Last year through the ManKind Project, I took two classes, Waking Up to Whiteness, and Unpacking Power, Privilege, and Diversity. Both of these courses taught me about the assumptions I had made through life as a White man. Even though I considered myself to be non-prejudicial, I found that that was not enough. The only people who could champion the cause of and right the injustices of targeted individuals were those whom society had placed in the role of privilege. Namely, White, CIS-gender male, heterosexual, Christians.

In documenting Arlinda's story, I had captured more racism than I was aware of. Naturally, in growing up Black in rural Alabama in the 1950s, one would expect racism to factor into Arlinda's daily life. However, encountering racism in the liberal bubble of the Bay Area was entirely surprising to me. I had shown the months it took to diagnose the cancer, the long lines at the pharmacy, the doctors disregarding her symptoms, and refusing to adequately abate the pain she endured. All of these symptoms point to medical racism. However, the doctors themselves, I would not call racist. The racism lies in the system.

Out of work and with her COBRA insurance expired, Arlinda did not have the funds for adequate testing to find the cancer, until she procured Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program.

With Medi-Cal, she had $40-60 copays at Walgreens, which she could not afford. So she waited for 3-6 hours at a time at the hospital pharmacy for a $0 copay. She sat in the waiting room and queued in the line along with the hundred or so other patients at that time who could not afford the copay at a national pharmacy chain.

The doctors are overworked in the hospital system, needing to cycle through as many patients in a day as possible, due to the low payout that Medic-Cal provides the doctors. If the patient's medical stats show there is no problem, they have little incentive to explore the issue in the 10 minutes allotted to that patient.

The medical textbooks read by aspiring doctors at University have outdated information about the pain tolerance of Black patients. Even Black doctors are misinformed that Black patients can handle more pain than their non-Black counterparts. Again, insurance constraints limit how far a doctor can push the dosage of painkilling drugs. Understanding the root cause of the pain would take more time, and the approval of insurance to examine the cause further.

Understanding the foundation and complexity of the issue is the first step in overcoming it. Next, we need to advocate for adequate medical care, and provide solutions to the medical and insurance infrastructures that can maintain profitability for them, while providing decent care for the patient.