Around 10:30pm, December 20th, 2015, Barbara Dawson arrived at Liberty Calhoun Hospital in Blountstown, Florida with complaints of intense stomach pains and breathing problems. This was not out of the ordinary, as Dawson, age 57, had been admitted nearly 22 times at Florida hospitals since 1987 for breathing issues. This time, a doctor cleared her as healthy enough to be discharged several hours later. Dawson disagreed, insisting she still needed help, including the oxygen tank to which they had hooked her up. The investigative report later released stated that Dawson even called 911 twice while inside Liberty Calhoun requesting a transfer to a regional hospital because she did not like the way the doctors and nurses were treating her.
Nevertheless, the hospital claimed she was causing a disturbance and called police around 4:45 in the morning. Officer John Tadlock arrived, told Dawson she was being charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing, and attempted to get her to leave the room. Barbara Dawson pleaded with both hospital staff and the officer, begging to stay and saying she could not breathe. Officer Tadlock then handcuffed her and led her out of the hospital. As they reached the police car, Dawson collapsed. The officer later said he believed she was making herself dead weight in order to avoid going to jail. Although two nurses came to assess her condition, Barbara Dawson lay on the concrete in the hospital parking lot for nearly 20 minutes before being re-admitted to a room inside the hospital. Ninety minutes later, at 6:24 am, she was pronounced dead. The cause of death was a pulmonary saddle embolism, a blood clot in her lungs.
In January 2016, the officer’s dashcam video/audio were released, showing the distressing state Barbara Dawson was in leading up to her death. Dawson is heard begging with the police officer to leave her alone in the hospital room, pleading “Please don’t let me die!” Quotes from the hospital staff and officers demonstrate the chilling lack of care and belief with which they treated Dawson. When Dawson collapsed the officer is heard saying, “falling down like this . . . that’s not gonna stop you from going to jail.” When a nurse is attempting to help the officer load Dawson into the back of the police car, she says sarcastically, “for somebody who can’t breathe without the oxygen, you’re putting it off that much longer.”[i]
The Larger Issues
Health care consistently fails women, particularly women of color. Medical discrimination in the United States is a serious issue; it is factually evident that blacks and other marginalized groups in the U.S. experience worse health outcomes and premature death more than whites.[ii] Racial/ethnic health disparities are closely connected to economic, social, and environmental disadvantages. Black and Hispanic women are less likely to be treated at a hospital for heart attack or coronary artery disease symptoms.[iii] While the top three causes of death are the same for non-Hispanic blacks and whites, the risk factors and mortality rates for these causes are much greater among blacks.[iv] The maternal mortality rates for black women are appalling, with black mothers being three to four times more likely to die during or after delivery than white women.[v]
There is also a chilling familiarity to Barbara Dawson’s final words. As the officer forcibly attempts to remove her from the hospital, Barbara repeatedly cries, “I can’t breathe,” with eerie reminiscence of the final pleas of Eric Garner, a black man who also fell victim to state violence in 2014. The willingness of hospital staff to involve law enforcement in a non-violent, non-threatening situation shows the dangerous over-reliance on police to remove black Americans from areas in which they are not welcome. Liberty Calhoun Hospital CEO, Ruth Attaway, claimed that hospital staff only ask police to remove patients when they believe there is a reason to be concerned for the safety of other patients. It is clear from the released dashcam audio that Barbara Dawson did nothing more than raise her voice to convey her pain and need for help. The story from hospital and law enforcement officials includes Dawson allegedly screaming obscenities at staff, while the true audio simply shows a woman in fear, pleading for her life.
Relation to Class Theories
Feminist author bell hooks wrote of the harmful trope of the strong black woman in her work, Ain’t I a Black Woman. She writes of the women’s movement romanticizing the strength of black women in the face of oppression instead of using it as a method of dehumanization. Hooks states that black women became to be celebrated “for their ‘innate’ ability to bear tremendous burdens.”[vi] This stereotypical image erases any place for black women to be taken seriously in the face of pain, weakness, or any form of vulnerability. This idea was prevalent in the remarks of nurses repeatedly telling Barbara Dawson that she was fine, ignoring her own statements that she direly needed medical attention.
Women of color are also doubly oppressed in the medical system – women already suffer from not being taken seriously by doctor and nurses, both male and female. It is not uncommon for women to have their health concerns downplayed or dismissed by their doctors. For women of color, who statistically already receive less than optimal health care, the dangerous effects are multiplied. This issue is one that warrants a better understanding of intersectionality, such as Kimberlé Crenshaw analyzes in her work, “Mapping the Margins.”[vii] It is important to recognize these invisible intersections at which many womens’ lives lay in order to give name to the experiences of women of color. The convergence of both race and gender biases is reflected in the health care disparities for those that are marginalized by race, class, and/or sex.
Necessary Action
We need to make a serious plan to address the health disparities that affect women of color in this country. For many physicians, they do not exhibit explicitly racist views or behavior, but they operate in a system that is inherently racist. Fixing medical disparities requires addressing of structural racism and implicit bias that is rampant in our country’s institutions. Legislative ideas focusing on medical disparities have already been utilized on the presidential campaign trail.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a 2020 Presidential Candidate, has spoken of plans she has to implement change in hospitals. In order to address the high maternal mortality rates for black women, Warren suggested using financial incentives to motivate hospitals to improve health outcomes for black mothers. Warren said she wants hospitals “to see it as their responsibility to address this problem head-on and make it a first priority.”[viii] Senator Kamala Harris, also a 2020 hopeful, introduced a bill aimed at reaching health equity for black women as well in 2018. The CARE Act would fund implicit bias training for health care providers and establish a pregnancy home demonstration program.[ix] It is the responsibility of our leaders in government to take strides in reducing the extreme racial/ethnic health disparities in the United States, and ensuring that all women of color are equally heard and treated for their medical issues.
References on Barbara Dawson:
Footnotes:
[i]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHmqicpZSzQ The 2 hour dashcam in its entirety can be found here.
[vi]bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Routledge, 2015, 6.
[vii]Kimberle Crenshaw. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, p. 1241.