significant amount of representation during their trial. The story of Walter McMillian is told throughout the entire story, but is interrupted with other stories that are relevant to his message. Walter McMillian was a Black male that was wrongly convicted for a murder and sentenced to death. The fight for his freedom was long, but ended up ending in success.
We see these unfortunate cases in our justice system too often. Although every individual is provided with a lawyer during trial, the best lawyers come at a price. One of Bryan Stevenson’s most famous quotes says “… the opposite of poverty is not wealth but justice.”. I constantly think about this quote when I think about the systemic injustices we see today. Many Black individuals are not given fair treatment. We see cases of police brutality too often. Black people fear their lives when being pulled over by police. For White people, it is a completely different story. Bryan Stevenson turned his career as a lawyer into so much more.
Walter McMillian was nowhere near the scene where the crime he was accused of occured. He was convicted solely for the color of his skin. He was completely innocent, but did not have the money to pay for a lawyer that cared enough to fight for his innocence. He was seen as an “Other”. The police did not mind convicting someone who they knew was innocent upon the arrest because they needed to convict someone to put the town at rest. Bryan Stevenson has devoted his entire life to helping those who were oppressed by our government system. If you have not read this book, I really recommend spending some time learning about the inequalities that our justice system holds. The photo below is Walter McMillian and Bryan Stevenson celebrating their victory of getting Walter McMillian his life back!
This week we were assigned to read A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid. This book is about Jamaica’s life as a child and her life in Antigua. She writes the story in many different sections to engage the reader and give them a look into her life as Jamaica herself and as a traveler. The way many travelers view the island was a lot different from the way she viewed it after growing up there. Most tourists would view the small island as so beautiful, but she had other views. The area she grew up in was pretty run down. She experienced great governmental corruption as the government was going through changes in rulers. She gives the readers a tour of the different spots that she deemed important in her life. The other sections are about Jamaica and her life. It gives a look into her past and an even deeper look into her present day life. She looks at the islands corrupt past and evaluates its current state as well.
The island of Antigua had a very corrupt government. The government was very abusive of its’ power and Jamaica made this very clear. The island of Antigua has a long history of corruption. They became independent from the United Kingdom in 1981. There have been many accusations that the government officials had been accepting money in return for political favors. Jamaica actually discusses this in her book. Many newspapers brought attention to these scandals, but the corruption continued. There was a long line of family members in charge of this government. The Bird family was in charge for many years which allowed this corruption to continue.
This family allowed for many of the citizens of Antigua to grow great distrust for the government. This abuse of power that continued for many years caused Jamaica Kincaid to write her book. She experienced these tragedies first hand. This story allows one to put themselves in the shoes of a citizen during the time of this governmental corruption.
Sources:
Antigua and Barbuda: History of Corruption and the Stanford Case
Amanda: Hi, welcome to “Yo Is This Transphobic?” My name is Amanda McIntyre
Kennedy: I’m Kennedy Herberghs
Amanda: And today we will be talking about the anti-LGBTQ+, specifically trans laws posed by the Trump administration and Roger Severino, head of health care at the White House.
Kennedy: Yeah, so this week I wanted to talk about an experience that I personally had with transphobia in a restaurant and then I want to take that into the consequences that that could happen in health care if this continued.
Kennedy: Last year I went into Wendy’s to get dinner and a transgender woman walked into the restaurant and placed her order, and at Wendy’s whenever you tell them your name they cut it down to four letters to put on to the board, because they don’t have time to type in everybody’s full name. The woman’s name was Madeline, but when the man typed it into the computer he typed MATT instead of Madeline. This caused the lady to be very upset and refuse her food from Wendy’s and abruptly leave the restaurant. And although this was just dinner and the lady could have gone anywhere else to get dinner, this was an inconvenience to her because she wanted her dinner from Wendy’s. She refused the food from there and she probably never went back after that. If this happens in healthcare and doctors refuse to treat a woman or a man, because they are transgender and they refuse to take their care, what do they do then? If you go to the hospital for a reason. I mean, you can’t just walk away and not receive the treatment, especially during a pandemic.
Amanda: Yeah, this is essentially a slow motion genocide of trans people that’s happening right now, and the defense for it is religion.Roger Severino, the one who’s been waiting to pose this law, is a devout Catholic, and he is posing that other devout Catholics and health care workers who are physicians should not be required to save the lives of transgender people on the basis that it goes against their religion. So, it poses the question, is healthcare right or a privilege? What is America? What world are we creating for our children? Is it an accepting world, or an oppressive world?
Kennedy: Yeah, exactly. And I personally am going to school for Pre-Pa and I can’t even imagine going to work and denying somebody care because of their sexual orientation or because of their gender. I mean that happens all the time. And it’s extremely upsetting. When you become a doctor you go through medical school, it’s not only just the classes of medicine that you take, you learn about ethics in the medical world. You learn about how to deal with patients and their feelings. And you deal with so much more than just what people bring up front, just the initial case that they bring to the table. You are so much more. I’ve never had a bad experience at the hospital. I’ve always dealt with doctors who genuinely care about not only my health, but also my personal feelings and they’ve tried to get to know you and make you feel like you’re in a comfortable environment and, obviously, if they’re not doing this for people, it’s going to push them away from the hospitals. It’s going to push them away from wanting to receive the care that is provided from these health care providers. And not to mention that these healthcare providers, they take the Hippocratic Oath at the end of medical school, before you even start your job, you’re required to sit down and you’re required to say that you’re going to treat a patient with the best of your abilities, and you’re going to cause them no harm. You’re going to put up your hand and you’re going to swear that you will be a good doctor. That you’re going to be so much more than just somebody who’s selfish in their own beliefs, you have to put that to the side and be able to treat whatever walks in that door.
Kennedy: We’re teaching those students in medical school and we’re students in college right now so we know. We see this on an everyday basis, you’re teaching those students that are going to medical school, that this can be comfortable. That this can be allowed. That this is going to be an environment that they’re working in. That this can be ideas that they develop while they’re in medical school and that absolutely can’t happen for very obvious reasons, I mean, our generation has allowed more things than many other generations. We’re bringing so many new ideas to the table. We’re becoming so much more comfortable in our sexuality and in our genders, and everything else that we’re trying to create in this world but it just feels like we’re taking one step forward and three steps back because this is going so much deeper than what we’re just seeing right now. And whether you visit a hospital or a private practice the care that you’re supposed to receive is top notch. But there’s so many other factors that contribute to the quality of healthcare that one is receiving. It goes so much deeper than whom or where
we’re receiving care from. Race, gender, ethnicity and economic status can all contribute to the health care that you’re receiving and it shouldn’t be this way health care should be blind.
Amanda: And while we’re talking about this issue, I do feel it’s important to address Black, transgender women, and not leave them out of the conversation just because they have so many separate pillars of oppression toppling down on them. You have sexism, racism, transphobia all kinds of things coagulated into one person, and all of this, uncomfortable ability in the room, it poses the question: Is this a religious issue, or is it to preserve cis white male supremacy? Is it another message to trans people saying “you’re not welcome in these spaces” because they challenge, cis white male supremacy?
Just with the black women in general, the distrust physicians have for their levels of pain. I’ve had several friends tell me that their mothers didn’t receive the correct amount of epidural and childbirth, or just things like that, because of the distrust that physicians have for black women and those biases that they carry into the workplace that really affects people’s livelihood and whether they end up walking out of that hospital or going out on their deathbed, and also obstacles such as lack of food
and access to medical care when you’re dealing with black communities. You know you could go into black community and see 1000 fast food restaurants and no grocery stores, just that alone can send somebody into the hospital, high, high demand for medical
care in black communities but such low amount and quality care is another issue that black trans women deal with. So they have all of these. And then on top of this, dealing with the oppression of the non binary and being trans is just something that needed to be addressed here.
Kennedy: I absolutely agree and I also think it’s important to touch on the fact that we’re living in a pandemic. We’re living surrounded by coronavirus and how many people are getting sick from this, how many young individuals are passing away because of the complications that come with this deadly virus. And if you’re putting the message out there, this NPR article that we’ve been talking about and how Roger Severino is making all these changes, this was during Trump’s term which was last year in 2020 when the pandemic had just surfaced. You’re putting out all these messages about how healthcare providers are transphobic how they’re homophobic racist there’s all these messages are coming out, and then you’re encouraging individuals to, you know, go get your covid test, go get the vaccine, go get all of these things and you’re telling them you know go get this care but then you’re also counteracting it with “maybe you shouldn’t feel comfortable going to get the care, there’s doctors out there that don’t even want to provide you their time of day to help you to save you to contribute to your better well being, because of your gender status”. And I really think that these messages are just so contradicting in how Trump’s administration even talked about covid. It was really concerning. You’re making this feel like it’s a fake disease but then you’re watching people drop dead you know? And now we’re looking at the consequences and how people are refusing to go to the hospital. People are refusing to get this vaccine. People are refusing to do all of this, but these are messages that these people are putting out
and then wondering why these harsh fallbacks are happening because of it. And I also think that if you think about it. You don’t know whether or not when you’re looking at a transgender male or female, you really truthfully with all of these like people are having a lot of things done and a lot of surgeries are becoming more available. A lot of people wouldn’t even know to the visual look that you are transgender, how would a person feel if they went into the doctor’s office, and a transgender, Doctor refused to treat them like if you put the put roles reversed. How would they feel if they were refused to be treated by your doctor because you had felt uncomfortable with the fact that they’re transgender? Would you not want them to help you if you were going through this? So it just really makes you think like if roles were reversed, how would this person feel how would a transgender doctor feel if they knew that their patient was homophobic, or sexist or however. It just really makes you wonder how it goes both ways and what we’re setting up for our future in our society.
Amanda: Right. And it’s also concerning for trans-military members. I know a lot of people in the military voted for Trump under the impression that he’s advocated for lots and lots of military funding. Hopefully raising their salaries and things like that. So, just making the military an unwelcome space for trans people is really something that, you know, intrigues me. These people are kind of dying for you. I’m putting their life on the line for you. Yeah, it’s those people yeah and you’re not protecting their health care rights, it’s just an extreme double standard right President Trump?
Kennedy: Yeah, I really feel like what we talked about today could go on for however long. We could go back and forth about this forever. It just really makes you wonder that even though we’re putting out all these ideas and I feel like Gen Z is doing
like a really great job of trying to make people more comfortable in their mental health in their bodies and really trying to embrace the society that we’re building for our future. And it just feels like everything that we do is counteracted by something from somebody above us, it just feels like every step that we try and make, it’s being shut down, it’s being made uncomfortable. And I really feel like we just need to evaluate as a society what we’re doing, what we’re doing to each other, what we’re doing in general and how we are treating this right of healthcare, as a privilege now. And this has always been something we’ve been dealing with. But now that we’re looking at it and we’re faced with it head on as we’re about to take on careers in the medical field. It just really feels like there needs to be a change made. And I feel like this podcast has really done a good job at bringing awareness to the topic and I think that every week when we continue to view these articles in the news and we continue to confront this in our everyday world that will continue to develop opinions about it and hopefully make change for our future.
Amanda: That’s good.
Kennedy: All right. Well, thanks for watching. Come back next week.
Throughout the past few weeks, I have found many examples that I could have used for these diary entries. Honestly, I feel that I found more than I should have. It is really eye-opening to search through news stories and realize how many people face injustice and inequality each and everyday. One article that really stood out to me throughout my search was one about Elijah McClain. He was a 23-year-old Black American citizen that was faced with intense police brutality. On August 24, 2019, Elijah McClain was stopped by the police on his way home from the convenience store for “suspicious activity”. He had been wearing a ski mask, which someone deemed suspicious. The police approached him with immediate aggression. He had expressed that he felt uncomfortable and that he was an “introvert” (CNN, 2021). He continued to tell the police “Please respect the boundaries I am speaking!” (CNN,2021), but the police did not listen. The Aurora Colorado paramedics arrived at the scene and diagnosed him with “excited delirium” (CNN, 2021). Following this diagnosis, the paramedics injected a high dose of ketamine into McClain. The doses of this drug are measured by weight. They injected him with a dose for a 200 lb male, when in reality he was only 143 lbs. At this point, McClain went unconscious and showed signs of ketamine overdose. He never woke up from this sedation. 3 days later, he was declared brain dead (AP News, 2021). McClain’s organs were donated from this point. The investigation of the Aurora Colorado police department and paramedics was ongoing for 14 months. They found that the Aurora police and fire departments had been wrongly administering ketamine by not following the protocols or administering appropriate doses. The data provided in the AP News Article shows patterns of racial bias during policing in this department. They note that 2,800 cases from the Aurora police department are being reviewed for unlawful force (AP News, 2021). It is crazy to think that many people in these departments sacrifice their license and their lives to harm someone else. It seems like racism is taught in their training. This story reminded me of Spivak’s article “Can the Subaltern Speak?”. In this case, McClain was speaking to them and not using aggression towards the police officers, but he was still not heard. His pleas were ignored. The only thing that was acknowledged by the police was the color of his skin. The police used their power to take this innocent man’s life. The men involved in this case were just convicted of their crimes and found guilty earlier this week (CNN, 2021). We see too many articles discussing how innocent people were killed because of police aggression. They found that police are 2.5 times more likely to be aggressive towards a Black male or female than a White person (CNN, 2021). This is a clear example of systemic injustice. The power that police feel they have is sickening. They feel that they have the power to harm individuals based on the color of their skin. This poor man, Elijah McClain, did not live to tell his story, but there are many people out there that fight everyday for justice in America.
Citations:
Levenson, E. (2021, September 1). Grand Jury indicts police officers and paramedics in 2019
death of Elijah Mcclain. CNN. Retrieved November 3, 2021, from
