Erika Pongos Professor Klutchin Hist 18 04/28/23 Reading Questions #4: In Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa examines health disparities in the United States from historical perspective and in the present. She argues that racism, not race, is the cause of a health crisis in the Black community today. In Chapter 1, she explains how she came to this conclusion. Briefly summarize her journey, providing at least three specific examples to support your claims. In the book Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa, Villarosa gives a lot of information on how she views the historical perspective of health disparities in the United States and throughout the present day. She argued that racism, not race, is the main cause of a health crisis in the Black community …show more content…
When it came to her personal experience, Villarosa explains the racism in the healthcare system that led her to investigate the connection between race and health. For example, Villarosa talked about an incident that occurred when she was pregnant. When she was pregnant, Villarosa had to advocate for herself in order to receive the appropriate care. After experiencing such distraught, this led her to question why minorities, especially Black people, receive lower quality healthcare than White people (p. 16-17). Another way she explained the health crisis in the Black community today was through historical research. In Chapter 2, Villarosa researched the history of healthcare in the United States and found a study about Tuskegee Syphilis Study. During this time of study, Black men were left untreated for syphilis without the consent of the participants in order to study the disease. Villarosa argued that this study specifically created a mistrust of the healthcare system among the Black community. Unfortunately, this medical racism continues to exist today. Lastly, Villarosa also expanded on contemporary research about the impact of racism on health outcomes …show more content…
Villarosa argued that the eugenics movement played a significant role in shaping family planning policies and practices in the United States. In the book, she noted that the eugenicists believed that certain groups of people like African Americans and other people who suffer through poverty, were biologically inferior and should be discouraged from reproducing. These ideas were embraced by policymakers, public health officials, and family planning workers. They often saw their work as a way to control the reproduction of marginalized communities. The author also stated that the eugenics movement was intertwined with racism and classism. Many of the eugenicists believed that certain racial and socioeconomic groups were more prone to degeneracy with criminal-like behaviors. Villarosa argued that these were the same attitudes that shaped family planning workers’ decision to target Minnie Lee and Mary Alice Relf for permanent contraception. The Relf sisters came from poor family and were living in public housing, which made them vulnerable to coercive sterilization. Villarosa allows history to help us understand the reproductive violence that the Relf sisters and other females suffered. She explains that forced sterilization was a common practice in the United States during the
Being both African American and female took its toll on Crumpler’s practices, yet she persisted. While focusing on her studies at the New England Female Medical College, Crumpler was ridiculed by colleagues. “She faced intense racism and sexism working as a physician in the postwar South” (Balzer). Knowing the light at the end of the tunnel would be her promising career as a physician, Crumpler kept going despite the abuse. “White doctors ignored her, made jokes at her expense and discounted her work” (“Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler”).
The unknown author of “The Truth about Margaret Sanger” relays various accounts of the history that surrounded Sanger, specifically during the 1930s and 194s0; these were the years where she actively participated and advocated for her beliefs. The author opens the paragraph by describing some of Sanger’s followers, such as Dr. S. Aldolphus Knopf. In March 1925, the doctor gave a speech in New York City in which he told the crowd to beware the black community. Knopf was a part of the American Birth Control League, which has transformed into the modern Planned Parenthood. Throughout the article, a brief history of Sanger’s family is portrayed, and the struggle with the religious community during her years of activism is also illustrated.
This reputation has been influenced by a number of events, including slavery, the slave trade, and ongoing police abuse of African Americans. Structural racism harms people's health in three interconnected
That did not mean eliminate the possibilities of poorer areas reproducing. It did not involve permanent defects on test subjects simply because they are poor. Eugenics in the penal system took the negative approach and called it a “movement” using the poor and imprisoned as subject studies of that movement. The eugenics movements in the United States, Germany, and Scandinavia favored the negative approach. The courts would offer shorter sentences to people who would agree to be sterilized, knowing that they would take it because they could not afford bond and would want a shorter sentence.
The war and immigration played the largest role on the emergence of eugenics. In 1927, the supreme court ruled in favor of the sexual sterilization of a young woman named Carrie Buck. This paper discusses
Rosa Park once said, “ Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and hopefully, we should overcome.” This illustrates how racism still exist but, it is up to the people to prepare their children to not become how society used to be. From 1619 to the 1960’s, women and African American people did not have the same rights as men or as white people did. Women were not able to make their own decisions and African American were slaves.
As one of her eleven siblings in a poor family, Margaret couldn’t help but to feel inferior and long for a rich and comfortable lifestyle. When Sanger’s mother died at the age of forty, Margaret believed that her mother’s premature death was a consequence of excessive childbirth. Along with this mindset, as a young girl, Margaret formed a mindset that poverty, illness, and strife were all fates for large families, whereas small families enjoyed wealth, leisure, and positive parental relationships (Croft). It came to no surprise that Sanger, with such a harsh childhood, grew up to become one of the biggest, if not the biggest, advocates for birth control. Soon after her mother’s death, Margaret decided to become a nurse.
It is important to realize that Sanger’s campaign for a women’s to choose birth control was at a time when women where not thought of as equals and contraception was considered to be obscene at the time. In fact, she provokes a hostile reaction among Christian leaders that considered her concepts for birth control to be offensive and evil to society. Her advocacy work drew controversy from political followers that criticized her association with science to be immoral for seeking to improve or change the human population. She was often criticized and associated which eugenics, the branch of science that believed in improving the human species through selective mating. However her goal was to allow women to have control over how many children
Eugenics was a racist pseudoscience the aimed at clearing out all human beings that we regarded as unfit leaving behind only a selected that were conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Sterilization and segregation policies and marriage restrictions were enacted enshrining elements of philosophy. California was among the top five states to adopt such laws by early 1910. This attributed to a substantial number of marriages being barred and thousands of Americans being sterilized. On average about half of coercive sterilizations were done in California before the eruption of World War II in the 1940s.
To say that these men were happy to see the doctors is even more disturbing of them, of course they saw these doctors as professionals trusting them with their health. This study shows how little whites thought of blacks, and willing to sacrifice them for no real
Margaret Sanger was an American birth control activist during the progressive era. She aided in legalizing birth control. Although she was a strong leader for women’s rights, many claimed she was racist and a supporter of abortion and eugenics. Despite these allegations, Sanger’s negative views of the disabled, fueled her inspiration to promote birth control, not that she wanted to exterminate the black race or that she didn’t value human life.. “Anti-choicers wield misattributed and often outright false quotes about Sanger as weapons to shame Black women” (Gandy 1).
(End the Stigma on Black Men Suffering from Depression). With Hopkins' experience, the negative views of many African Americans have feared him not being accepted into society unless they assimilate into the accepted culture. Blacks are often victims of racial discrimination, which is also one of the leading factors why many feel less motivated to speak out about their mental health needs. Significantly seen in Black communities, experiences of racism of their ancestors, and recent events such as police brutality events to multiple African Americans, it causes the community to distrust the mental health care services provided, and this is noted by Thomas A. Vance, a PhD who studied “factors associated with lower utilization of mental health care among the Black community. Lack of trust in the medical system due to historical abuses of Black people in the guise of health care… and past history with discrimination in the mental health system” If an African American were to think to seek help for their mental health, they would have to think otherwise if they are being diagnosed realistically, or being discriminated
The author’s argument was to inform the public on how Margaret Sanger argues that women today are still enslaved by childbearing and abstinent couple due to the lack of misrepresentation of the Birth Control movement. The author tends to elaborate some of Margaret’s reasons of the birth control movement which was the limiting the size of families who were have extremely large families. The message is explicit because it informs the public on Margaret’s argument of women’s right to birth control as women constantly wrote her about their problems. The author get the message across by listing reasons and arguing her point of view of why the birth control movement was best for women on how it could limit and prevent a decrease in families and abstinent
If a Hispanic came into their local physicians office it is assumed that they are an illegal immigrant and shouldn’t be helped because they don’t belong here, they belong on the other side of the wall, in a land with no opportunity. Monique Tello had a patient of hers share a story of a painful experience in the emergency room. “They treated me like I was trying to play them, they didn’t try to make a diagnoses or help me at all” (Tello, 1). A middle-aged, church going, black women who has had no record of substance abuse, poorly treated because of the color of her skin and the stereotype she has unfairly fallen under. More stories like this exist, there are constant situations just like this one happening in hospitals all over the country.
Margaret Sanger introduced “Morality and Birth Control” in February 1918. One would argue that this period was pivotal for the progression of women – five years after the Women’s Suffrage March and two years before the 19th amendment granted voting rights to women. Sanger had the ability to use her work and influence for the emancipation of women, and some felt as if she had accomplished bringing awareness to women issues. However, did Sanger consider the impact that the push for birth control would have on the black community? In her book The Dark Side of Birth Control, Dorothy Roberts reveals the effects of birth control once intersectionality is taken into consideration.