Morntint☀️
A 🧵 for the whites & whites-adjacents who feign race-naïveté

Racism is NOT hatred.
Racism is NOT ignorance.
Racism is NOT oldness.

Racism is not even about being a good or bad person.

This is highly reductive & falsely simplistic…by design.

1/ So that it’s easy to brush off violent oppressive behaviors as: “Oh, don’t mind him/her/them - they’re just “crazy”/“stupid”/ignorant/old/young/didn’t mean it. Thereby minimizing the harm done to the target/victim/survivor of the perpetrator’s violence AND the entire system.

2/

Super excited to witness the celebration of @drtlaleng’s report on Racism @UN special rapporteur on the Right to Health, to United States General Assembly & the @TheLancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination and Global Health, along with the co-leadership of @udnore✊🏾

https://twitter.com/rsdghcommission/status/1583125896894062592

Watch:
“I think of my 8 yr old self living in Apartheid South Africa… none of this is normal, yet a so much of it is normalized.”
“I bring a true anti racist, anti-colonial, intersectional lens to my analysis.”
“Racism is a key determinant of health.”

This is one example of how to start an article when you’re about to get into disparity data. From Dr. Montoya-Williams & team. You set the table with ✨Context✨ because the “why” behind racial disparities has been beyond settled. No one should be “surprised” anymore. @DrDianaMW More on the article⬆️

Firstly, wow.
I had NO idea this story would strike such a nerve. I just put it out as a means of processing my own feelings & experience.
Thank you for your love, compassion, humanism, & shared anger, sadness, & determination to create better for our children & each other.
1/

https://twitter.com/innodim/status/1579967073710931974

Super importantly, I want to shout out my intern, Dr. G (she’s not on Twitter) who was also on the case & handled an extremely challenging encounter w/ grace & compassion. I’m grateful to her providing me the opportunity to pass on the valuable lessons my teachers taught me.

2/

Today was a tough one. Little baby girl comes in for “recurrent UTIs”. Parent is frustrated because she’s been to ER multiple times this year when these symptoms started where she’s given antibiotics & sent home. But symptoms always come back - belly pain, pain in urination,… discharge, foul odor. She goes back to ER - antibiotics & sent home. & the cycle continues.

But, wayment - vaginal discharge? Foul odor?
UTI?

Nope. Nope. That ain’t right. Okay, let’s consciously avoid anchoring bias and THINK.

When is a “UTI” not a UTI?

I want to say that God is good & God comes in the form of my residents, students, & trainees. Yesterday, my chest was heavy & I was feeling so discouraged. This morning, I get mail from @ACPinternists stating 1 of my residents nominated me for women in medicine recognition😭😭😭 I call Dr. Green this morning & let her know how much she has filled my heart with encouragement & love. She barely lets me speak as she pours into me how much she & her colleagues love & appreciate my work & tell me to keep doing what I’m doing the way I’m doing it.

Good morntint💕🌞 to everyone who rejects Performative civility & respectability politics for the coddling of white feelings. To Black folx who resist “etiquette” that kowtows to white supremacy and supplants their own humanity & freedom to hold unpopular but true opinions.☕️☕️☕️ Good morntint💕🌞 to rich folk who choose not to use their platform to censor Black scholars, particularly Black women speaking difficult truths, especially when it’s essentially pettiness in response to their support of the unionization of your company- led by a young Black man.

“WHAT, TO THE SLAVE, IS THE FOURTH OF JULY”
- Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852 🧵
Excerpts:
“The task be4 me is 1 which requires much thought & study 4 its proper performance…Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me.

Full Speech:
bit.ly/3a7TQvQ “The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable—and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight.”

2/

When the well-intentioned white person or faux “DEI expert” comes with the “we all have bias”, inform them:

Yes, we all have biases.
But, those biases are not equal.
Becos we don’t all have power.
The power to translate that bias into an outcome for those without power.

1/ Bias + Power = Badness

My bias may get someone uninvited from the cookout.

But a white person’s bias gets folks killed.
Whole communities drowned. Burned. Shot up. Set on fire. Sick. Deformed.

Destroyed.

2/

🧵 Story time:
Another day contending with ubiquitous whiteness.

So, boom! We’re in the hospital lobby right? Saying good bye to our family member who’s in hospital. From nowhere:

Security: (raises voice from security desk a few feet away) Ma’am! Please put on your mask.

1/ Me: (Stares at him) What? Who are you talking to? Us?

Security: (pointing at my sister) Her.

“Her” is my super pregnant brown-skinned sister who is wearing a black mask. We’re all wearing masks.

Me: She IS wearing a mask!

2/

So…

Should I send my kids to school today? Tomorrow?
The day after that?

Should I go with them? Who is protecting our babies since, clearly, as a nation we’ve decided, as a nation, our children’s lives are of no value?

Where is the country’s soul?
Where??
Where???

1/ I can’t stop crying for those parents & their community.
I’m not done weeping for Buffalo.
& there’s so many communities all over the world suffering.

The weight of Buffalo, Laguna Woods, Ulvade, Monkeypox, Bill Cassidy’s & Stanley Goldfarb’s ass, Wednesday weighs heavy.

2/

Morntint☀️🌞
Chyyyyyle! When it comes time to actually do the work of divesting from white supremacy culture, policy, practices, processes, & protocols, healthcare, medical, & public health systems hide behind impotent, un-funded DEI committees & taskforce that have no real power Real change requires identifying and uprooting cultures of whiteness encoded in the operations & infrastructure of these institutions & disrupting the power dynamics that maintain health disparities as well as the underrepresentation of Black folks in organizational leadership.

🧵 Here’s a sampling of books on or including info on Race Science/Race medicine/Scientific racism. Feel free to add to the list. Save, share, tag folks. Also, let me know if you’ve read any of them & your take-aways.
How have they shaped/influenced your work?
List ⬇️.
#AIMART

https://twitter.com/innodim/status/1520788341033213955

✅Racism, Not Race: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions by @gravesjl55 & Alan Goodman

✅Superior: THE RETURN OF RACE SCIENCE by Angela Saini

✅Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by @DorothyERoberts

1/

Good morntint🌞
I am still surprised at how many super highly educated people with authority & power 2 whom I have to explicitly state these words:
“Human Race Is A Sociopolitical Construct #HRIASC invented by white supremacism for the purpose of economic power hoarding.” #AIMART Again, I wouldn’t be a millennial professor if I didn’t make an @instagram reel/TikTok about it 😁😆😊

We stay reminding MDs, PhDs, RNs, PharmDs, DPTs, SLPs, ABCDs, XYZs, 5-Os, & C3POs that
Race is NOT biological &
Racism is the vector of health disparities. @EndRC2022 #AIMART

There’s a tweet making its rounds that’s truly annoying as it illustrates the stubborn inability/refusal of nice liberal white folks” to be critically self aware, particularly of their own white body privilege & positionality.
See screenshot.
(Choosing not to RT)

So, a 🧵

1/ 👉🏿There’s no such thing as being “apolitical”. Politics is life. Everything about our lives & living is informed by politics & we inform the dynamics of said politics by our participation or lack thereof.

2/

📣Almost 40% of Black mothers and birthing people experience Maternal Mental Health (MMH) conditions.

📣Compared to white women, Black women are twice as likely to experience MMH conditions but half as likely to receive treatment.

mmhla.org/wp-content/upl…

#AIMART
#BMHW22 📣Black women are one of the most undertreated groups for depression in the U.S.

📣Over 50% cases of postpartum depression in women of color go unreported

#AIMART
#BMHW22

On this upcoming International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery & Transatlantic SlaveTrade 3/25 & International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination 3/21, I'm remembering how Black people were cared for by Veterinarians along with white folks' animals. 1/ I’m remembering how we weren’t seen by human physicians unless our case was complex or “interesting” and were serving the role of “teaching material” for the education of white physicians or “research materials” for experimentation and research to improve white health.

2/

Morntint☀️
Now that you washed the crust from yo’ eyes & done your morntint meditation - can’t wait to see you 1pmET this aftrnoon on @TwitterSpaces
for the crisis management that is #AIMART becos
📣Global AntiBlackness is a Global Health Crisis!
🌍Africa*Asia*MidEast

AMPLIFY!

https://twitter.com/innodim/status/1504795844171735042

With phenomenal co-hosts @AmyTanMD @karanjasan @pritinemani @rede4blacklives

twitter.com/i/spaces/1ZkJz…

Good morntint to everyone except people who reflexively hit the “people shld be hired/admitted/recognized on the basis of their qualifications rgrdlss of skin color/gender” button when a Black (woman) is considered for a position, but not when it’s the usual mediocre white men.

https://twitter.com/oni_blackstock/status/1487415955726733312

These folks are your run-of-the-mill “color blind” intentionally ignorant folks who refuse to understand that we don’t function in a vacuum & the ubiquitous presence & impact of white supremacy informing their expectation of qualifications for marginalized identities while…
2/

#AIMART storytime 🧵
This just in: Boom💥
So, I’m getting ready for work today, tying up the ol’ scrubs and peek at my phone - I see a message, sent last night from the ER doc stating that one of my patients, a young Black man admitted for Sickle cell pain crisis...

1/ ..., wanted to leave and the doc was okay with discharging because the patient’s pain seemed to have resolved. Ok, I get to the 🏥and my team informs me the patient is still in-house (in the ED – No beds on the floors.

2/

Good morntint!
So………how are these “DEI” “Microaggression” trainings going? 💅🏾💅🏾💅🏾

https://twitter.com/dch1309/status/1452282702066069505

Because when super white, male, DOCTORS claim to be 1️⃣microaggressed against 2️⃣Because a (Black Womxn) patient exerted their right to the quality of care they deserve3️⃣ w/ No apology or correction or learning after being corrected by Black & minoritized folks….