Getting Sick While Black

O, The Oprah Magazine, October 2018

In O’s longest and most in-depth reported feature of 2018 (I was the assigning editor), woman after woman told us the same disheartening things: “I felt like my doctor didn’t take me seriously.” “I felt like I wasn’t getting the care I needed.” Writer Erika Stallings interviewed dozens of black women, mostly college-educated white-collar professionals like lawyers, professors, and non-profit executives, who share dismaying experiences of racial bias, dismissal, and outright prejudice in hospitals, doctors’ and therapists’ offices, and delivery rooms. Stallings also shared her own story of bias and dismissal while recovering from major surgery. Panning out from the personal to the universal, she presented scientific proof that many doctors tend to treat black patients differently, and also discussed the growing body of research that shows that the chronic, toxic stress of dealing with racism can have lasting detrimental physical and mental health effects.