Under the Skin

Adult nonfiction 

     "At every stage in life, Blacks have poorer health outcomes than whites and, in most cases, than other ethnic groups.  Black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die at birth or in the first year of life--a racial gap that adds up to thousands of lost lives every year.  Blacks in every age-group under sixty-five have significantly higher death rates than whites."

     Over decades and centuries people have offered up explanations for this phenomenon of Blacks living sicker and dying quicker.  Some looked to genetic or physiological differences.  Victim blaming has been quite popular for a long time.  Stereotypes of uneducated Blacks smoking, drinking, abusing drugs, dining on junk food, and forgoing exercise abound.  And now there are people saying that it's not race; it's class.  These differences disappear with education and high income.

     Bzzzt!  Not true!  In her groundbreaking Under the Skin Linda Villarosa indicts a villain that the medical establishment has been and still too often is reluctant to address.  It's racism, not race.  She has a lot of scientific evidence to show that it lurks in settings ranging from hospital delivery rooms to communities devastated by the toxins of environmental racism. 

     But she delivers those truths in a user friendly voice.  She's not one of those writers who you need an advanced degree to understand.  Chapters are centered around the plights of individual human beings: people like the Relf sisters, Minnie Lee and Mary Alice, who were sterilized without informed consent when they were only fourteen and twelve; Simone Landrum, who lost a baby and almost died herself when her symptoms weren't paid attention to; and brain cancer patient Danielle Bailey who grew up swimming in a coal ash polluted lake close to her home.  Their stories put human faces to statistics.

     There are still too  many people people, including very powerful people, who want systemic racism in health care and environmental policies to remain the elephant in the room we tiptoe around.  To change that a lot of us need to be enlightened and agitated and help speak truth to power.

     Maybe you could be one of us.

Jules Hathaway 

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