The White Privilege of Good Health

Please don’t “whitesplain” that you earned your place in life. I’m glad you are there, but acknowledge your advantage.

In the United States, healthcare is not a right, it is a privilege. If you have healthcare, acknowledge your privilege.

Our nation ties the ability to obtain medical consults, medical intervention, and prescriptions to abject poverty or bountiful employment.

If you are impoverished enough to obtain these minimal benefits of healthcare, I am sorry. You have more hurdles to overcome in the span of a day than I have in a month. I hope you have access to meet all of your needs in this country that houses 585 billionaires.

As a healthcare provider I don’t want my patients taking insulin every third day because it costs $230 a month (true story from a week ago). I don’t want you to struggle with hunger because you failed to complete your “workforce paperwork” to keep your medical card ─ while you were homeless and battling addiction. I want your child to be vaccinated even though you didn’t know you had to complete paperwork to keep their Medicaid benefits. I see your hurdles. I see the barriers that our “boot strap it up” society puts before you. I see you that you don’t have boots.

  If you are bountifully employed and you “earned” your place at the table, I appreciate that. But, please acknowledge how the path to the table was laid for you. You didn’t get there alone ─ someone helped you. Someone paved your road (literally). Someone voted to fund the school levy that bought supplies for your school. Someone hired your mother and/or father that put food on your table. In our country, advantages are passed down from generations before us. Black people missed out on that generational inheritance.

Health is influenced by economic stability, education, your neighborhood, the environment, social and community context, and access to healthcare. These are known as the social determinants of health. If you check each of these boxes, you are privileged. It doesn’t matter if you worked hard to get there, you are still the beneficiary of a complex system that worked in your favor.

How do persons of color line up? Two hundred fifty-one years of slavery gave white people a head start. In many parts of the country there is a 20-year life expectancy gap between black Americans and white Americans. White neighborhoods are richer and safer. The schools are better. Jobs are more plentiful. The kids have more to eat, and the neighborhoods are more likely to flourish. Don’t believe me? Fact check me. 

Black people suffer disproportionately from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, maternal morbidity, and Covid19. Until we address the social determinants of health for black people, we will continue to have disparities in health and health care. Black lives matter until all things are equal. Until they achieve the same level of health and prosperity that white lives have achieved. Only then will all lives matter equally.

Dr. Theresa Poling, DNP, APRN-BC, FNP

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