24 | Go Tell’em | For Real, For Real
56:42 Share

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Black History for Real early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Forget one-size-fits-all diets. With Noom, you get a personalized weight loss plan that's tailored to your lifestyle. No food is off-limits. Enjoy your favorites while discovering healthier habits. Noom's users love the flexible approach, blending psychology and biology to help you lose weight in a way that's sustainable for you. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and biology-based approach.

Sign up for your trial today at Noom.com. That's N-O-O-M dot com. And check out Noom's first ever cookbook, The Noom Kitchen, for 100 healthy and delicious recipes to promote better living. Available to buy now wherever books are sold.

As summer winds down, let your imagination soar by listening on Audible. Whether you listen to stories, motivation, expert advice, any genre you love, you can be inspired to imagine new worlds, new possibilities, new ways of thinking. With Audible, there's more to imagine when you listen.

And speaking of listening, you can listen to the best-selling science fiction thriller Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir right now on the Audible app and traverse the galaxy in a desperate last-chance mission along with astronaut Ryland Grace, all from the comfort of your living room.

As an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. New members can try Audible free for 30 days. Visit audible.com slash WonderyPod or text WonderyPod to 500-500. That's audible.com slash WonderyPod or text WonderyPod to 500-500.

Black is beautiful. Black is beautiful.

Welcome back to another episode of Black History For Real. And this week, we are taking a deeper look at some of the themes that we have recently covered on the show. We're using our Fannie Lou Hamer story arc as a springboard to talk about voting rights and reproductive rights, two topics that still loom large nearly 50 years after Hamer's death. If you haven't listened to the episodes about Fannie Lou Hamer, we strongly encourage you to go back and take a listen.

Yes, consider this your encouragement. For those of you who have listened, you already know that the Fannie Lou Hamer we're talking about, she stood on business and you realize she'd already learned about it in them school books. She was a black woman from the deep south with just a whole sixth grade education. She went on to be an icon of the civil rights movement, voting rights, women's rights, all that. She fought poverty, polio, and the president to get what she and her people deserved.

So today we're going to be talking about a lot of the same things we still fighting for that Hamer was also fighting for way back then. Let's get into some black history for real. Let's get into it.

So just for some quick background, Fannie Lou Hamer was the youngest of 20 children born in 1917 to some sharecroppers. She began picking cotton at the early tender age of six. At the age of 12, she was forced to drop out of school to help her parents.

parents make ends meet. By the age of 13, she would be picking 200 to 300 pounds of cotton daily while living with polio. You gotta remember at this time, there was no Americans with Disabilities Act, which today offers certain protections for those with various disabilities. And even if there had been concessions for disabled folks, they probably would not have extended to Black folks.

So they had this polio stricken, barely a teenager out in the Mississippi heat picking cotton. And that right there, folks, is probably the reason why you never heard about old Fannie in your school books, because then we would have to take some of that patriotism that we give to OFDR about how great of a trailblazer he was fighting polio. Because then we have to think about how this black woman with the sixth grade education was forced to pick two to three hundred pounds of cotton daily to

Yeah. I mean, there's the fact that she was, you know, a young child when she was doing this on top of being a person with a disability is out of the question.

Absolutely incredible. And to your point, conscious really speaks to the way disability, the way adversity, the way triumph is framed when it's white folks, when it's white men versus when black folks and specifically black women have to overcome certain systemic barriers in order to make a name for themselves and fight injustice. Yeah.

Yeah, and just to sprinkle some context in there, because you know the motto, facts of a feelings. What we know is that Fannie Lou Hamer contracted polio as a child around 1919. Around the same time, Franklin D. Roosevelt contracted polio in 1921. In contrast, in being outside picking cotton, FDR was getting hydrotherapy.

in Warm Springs, Georgia, and was afforded leg braces and later a wheelchair. The same rehabilitation center that FDR was going to, it was founded in the 1920s before he became president and maintains a white-only policy admission, which will almost go to show that the black people that was dealing with polio at the same time FDR's being championed for what he's doing, you see how the struggles, you feel me, is set up a little different.

Absolutely. And despite her hardships, Fannie Lou finds love in reading and finds love in Perry Hamer. He's a tractor driver at the same plantation where she works.

Fannie Lou and her husband wanted to have children, but in 1961, she was forcibly sterilized by a white doctor. When she went in to have a uterine tumor removed, a hysterectomy was performed without her consent or her knowledge. Forced sterilization was a form of population control widely targeted towards poor black folks. It was so common that members of the black community called the procedure a Mississippi appendectomy.

That's just so nasty to think about. I know. We're talking right now about how this black woman has been kind of erased out of history, kind of illustrating the need for black history for real, for real. So tell your mama name and your daddy name and your uncles name to go on and tune into the podcast. Definitely check out them past Fannie Lou Hamer episodes as well as some of them other ones, because we're going to really be able to explore different entities like medical racism. We'll be doing this episode right here.

Yeah, and the thing that we touched on is the fact, and something I love that we do on the show is contextualizing these topics for today. Unfortunately, medical racism is something that we continuously deal with. I'm sure listeners will remember not too long ago, Serena Williams almost died in childbirth.

And I think that her story is so important to highlight because of the fact that despite being a highly decorated athlete, a celebrity, someone who is very wealthy and for that reason should have access to the highest quality medical care,

Even when she was in the midst of childbirth and she told her doctors, hey, you know, I have a tendency towards blood clots and my legs are feeling it. I think something could be wrong. They didn't want to listen to her. She almost died. And so when you think about that, you realize, okay, if this is how a famous wealthy black person gets treated...

How do you think non-famous or poor black people are being treated under the same circumstances? There was also very recently a YouTuber by the name of Jessica Petway who was misdiagnosed with fibroids. She was dealing with

you know, severe pain in her abdomen and intense bleeding. She was seeing doctors over and over again before she was finally diagnosed with cervical cancer. And then she passed away at the top of this year. And to think that she had gone to so many doctors who told her, oh no, it's just fibroids. Oh no, they just dismissed all the pain and all the symptoms that she was having. And

For her to then die from something that could have possibly been treated earlier and she could have survived. Again, this is happening way too frequently today, considering this was something that Fannie Lou was dealing with before.

50 years ago. 50 years ago. I think for me, it makes me think about Professor Kimberly Crenshaw's concept of intersectionality and thinking about how not only do we have different identities that intersect, you might be a woman, black,

a poor southerner with polio also thinking about how the different systems kind of interact and intersect as well thinking about like medical racism with sexism with a little classism with a couple of the other isms it really make it work for me you have to we have to raise our racial literacy and our literacy to understand power and domination as a society to make it we can have better analysis and better understanding for how folks get pushed into the matrix

Yes. And unfortunately, there are way too many examples outside of Fannie Lou Hamer's situation where she received this hysterectomy without her consent. Another one that people might remember is the Tuskegee syphilis study in the 1930s all the way through the 1970s. The US Public Health Service conducted a study on 600 African American men where they studied

399 with syphilis and 201 without. They were studying the progression of untreated syphilis. The men in the study were misled and therefore denied treatment, even after penicillin became widely available as a cure in the 1940s. The medical mistrust that the Black community deals with comes from a long legacy of

Medical apartheid, as well as these examples like Tuskegee syphilis studies. So when we get to 2020 and we start talking about public taking COVID shots and things like that, it made a lot of people, especially in the black community, really kind of have this traumatic response to how we have been duped, misled in or denied treatment of particular things or used as some elaborate. Mm hmm.

Yeah. And I'm so thankful that you, again, tied it back to current events because when that conversation was happening about anti-vax, there were definitely some outliers that were kind of doing these like wild conspiracy theories, but there was also a lot of valid distrust and skepticism around taking the COVID vaccine, like to your point, because-

historically, we've been used as guinea pigs. So, you know, it was bad enough that we had leadership at the time who were not doing a good job of communicating the risks and actually instituting policies that would keep all of us safe. But then when there was a vaccine available, it was no wonder that Black people especially were skeptical about

Not only skeptical, what we know is that history loves to celebrate the productions of black women, but they usually doesn't celebrate black women as mere producers. When we're talking about this old syphilis and Tuskegee experiment, we also have to acknowledge how most studies and dialogue usually ignores how the impact of these victims' wives also got brought into syphilis. You know what I'm saying? Syphilis is a STD, it can be transmitted. So there are multiple ways and different impacts that

to this day in Tuskegee, Alabama, they still dealing with the impacts of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. There was at least 40 wives of the black men participating in that study who were also infected by syphilis. And further pushing the context on black history for real, for real, there were 19 children born with congenital syphilis as a result of the experiment showing you how not only black men, but also black children were impacted by this experiment that also was like a manifestation of medical racism.

You can't have a conversation about medical racism without talking about Henrietta Lacks. For y'all in the back that maybe not know of this story, there were sales taken from this black woman named Henrietta Lacks. They were taken without her knowledge, without her consent, without her family's knowledge, without her family's consent. Henrietta Lacks was so instrumental and big farmer, her sales known as the HeLa sales has been used to fund and push numerous medical breakthroughs. Still, her family was not informed or compensated for

for decades and they literally had to fight in the courts for decades to even get a little bit of progression. - Yeah, I mean, her story is so incredible because not only were her cells being used for all of these different testings that then were used to create different medicines, but the fact that they did not notify her family, like it wasn't just like a, oh, and it was an accident, right? Like they conscientiously decided not to tell her family.

And thankfully, there was a somewhat happy ending because they were able to get compensated for it. Eventually. Eventually, eventually. But that doesn't negate how long it took them to get the money that they were owed. And it's also one of those things where like-

you know, ultimately they were able to use these cells in order to create medical advancements. There's a world in which if they had asked, I feel like they would have said, yes, it's like, we're going to pay you. This is going to save lives. Your mother's going to be part of history in a really incredible way. But it's like they didn't want to involve them because they knowingly wanted to steal from them. I mean, it's just so insidious. It's like, how are

you doing this for the good of mankind, supposedly, while at the same exact time? You know, it's like, whose benefit is this for if you're not even willing to credit and pay the Black woman and the Black family, you know, but sacrifice their loved one for the good of all of these medical advancements? Like, it just, it's so contradictory to like the Hippocratic oath, right? Of like,

Of treating others fairly. Well, Frankie. I know. I'm like trying to rationalize something that can't be rationalized. Well, Frankie, I'm going to give you your way to rationalize with this. As a black woman, you are a public good.

You are a public good and everything you can do and do is always going to be seen as that a public good. So you being able to probably benefit from this in any way, this means your black ass being selfish. And what we know is that America loves to paint black women as being uniquely selfish, especially when you're not willing to do something for the collective.

at the expense of you. So I think that, you know... We have to be the strong... The strong black woman has to be the mule for everybody. We have to mule for everyone. When I learned that America is one of the only two countries in the world that allows for big pharma to be able to market their products, it really made me come to always think about Henrietta Lacks' story and how Johns Hopkins Hospital was seen as one of the most prestigious hospitals ever.

to this day in America, regardless of how racist they've been in the past, regardless of how they still implicated in racist practice. To me, it make me think about how white institutions are always able to get away with doing some foul, wild shit while still being able to keep their legitimacy. But black institutions,

Oh, man, listen, man, listen, listen, listen, listen, man, listen, man. Never. If you create a black institution and you had a D-Hall when you was in sixth grade, the institution that you made when you was studying, we're going to call into question because how the hell you got a D-Hall when you was in sixth grade? That's how I fight they do black institutions. But I digress. I don't think Henrietta Lacks' family got enough compensation. John Hopkins is seen as the biggest employer in the state of Maryland.

And they're literally they were able to build this empire based off a lot of the profits and the accolades and legitimacy they were able to get from those HeLa cells. So one could argue, you feel me, that John Hopkins that we know today in the status quo is all can be accredited to what they were able to do in the still in exploitation of the HeLa cells from Henrietta Lacks. It's kind of a very poetic concept.

to the medical legacy that we have here in America. And you're going to see when we start getting to these other examples that we have in this episode, you're going to be like, damn, Black History for Real for real is medical racism. ♪

Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous two-year contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about, you insane Hollywood a**hole?

So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Want to teach your kids financial literacy, but not sure where to start? Greenlight can help. With

With Greenlight, parents can keep an eye on kids' spending and saving, while kids and teens use a card of their own to build money confidence. As a parent, you can send instant money transfers, set up chores, automate allowance, and more. It's a convenient way to run your household, customized to your family's needs, and the easy way to raise financially smart kids. Get started with Greenlight today and get your first month free at greenlight.com slash wondery. ♪ Black is beautiful ♪

Well, you know, we talked about Fannie Lou being sterilized. And unfortunately, that's something that has happened time and again throughout American history. Many Black, Indigenous, and Latino women were subject to forced sterilizations throughout history. It was often without their knowledge or their consent. And the practice was really part of a larger eugenics movement. The movement sought to control the reproduction of those deemed, quote-unquote, undesirables.

And of course, you know, we don't have black people that are disproportionately seen as being undesirable. And since we brought up eugenics, I got a little bone to pick with a couple of y'all, right? A lot of people, you feel me, love to bring up Planned Parenthood in relationship to Margaret Sanger, in relationship to eugenics. And as a result, you feel like because this historical era, this historical past exists, anything that Planned Parenthood could do that was negative.

It tastes everything. I always find that that analysis is very preposterous because those same people don't feel that way when we start talking about how the KKK started the Democratic Party or how the white supremacy today, you feel me, going back to Goldwater has been able to have a stronghold on Republican Party. So for me, it always- Or how the Nazis gave us the Volkswagen, but y'all still drive the quarter.

You know what I'm saying? We keep on going, you feel me? You love singing, you know, everything about your Amazing Grace. You love that song, Amazing Grace, made by Slave Master. Star Spangled Banner, made by Slave Master. So for me, it's always very interesting how we can pick and choose what history matters today

And it's always interesting how we make it with certain things today is sanitized and distances from whatever history bring it to us. And I don't think it's ironic that Planned Parenthood and the status quo can be net good for black women in terms of reproductive freedom, in terms of getting tested for STDs, in terms of a whole bunch of different things. But Frankie.

Margaret Sanger. Yeah. I mean, you're totally right because, look, we cannot ignore the roots of Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger's politics were absolutely racist and her motivations were racially motivated as well. But that does not negate

the way that Planned Parenthood has been able to empower women, people, non-binary folks, men of all backgrounds in order to have access to reproductive care. And reproductive care is helpful.

healthcare and it's something that everyone should be afforded. And so, yes, we can acknowledge its roots while also saying that today it's a net positive that every single person should be able to make decisions about their reproductive care and

And it's not just abortion. They're also giving out birth control. They're also giving people the ability to get cancer screenings. They're also giving people, you know, you're being able to get OBGYN appointments if you are pregnant, right? Like there's services that they provide that do include abortion, but they have a whole host of services that have nothing to do with that, that are just about reproductive care and taking care of your body.

And people should be empowered to do so no matter who they are.

And because you're talking about eugenics and production, I always thought this was interesting how black people's value that we have to the American public is always tied to our ability to be exploited or work for free. Meaning we can't work for free. The way our body's going to be caught up, it's going to be seen as undesirable. Well, if we can't work for free, then we're lazy. Yeah. If we don't work for free, we're lazy. If we don't work for free, we're undesirable. It's just like, what? It don't make any sense.

And on the topic of working for free and the ways that our bodies have been abused and used for the advancement of others, we have to touch on the father of gynecology, Dr. James Mario Sims conducted experimental surgeries on enslaved African-American women without anesthesia. Now, like...

This blows my mind as someone that has gone to the gynecologist and knows that it can be an uncomfortable experience under the best of circumstances to know that the advancements and the technology that we use to this very day was developed on enslaved African-American women without anesthesia is mind-blowing. He actually believed...

And unfortunately, a lot of people believe this. He believed that we felt less pain than white women. And his practices were incredibly brutal and exploitative. And again, a lot of the techniques that we understand and the things we understand about reproductive systems were developed from Dr. James Mario Sims. And honestly, I don't even think we should have that doctor in front of his name, right? It feels like...

It feels like his behavior should disqualify him from being called a doctor. You know, you can be a doctor and abuse people. You can be the president and be convicted of felons. You know what I'm saying? This is just a way that we illustrate how white privilege is not just something that's 20-20 fold. We can take it all the way back to the plantation times. Because to me, it made me think about how medical progression in this country is.

typically comes at the expense of black women's pain. We've now given you not only Fannie Lou Hamer, not only Henrietta Lacks, not only the countless nameless indigenous Hispanic black women names, we also have this father of gynecology showing you that there is a legacy, a literal legacy of our country being able to push forward for progress at the expense of women and particularly black women. I think that- Even the fact that he's called the father of gynecology. To this day. Like the

father of gynecology sounds like a positive thing, right? So much the father of gynecology. His shit was so instrumental that people in the medical industry still believe that black women feel less pain than white women.

It happens all of the time, especially, you know, the maternal mortality rates for Black women are astronomically high. And so often what happens is women are in the process of, you know, giving birth and or are having contractions and whatnot. And they say, I feel pain, something doesn't feel right. And they are told they are exaggerating. There are medical techniques

I think it was a few years ago, there was a viral screenshot going around on Twitter that was saying that ranking the pain tolerance based on skin color. This was not that long ago. And many of those textbooks are still in circulation. And people genuinely believe this about us. Yeah. And you would be pathologized as a damn criminal, a drug seeking criminal that is over exaggerating your pain because you need some pain meds.

It almost told me like the further we go in the past, I mean, like the further we go, the more we stay the same, which is kind of just weird to me. It's kind of sad, you know, and we know facts over feelings. Studies have been shown that black patients are less likely to receive adequate pain management, especially when compared to their white patients, especially when compared to their white patients. The idea is that black people feel less pain.

It ain't going nowhere. All right, more examples, unfortunately, when it comes to maternal health are the Puerto Rican birth control trials of the 1950s.

Poor Puerto Rican women were used as subjects in birth control trials without informed consent as well. There is a common denominator here. We don't do this without your consent, whether you like it or not. They were given high doses of experimental drugs, and the drugs led to serious side effects and health complications. So again, thinking about those side effects and those warnings that you see on your birth control labels,

The way that knowledge was found was at the detriment of somebody else's reproductive health. What percentage of Black people in Puerto Rico do you think were disproportionately impacted by being in poverty or being poor? That were impacted also without this informed consent of them being tested? Oh, I can't even assume a number because I'm sure anything that I'm going to guess is going to be too low.

Something that I think about when we talk about medical racism is I talk about all of the people that I know online and in real life that were so fervent about watching The Handmaid's Tale. And I was like, this is not fun for me. I'm

I'm not like, ooh, what's going to happen? What rights are going to be taken away in this episode? Because so much of the storylines in The Handmaid's Tale, and I can't remember what her name is that wrote the book, but she said as much, that she looked

at historic events when talking about forced sterilization, women being forced to have babies against their will, wet nurses. I mean, just so many of the elements that are used in this quote unquote fictional show that are used as entertainment are

are really based on things that were done to black and indigenous women in this very country. And it's like, well, of course you can watch this and like, you know, get all the Emmys and such when folks don't know our real history. The show doesn't say, you know, inspired by true events. It's presented as, you know, science fiction. Oh my God. This is, can you believe it? This would be crazy if this happened.

Hey, man, I think that I got all the money that I made last year, all the money I ever make. I will kick anybody ass in the debate saying that literally all of the apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy doomsday movies, they all capture shit that black folks have already politically, socially, economically been through. And it's literally seen as a sci-fi fantasy apocalyptic doomsday because it's asking the question, what if it happened to white people? Right.

That's literally all it comes down to. It's like, well, forced sterilization, we have a history of that. We still see people going through it now. Having a reproductive alternative and freedom taken away, we see what happens with that. Being seen as a sexual object only for the desire of men, we've seen that as well. It's like all of these things are typically already in the status quo. It's just happening to people that Margaret Sanger then would have said was undesirable.

Therefore, what we're going through is undesirable. The world don't really care about it. And usually folks don't care about it until they friend out.

Yeah, you know, you bringing that up with apocalyptic movies and those types of films, I saw someone make a similar point about horror films, that horror films are often showing like what a woman's experience is, like being stalked and being brutalized and being sexualized and being seen as hysterical. But to your point, it's through the lens of like, what if this happened to men? Yeah.

Well, now it's really scary. And that was a light bulb moment for me because I really had not made that connection. But it also made me realize, oh, this is why I don't want to watch those movies. When we talk about medical racism on a transplant list, it's horrible, too. Black patients in the 20th century were less likely to be referred to kidney transplants, especially, especially when compared to white patients. We can't forget the discriminatory practices within the medical community. We got the wait list.

Black people are half as likely to be put on the kidney transplant wait list as they white patients. We also got wait times.

They say time is money and money is time. Black patients face a transplant wait time that is a year longer than white patients. So when we start thinking about how black people deal with a lot of crazy stuff, a lot of times it's just because we are black. Not because of the decisions that we made, not because of the way we had our hair or the way we was dressed. Literally, our black presence sometimes make it enough for us to be able to see some violence. We got transplant rates rising.

One year after renal failure, white people are almost four times more likely to be received a transplant than black people. Four times more likely.

We also have to talk about living donor transplants. In 2020, 64% of all living donor transplants in the US went to white patients compared to 11% of black recipients. And then of course there's segregation. Black residents in the most segregated neighborhoods have 59% lower access to kidney transplants than white patients in the least segregated areas.

So again, there's often these conversations of, well, y'all separate yourselves. It's like, did people choose to be segregated? Or is this a result of the institution of segregation, the trickle down that contributes to where people live today, and then impacts the access that they have to social services, to healthcare? And in this instance, something as...

not simple, but something as what should be, you know, pretty even keel of like, if you need a transplant, you should get one. But where you live could potentially impact you in a way that means that you won't end up getting one. Fannie Lou Hamer was able to have children through adoption. She and Pap adopted four daughters. And in a sad twist, one of them, Dorothy Jean,

didn't live past the age of 22. She was denied admission to the local hospital because her mother's activism. Think about that. Her mother's activism got her denied admission into a local hospital. She died from internal bleeding. When we think about reproductive rights and health specifically, it seems like we're going backwards.

There is a concerted effort by right-wing politicians and ideological groups and some of their homies alike to restrict access to abortion and other reproductive health services. As a black person who lives down south, I am most concerned when I see Republicans being able to dupe black people and specifically about reproductive freedom with folding in things about religion, folding things in about Christianity that's going to have a disproportionate impact on black people or

It's so frustrating also that these groups that are pushing these restrictive policies have claimed the misnomer of pro-life policies.

Because let's be real, y'all don't care about life. You care about birth. You are forced birth. Because why is it you're so concerned about, oh, save the baby, save the babies. But then you won't do anything to make sure that once the baby is here, it has a high quality of life. You won't do anything to make sure that the parents of that child have, you know, health care and a roof over their head and clean water.

water and affordable food and childcare and affordable diapers and baby food, all of the things that are going to help give your child a high quality of life, we don't want to do that. These groups say they are pro-life, but they only care about controlling your ability to produce a child, not actually give a child a high quality of life. And

And it is so frustrating because in actuality, what they want is they want to create more children that they can push into the school to prison pipeline. They want more young bodies that they can lock up.

up. They want more people to be saddled in poverty because they weren't able to finish school because they had a baby too young. That's what they want. They want people's lives to be upended because they know, they know damn well that having a baby too early in your life lowers your, like decreases your chances to go and go to college.

to have a certain type of job, to live a certain quality of life. And it's just so frustrating that they keep saying, oh, pro-life, the Bible, the Bible. It's like, you do what the Bible tells you to do and stay out of my uterus. Leave me alone. Your uterus means I'm supposed to be in it.

God, it's so annoying. In my mind, that's what they be saying though. Because to me, conservative contradictions is like, hey, big government bad. We got to make sure government not outreaching and overreaching, but government going to control your uterus as well. To me, the perfect one-liner. And make no mistake, if you wealthy and

you'll be able to get access to birth control. You'll be able to get an abortion. If your mistress needs an abortion, she'll be able to get one. It's you poor motherfuckers that we don't want you to have an abortion. Definitely, definitely. We don't want y'all having abortions because we need y'all to be able to give the labor union. But Marjorie Greene Taylor, you feel me? Her husband made the mistress pregnant. Well, and the other thing, I'm sure you saw this conscious, which was

It was a bittersweet irony because I don't want to celebrate anybody feeling the consequences of bad decisions or supporting things that go against their best interests because ultimately, we all face those consequences. But there were a number of conservative women who were really surprised when they found out

that their IVF treatments were being impacted by these pro-life conservative politics. Because if you think an embryo is a baby, if that's what you think, because an embryo is not a baby the same way a tadpole is not a frog, then suddenly...

IVF is considered abortion because you can't use all those embryos. And now people who want to have babies, again, not people who want to have an abortion, regardless of what you think about abortion, people who want to have a child, people that are spending thousands of dollars...

Pro-life folks who want to, and again, and people who are pro-choice, who just want to have a baby and have spent thousands of dollars to collect these embryos, to have these treatments done. To have them thrown out, too. It's crazy. And have them thrown away.

And I've had many friends that have gone through IVF and egg freezing. It's really hard on your body and it takes a really long time and it costs a lot of money and most healthcare does not cover it. And to know that people have gone through all of that for the shit to be thrown away because you're pro-life, bro?

This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. Black is beautiful.

Let's jump into some of these numbers because Black women in the U.S. die more than white women during and shortly after pregnancy. And this disparity is often attributed to systemic racism, spoiler, implicit bias in health care, and socioeconomic factors. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2020, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 55.3 deaths per

per 100,000 live births. Meanwhile, in 2020, the maternal mortality rate for white women was 19.1 deaths per 100,000 live births. Now, hot take.

I think the number should be lower for everybody, okay? For everybody. Because in a modern day and age, it is ridiculous to think that you can carry a child, you know, nine months, eight months, however long you're able to carry a child, and then you might not come home. But to know that for black women, that number is exponentially higher, and

And then let's talk about the fact that folks will have all sorts of shit to say to you if you are a black woman who's unmarried and don't got no children. And ask me how I know, because so many people have so much to say about my reproductive choices. When, you know, first of all, let's not talk about how much it costs to have a baby. Am I going to live if I choose to have a baby?

Frankie, you're being selfish, Frankie. You have to better society and be a baby producer. And you know, you're, you're, you're alive for a new life. You live your life now. You can be a birther of a child, land your back and have a baby. The way they talk about, the way they talk about black women's worth over on, on the ticky tockies, they'll say, well, if you, you don't have a baby, what are you meant to, what are you meant to be on this earth to do if you don't have a baby?

That sound like something master would say. That sound like something master would say. God damn it, you slave Negro. You ain't got no good to me. 200 pounds of cotton a day ain't enough. Can you produce me 10 more Negroes? 10 more. 10 more. Mm-mm.

And we mentioned Serena Williams in 2017 after giving birth to her daughter via an emergency C-section. Serena Williams experienced a life-threatening health scare. She developed blood clots in her lungs. Now, Serena Williams, as we all know, is a famous and respected all over the world tennis pro. Okay? What the...

arguably one of the best tennis players of all time. And she had to... Greatest athletes of all time. The greatest athletes, exactly. In the top five. Exactly. She repeatedly had to advocate for herself and the doctors weren't listening. There is a heartbreaking documentary about this experience. And...

I had to shut it off. It was really, really difficult for me to watch. Even knowing that she survived, the frustration and the fear in her voice that one of the greatest athletes of our generation could have died, was so close to death just because she was a black woman who needed medical help. And you know what? I'm going to shake it up a little bit further. Serena's husband is white.

And as someone who was once married to a white person, folks love to talk up and down about how, well, you're married to a white person and you're going to get all these extra benefits and you're trying to escape your blackness. You're trying to, you don't care about who you are as a black person. And yet here is an example of a wealthy, successful black woman who is married to a white man and

even that did not prevent her from experiencing medical racism that almost led to her death. What, her having a white husband did not allow for her to escape her blackness? It sure did not. Her being a multi-millionaire did not allow for her to escape to her blackness. There's a lot of people that believe. But they'll say something different on Twitter.

Oh, man. But hey, there's a lot of folks on Twitter and TikTok and just throughout social media that believe that black people can either A, hustle their way out of white supremacy or B, hate to say it, fuck their way out of white supremacy. And a lot of them don't acknowledge that that is not how structural oppression works. And regardless of what your interpersonal feelings is about what that black person is doing, the system, the structure, the institution, I

already got them positioned. So while we debating on Twitter about the likelihood of a person being married to a white person and what this mean, they mean for black people, the white supremacists, they got all y'all asses out there. You feel me? They got us all out. You know what I'm saying? Thank you for doing the work for us. Thank you for pushing our talking points. Individually, people that listen to this, me and Francesca are not

boiling down the significance of black people being with black people. We are critiquing the idea that when a black person is not with a black person, that this means that they get to skip or navigate around their blackness. It's like that is racially illiterate.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a warrior for reproductive rights, but she got her start fighting for voting rights for everybody. In August 1962, Hamer and 17 others attempted to vote, but they failed a literacy test. Despite Hamer being fully literate, these literacy tests were used as a tool of systemic racism in the United States, particularly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

These tests were designed to make sure that only "educated" citizens could vote. But let's be real, they were implemented to disenfranchise African Americans and other minority groups. On December 4th, Fannie Lou Hamer went to the courthouse in Indianola to take the test again. And she failed. Again. Hamer told the register, "You'll see me every 30 days till I pass."

On January 10th, 1963, she took the test for a third time and did exactly what she said she was going to do. She passed. She was finally registered to vote. Finally registered to vote after all the blood, the sweat, and the tears. But when she tried to vote, they turned her away. Apparently, her county required voters to have two poll tax receipts. Funny how that popped up.

Always giving more trials, tribulations to make it where you just want your voice heard to be voted. And for those unfamiliar, a poll tax is a fee that people are required to pay in order to vote in an election. Now, how does that sound legal or fair? You will never guess why these poll taxes were used. Hmm.

Hmm, let's put our thinking caps on. They were yet another way to disenfranchise Black people and even poor whites in the South. This might be one cliche that works. The more things change, the more they stay the same. We still fighting against the shady practices in order to vote?

So one thing that we've talked about on this show, but I've talked about in other projects that I've worked on, are voter ID laws. And when this conversation comes up, there are people who get so indignant. Everybody should have an ID. How is that unfair? When you're not acknowledging the fact that there are people that were born in this country that did not have access to getting an ID, and it does not make them any less of a citizen whatsoever.

Also, if you don't have a car or where you live and you don't have access to a DMV, you

then there are barriers in place for you to get an ID. And so these strict identification requirements, many states have enacted these laws requiring voters to present specific types of photo identification to vote. And these laws disproportionately affect minorities, the elderly, students, and low-income folks who might not have easy access to the required IDs.

Some states also only accept certain forms of ID, excluding common forms such as a student ID or a tribal ID. Now, again, that is not fair. And the thing that conscious you and I have said many a times, they wouldn't put all these barriers to vote if they didn't believe that voting was important. Yeah. Yeah. Again,

Not saying voting is the end all be all, but acknowledging as a tool, there has to be something that comes from it because they spend too much time, effort and energy and making it hard for particular communities to vote. They're not doing it for fun. They ain't doing it for fun. Whether we're talking about making it where there are limited polling areas in a particular community or making it where they criminalize and giving water to people in, you know what I'm saying, waiting in line. We see that there have been different efforts.

to not only roll back voting rights, but also criminalize access itself to being able to vote. We know that reduced early voting and absentee voting is something that is very instrumental in this so-called democracy. Some states have reduced the number of days available for early voting, making it harder for those with inflexible schedules to vote. I also think about how a lot of people that's not from America always frown upon that our voting days are not elections.

Always frown upon that our voting days go on as business as usual because they really don't want to give you the ability to go and vote. And if you take and you can't take the day off to vote from your job because you might risk losing your job. And anybody that's voted in the United States knows sometimes you show up and you're there for hours and you have to decide, do I stay in line?

So I can vote. And, you know, I remember when I was still living in New York, I would go vote on my lunch break sometimes. And it's like, you only have an hour, so you got to get back to work.

And not everybody's job is going to be as forgiving when it comes to being out for two hours, three hours just so you can vote. Well, especially because we're going to bring the internal link between these two things we talked about. In medical racism, people are always highly skeptical of black women in the medical industry because they believe what they're doing is criminal or is deviant.

Likewise, when we start talking about black people being able to vote, there are also different ways they have skepticism on the way that black people participate and make it where we don't get shit. The same way a black woman get denied pain medication is the same way that black people, men, women, people gender nonconforming will be denied an absentee ballot.

or denied the ability to stand in line without being criminalized for drinking water. We know that there are laws in some states that have made it more difficult to obtain and submit absentee ballots by requiring more stringent criteria or reducing the timeframe in which ballots can be requested and returned. Another issue when it comes to the voting process is the voter roll purges.

States have conducted aggressive purges of voter rolls, often using flawed data that results in the removal of eligible voters. These purges, once again, disproportionately impact minority and low-income voters. There's also the failure to notify. Voters are sometimes not adequately notified that they have been removed from the rolls, thus leading to confusion and disenfranchisement on Election Day.

Yeah, and back to this polling place closer, because when I was talking about it earlier, let's sprinkle some more context and make it where we know what we're talking about, right?

Many states, particularly in rural and minority populated areas, have closed and consolidated polling places, making it more difficult for residents to access voting locations. Longer travel time, longer wait times. These closures often result into longer distances and wait times, discouraging people or preventing them from voting, as well as you have states like Georgia that are literally criminalized giving water to individuals because they've been waiting in line for five, six hours to vote. Mm-hmm.

Hey, Jerry Manning, though, some shit they had made me think. I've been thinking about this. I'm going to think about this all election period. I live in the state of Texas. And in Texas last year, there were, I think, four million people that moved to the state from California and New York.

The Republicans, when they started seeing this influx of different people moving into Texas, they might have a different ideology when it comes to politics. They literally went and hollered at their boy, gerrymander, and they did a whole bunch of more gerrymandering. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm tired of gerry in them. All those lines are fake.

The drawing of, I mean, they're just not real. None of it is real. The drawing of electoral district boundaries to benefit a particular political party is known as gerrymandering, can dilute the voting power of certain groups, especially, say it with me, minorities. Racial gerrymandering, in some cases, districts are drawn specifically to reduce the electoral influence of racial minority groups.

My mama a convicted felon. My daddy a convicted felon. My grandma a convicted felon. Shit, all my uncles that I got blood with, they convicted felons. So what I'm about to get into is really something that's near and dear to my heart, especially seeing all these folks that's celebrating Donald Trump getting convicted of felonies, and I know ain't gonna shit happen to him. You know what I'm saying? Restrictions and re-enfranchisement. There are some states that have made it difficult

for individuals with felony convictions to restore their voting rights. Disproportionately affecting African Americans due to higher rates of incarceration, especially in this climate when you have people that love to bring up, well Biden passed the crime bills. Well damn, it sounds like to me you're acknowledging that this is one of the reasons why we deserve reparations dammit because it's not going away to slavery. That sounds like something you're saying the state did to black people that was unfair. But also if you can acknowledge there were laws that disproportionately made it where black people were convicted felons

How can you still ask folks, are you a convicted felon when it comes to jobs and when it comes to voting? In my opinion, they are some of the people that's most impacted by policy. So in my mind, they should be able to vote. Well, and it also is this idea of like you hear people say, if you do the crime, you do the time. OK, so you do the time and then you're punished forever. Forever.

I mean, it's kind of like, all right, well, then what was the point of doing the time? Right? Like there has to be some sort of, okay, this is, and you know, there's so many criticisms of the criminal justice system because it is not set up to keep people from reoffending. It's not set up to rehabilitate folks. But ultimately, if you've gone through the criminal justice system, I

You shouldn't have to be punished for the rest of your life if we are operating under the idea that you've done the time for the crime. So then, like, again, I'm trying to make sense of the nonsensical. And again, it's the thing of the system isn't, it's not failing. The system is operating exactly the way that it was built to. And the thing that really just makes my ass itch, if I'm being honest-

My family life changed forever. It's certain jobs they can't get, certain places they can't live in, certain resources they can't get access to because they convicted felons. Donald Trump gets to run for the president of the United States, being one of the top candidates right now. He gets to walk out of the court. While having 34 convictions. He gets to walk out of the courtroom? In the history of hood, I ain't never heard that shit in my life. I ain't never heard nobody getting convicted of one felony and walking away, let alone 34.

Continuing our topic about voter rights and access, legislative and judicial actions are also part of this conversation. The 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It eliminated the requirement of certain states to obtain federal approval before changing voting laws. And as a result, we have seen a surge in restrictive voting measures.

Many states have passed new laws that add barriers to voting. They've limited the use of ballot drop boxes and banned drive-through voting. Some states have even created stricter voter signature guidelines.

Some would call this the hypocrisy of democracy. Some states have implemented new rules that restrict the use of mail-in ballots. People gotta get notarized signatures. They've banned ballot collection by third parties and limited the availability of mail-in voting to certain groups.

Disinformation, misinformation, alternative facts, whatever you want to call it. It's all about the security and the reliability of mail-in voting has led to the decreased confidence in usage among voters. And I don't think it's ironic that people that are typically working class minorities are usually the ones that give these mail-in votes. And that's, I think, the correlation between the criminality of it.

It's also, as someone that has done mail-in voting more than once, because for a while it was bi-coastal, it's also really stressful to mail in your ballot and just hope that it gets there. You just got to hope and pray. You're checking online every single day, and it really does feel like it's set up in such a way where...

Your confidence is eroded. So again, people are going to be less likely to do mail-in voting. And then also, personally, I didn't feel as if I had the utmost confidence. I was always checking to make sure that my ballot had gotten in, and thankfully it did. But it wasn't until after the election that I was able to see on the website that it was like...

The day of the election, I was like, oh my God, I'm going to be so pissed if my vote's not counted. And then it was like a few days later, it showed that it was there. But I'm sure there were plenty of other people who didn't have that experience where they looked and their ballot just never got accepted. Like I said, Fannie Lou Hamer stood on business when it came to fighting for the right to vote. When her boss fired her, she kept on going.

On June 9, 1963, Hamer's bus was returning from a voter registration workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. It was led by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They were pulled over by the cops and Hamer was arrested. At the county jail, Hamer was nearly beaten to death. Hamer got out of jail three days later. Her injuries were severe, though.

It took her over a month to start healing from those harsh beatings. Keeping it real, she never totally recovered. Fannie was left with a permanent damage to one of her kidneys, but none of that held her back. She headed straight back to Mississippi to spearhead voter registration drives to be able to benefit all the folks in Mississippi.

So the thing that we have said numerous times over is that voting is not the end-all be-all, but I do think it's important to remember that all of these barriers that have been set up to specifically keep Black folks from voting should tell you a thing or two about its importance. They're not doing this because it's fun or it's an interesting challenge. It's because they know that empowering Black folks to vote

has the potential for us to have a say in our nation's process and to advocate for ourselves. And the powers that be do not want that. And let's just acknowledge the elephant in the room right now, man. A lot of us is going to get very, very caught up

in the top of that ballot in the presidential election, whether you want to talk about a Genocidal Joe or Criminal Trump. I recognize that. Don't get lost in the sauce of what's happening at the top of the ballot when you start to ignore the bottom of the ballot. Who's the sheriff? Who's the DA? Who's the superintendent? Your life is going to be more impacted by

the policies and by the positions that's locally being held and ran. So don't get caught up in being like, because the presidents of the United States are two options. I don't like them. I don't care about them. I'm not going to vote at all. This is going to impact how black people are this time is more likely of going to prison and this time is more likely to go into the county jail. This time is more likely of receiving some education that's anti them. You should be very mindful and vigilant of the way that local politics impact your everyday lived reality.

Yeah. And I would also add to that, that local elections are happening year round and they're not every four years. They're happening all of the time. And we have an obligation to ourselves and our community to get involved and remain active. And I think you put it perfectly conscious that while the presidential seat is one that is important and that we're all aware of, there are so many other positions on the

we in our day-to-day are going to interact with and be impacted by. And so, you know, the last thing that we're going to do here on the show is tell you who to vote for. But the one thing I will do is encourage you to be informed so that you can make the best decision that aligns with your morals for the good of yourself and for your community and for the people that you care about.

Well, thanks so much again for tuning in. This has been a special bonus episode of Black History for Real. Black History for Real is hosted by me, Francesca Ramsey. And me, Cassius Lee.

If you like Black History for Real, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Black History for Real is a production of Wondery. Sound design for this episode is by Lucas Siegel. The theme song is by Terrace Martin. Lindsay Gomez is a development producer. The production coordinator is Taylor Sniffin. Sophia Martins is our managing producer. Sonia May is our associate producer. Our producer is Matt Gantz.

Our senior producer is Morgan Gibbons. The executive producers for Wondery are Marshall Louie, Aaron O'Flaherty, and Candice Mariquez-Wren.

BP added more than $130 billion to the U.S. economy over the past two years by making investments from coast to coast. Investments like building EV charging hubs in Washington state and starting up new infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico. It's and, not or. See what doing both means for energy nationwide at bp.com slash investing in america.