Megan Thee Stallion, Maternal Mortality, and America’s Dismissal of Black Girl Pain.
By: Dr. Paul Do
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Megan Thee Stallion, Maternal Mortality, Black Girl Magic

“Black women are so unprotected & we hold so many things in to protect the feelings of others [without] considering our own…” — Megan Thee Stallion

On July 12, Megan Thee Stallion was the victim of domestic violence at the hands of her boyfriend, Tory Lanez. TMZ initially reported that she had suffered foot injuries as the result of stepping on broken glass. However, what is likely is that she was shot in both of her feet by Lanez, who has been arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon in his vehicle.

The response to the incident from some celebrities was horrifying, but unsurprising-the list of celebrities who mocked or made jokes at Megan’s expense included Chrissy Teigen, 50 Cent, and Cam’ron. Rather than sympathy befitting the victim of a violent crime, Megan’s plight was met with humor and dismissal. Megan proclaimed “I didn’t deserve to get shot,” because when black women are the victim of domestic violence, “it’s usually framed as a situation of mutual combat or provocation,” -C. Nicole Mason, president and chief executive of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

To this point, one response to Megan being the victim of a violent crime was a reference to “Ike and Tina [Turner] love,” because violence against Black women, especially Black women in the public eye, has been normalized for generations. At the core of these jokes is a pervasive dismissal of Black Girl Pain. A dismissal rooted in attempts during the 19th century to “scientifically” justify slavery. Because Megan is Black, she can handle the pain of being shot.

Physicians in the 19th century sought to establish the physical peculiarities of the Black body that distinguished it from white bodies. These “‘peculiarities’ included thicker skulls, less sensitive nervous systems, and diseases inherent in dark skin.” (https://www.pnas.org/content/113/16/4296) Dr. Samuel Cartright once infamously wrote that Black people bore “a Negro disease [which made them] insensible to pain.” Well into the 20th Century, there was a strongly-held belief in parts of the medical community that Black people could tolerate surgical operations with little to no pain at all. Researchers piggybacking on this junk science continually experimented on the bodies of Black people under the assumption that Black people were more resistant to pain than white people. (See: Tuskegee Airmen).

A 2016 report, headed by Kelly M. Hoffman, PhD, found that an astonishing number of medical professionals endorsed false beliefs about biological differences between Black people and white people. For instance, 25 percent of white residents agreed with a comment that Black people had literally thicker skin than white people. These same residents also believed that Black people had less sensitive nerve-endings and faster blood coagulation than white people.

These kinds of fantastical biases about the Black body have obvious and dangerous real world implications. Black people are prescribed pain medication at a much lower rate than white people. And when pain medication is prescribed to Black people, it’s at lower dosages than those prescribed to white people. This disparate outcome of pain management is a direct result of the implicit bias apparent in doctors in this country vis-à-vis the Black body’s ability to withstand pain.

The implicit bias against Black bodies bears poisonous fruit in many ways. None more heartbreaking than maternal mortality. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of any industrialized nation. And over 60 percent of those deaths are preventable. Unsurprisingly, due to systemic racism and implicit bias in the healthcare field, Black women are more at risk of maternal mortality than white women. And improving socioeconomic factors for some Black people, such as access to quality healthcare, do not improve outcomes for Black women. Black women with a college degree are five times more likely to be the victim of maternal mortality than white women of the same education level.

Wealthy and famous Black women, like Beyoncé and Serena Williams, have been unable to avoid being victims of implicit bias and both nearly died during the process of childbirth. Williams nearly died of a pulmonary embolism after giving birth to her daughter and said she was not taken seriously when she alerted the hospital staff about the embolism. Had she not insisted that they check for the embolism, Williams would have been another, albeit the most famous, Black woman whose pain was dismissed by implicitly biased healthcare providers.

Why do healthcare providers dismiss Black Girl Pain? Patrice Cullors, a co-founder of BLM, said: “When white people advocate for themselves or their family members, [healthcare providers] think they’re acting reasonably. When Black people are advocating for our family members, we’re complaining, we’re being uppity, we don’t know what we’re talking about, [and] we’re exaggerating.” At the root of this mindset is the lack of Black faces in the medical profession, stereotypes like “the Angry Black Woman,” victim blaming, and, of course, implicit bias about the Black body.

As Lauren and I navigated the IVF, prenatal, childbirth, and postnatal processes, I became keenly aware of some of the challenges Black women face when advocating for their own healthcare. A doctor may unknowingly show his bias against Black bodies by referring to Lauren as “tough.” A nurse’s reference to Lauren being monitored for preeclampsia carries with it the weight of generations because Lauren is a Black woman. You start noticing a change in the tone of voice of the front desk person when an administrator makes a mistake and leads you to believe that your unborn baby has tested for Downs Syndrome despite the test taking place a month prior with the opposite result. Lauren met every challenge and advocated for herself so powerfully and without flinching. She had to. She knew that nobody else would feel her pain. This is America after all.