[indistinct chatter]
CHERYL HANNAH: Um, this cake says, "80 years of birthdays."
Eighty years young,
and his favorite saying has always been, "You're only as old as you feel."
And if that's the case, Dad, you're very, very young... About 40.
[laughter]
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES: I was born to a white mother and a Black father.
[Cheryl laughing]
That laugh you hear is my mother, Cheryl Hannah,
and it's fitting that this is the first thing you hear from her
because my mother is one of the kindest people I know,
always laughing, always doing things for others.
Years ago, my mom threw my grandfather a big party for his 80th birthday.
When my grandfather, Joseph Novotny, was born,
he was designated male and white.
Arlena Tillman is my grandmother on my father's side,
and when she was born, she was designated female and Black.
Both were born in the year 1924, but because this is America,
that is where the similarities end.
They did not choose these designations,
but were born into them.
And yet, nearly everything about their lives would be shaped
by their race and their gender.
My grandfather could vote when he turned 18.
My grandmother could be beaten and maybe killed
if she had dared to try to cast a ballot at 18.
If my grandfather was qualified, there was no job he could not have.
Regardless of her qualifications,
most well-paying jobs in the North,
just as in the South, were off-limits to my grandmother.
Grandpa could send his children to any school he wanted.
Grandmama's children were sent to the schools
designated for Black children.
These two families, these two histories,
this racial classification system we've inherited,
collided in the year 1972, when my father met my mother.
They fell for each other fast,
and within a few months, my mom had moved in with my dad.
When they had me and my two sisters,
my father knew that our Blackness would shape much of our lives,
and so, when we were very young,
he sat us down and told us the reality of race in America:
we were biracial, and in this country,
that meant that I could be Black, but I could never be white.
I was born of both worlds, but could only belong fully to one.
I was designated female and Black, just like my grandmama.
And that is who I am.
♪ deep, slow music playing ♪
[water sloshing]
[voices humming]
NIKOLE: This is The 1619 Project.
[waves crashing]
♪ Wednesday's Child by Alice Smith playing ♪
[inaudibly singing on video]
♪ Tuesday's child will play in sun ♪
♪ Wednesday comes with a gun ♪
♪ Thursday's tears have just begun ♪
♪ Friday ships are filled with crying ♪
NIKOLE: In the United States,
race defines our lives from beginning to end.
Our race is listed on our birth certificates when we're born,
and on our death certificates when we die.
We're used to checking boxes to designate our racial category,
whether it's for school applications, or bank loans or a driver's license.
And yet most of us don't stop to question
just how we arrived at the racial classifications
we have become so accustomed to.
But in 2019, when Ashley Ramkishum and Samuel Sarfo
made a trip to the Arlington clerk's office
to apply for their marriage license,
they did question just why they had to check these boxes in the first place.
Thank you, Samuel and Ashley, for agreeing to talk with us today.
So, when you all decide that you are going to get married,
you're living in Virginia,
and you go to apply for the marriage license,
and what do they ask you for?
- When we go to the Arlington courthouse,
they, basically, direct us to go to the computer
to start filling out the marriage application.
We got to the question where they asked about our race,
and it just had the drop-down menu, and it had the asterisks on it,
so we didn't really have an option to not answer it.
So, I asked if there's a way for us to do it on paper.
She had said, no, there wasn't an option,
and if we didn't wanna answer the race question,
we just had to click "other."
And so, we said... "Nope."
And we just walked away.
So, why did that stop you?
I mean... in the United States, we check race all the time.
Race is on your birth certificate, race is on your college applications.
We always are checking race, so why did that surprise you,
and then why did that stop you at that moment?
- For me, personally, for somebody that grew up in Ghana,
where I guess you could say everybody's like me, or--
- We didn't have to check this box, like-- - Mm-hmm.
- Actually, to be honest, when I first came to America
is when I really got exposed to the word “race."
- Mm-hmm. - Prior to that, if you say "race,"
I'm thinking we're racing.
It wa-- It's not a thing, so when I came here,
that's when all this box checking and everything, so
you just have to pause for a second and think like, "Why?"
[indistinct chatter, laughter]
NIKOLE: In America, the origins of race go back to the system of slavery.
Though we may believe that race is biological,
a physical trait defined by our skin color,
or hair texture, or the shape of our lips or nose... it is not.
How we've come to call someone white or someone Black,
was, actually, invented to help perpetuate the system of slavery,
generate profit, and sustain white supremacy.
And the laws that built this system were focused on controlling
the sexual and reproductive lives of Black women.
♪ light music playing ♪
CREW MEMBER: Take one, marker. [slate claps]
- All right, we're here to talk about a subject that
everyone thinks they know and understand,
but that they, actually, don't.
So, I realized how ridiculous,
um... race is and how we think about race
when my daughter
was asking me why she wasn't white--
PROFESSOR DOROTHY ROBERTS: Mm-hmm. NIKOLE: And, right, because we teach,
in this country, that race is your skin color.
PROFESSOR ROBERTS: Right. NIKOLE: So, she's like, "Well,
our skin looks white, and Daddy's skin looks black."
And I'm like, "No." I'm like, "We're all Black."
PROFESSOR ROBERTS: Mm-hmm. NIKOLE: And she was like, "Well, why?"
So, then I'm trying to help her understand
because my mother is white.
So, she was like, "Well, if Grandma's white,
"and she's your mom, why aren't you white?
And why are you Black, and Daddy's Black, and I'm Black?"
- And, and, and I'm like-- - Right.
"Actually, I don't know." [laughs]
And it's one of those things where you don't realize how ridiculous it is
until you break it down to someone who has not yet been indoctrinated
- into our system. - Right. Mm-hmm.
- And then you see it's, actually, very silly,
so... how did we arrive at being a country
with all of these racial classifications,
but, specifically, pertaining to who is white and who is Black?
- Originally, when the colonies were beginning to be established
in what's now the United States,
there weren't these clear classifications and distinctions
between who's white and who's Black.
And so, they soon discovered that in order to maintain
a slave society,
that it was important to make clear what these distinctions were.
So, for example, a question that came early on was,
"What is the status of a child born to a Black woman,
but fathered by a white man?"
During this time, white men who owned, under the law,
Black women, could rape them with impunity.
And children were being born who were fathered by these white men,
but at that time,
there wasn't a clear-cut rule of the status of these children.
Under the British law,
which was a patrilineal law ,
these children should have the status of their fathers, which was white.
If the children had the status of their fathers,
then the children would've had an entitlement
to their father's wealth, uh, their land,
and most importantly, to their status as white people,
and that wouldn't have served the white elite.
And so, the Assembly got together in Virginia,
and in 1662, they passed a law that said
that the children of Black women would have the status of their mothers.
Uh, in other words, they were enslavable.
They were creating this political classification,
but by putting the source of it in Black women's wombs,
they made it seem as if it was an inherited condition,
and they also made it seem as if Black women were responsible
for the enslaved status of their children.
NIKOLE: In order to justify the barbarity of slavery,
white Americans created a culture that treated people descended from Africa
as a distinct and inferior race.
Many white theologists justified African slavery
as the natural order of the universe, a part of God's divine plan.
And by the 1800s, pseudoscience emerged to support these theories.
White physicians perpetuated fallacies in medical journals
that stated Black people had smaller skulls, thicker skin
and weaker lungs than white people,
all myths that served to justify the violence and subjugation
that enslavement required
by creating the idea of natural racial divisions.
As the pseudoscience of the 19th century took hold,
the medical field used race to justify brutal experimentation
on Black people's bodies,
and perhaps none more unspeakable than those executed on Black women.
During the 1800s, James Marion Sims, created the field of gynecology
by conducting surgical experiments exclusively on enslaved women.
He operated on them without anesthesia, even though it was available,
based off of the racist belief that Black women were immune to pain.
And while Sims is widely known as the "Father of Modern Gynecology,"
history has often erased the Black women whose bodies were used
to create the field itself.
Of all the women Sims experimented on,
we only know the names of three: Lucy, Betsey, and Anarcha.
All these centuries later,
the false beliefs about Black women's pain and their humanity
still impact the reproductive health care they receive.
And the consequences for Black women and their children
are all too often deadly.
♪
CHRISSY SAMPLE: When I look at Cassius,
I always see two babies.
I can't unsee that he has a brother,
and I can't unsee that he's supposed to have
this little person with him forever.
NIKOLE: Chrissy Sample went through the devastating experience
of losing a child before he was even born.
And that loss, like those of so many other Black women,
was in large part defined by race.
The fetal mortality rate for Black women is more than twice that of white women,
not because Black and white people are biologically different,
but because evidence shows that Black women do not receive
the same standard of medical care as white women.
A 2019 survey of 2,700 women found nearly 23% of Black women
reported being mistreated by medical staff,
ranging from violations of physical privacy
to being threatened or refused treatment,
compared to 14% of white women who reported the same experience.
Thank you for agreeing to speak with me today.
And I thought we might start by you just telling me a little bit
about yourself and your husband.
- I'm a Brooklyn mom, um, born and raised New Yorker.
My husband works for the NYPD.
We're a modern, regular Brooklyn family tryin' to figure out, navigate through
this new world that we're living in.
We have Cassius, who's two, Cameron who is about to be 10,
and I have a bonus daughter who is 14.
- So, can you describe for me, um, what it means to you to be a mother?
Motherhood is not easy.
I feel like I'm constantly doing this juggling act where
some days I feel like, "Wow, this is-- Who put me in charge of these humans?"
Because this is a lot... I wasn't expecting this.
I understand where you're comin' from.
I would say I have, I have all the confidence in the world,
except for parenting. [Chrissy laughs]
This is the one part of my life where I'm like, "I don't know,
"I don't know what I'm doing,
- and I'm probably not doin' it right, so." - It's very humbling.
- It is. I think every mother can relate to that feeling.
[indistinct chatter]
Seven years after Chrissy Sample had, what she described as,
an easy first pregnancy with her son, Cameron,
she and her family learned at their gender reveal party,
that they were expecting two baby boys.
[all cheering] CHRISSY: There were so many emotions.
Happiness, excitement. I was anxious.
It was so much love and support.
Everyone was writin' these little sweet notes,
and just little tidbits on well wishes for the baby,
well wishes for the mom.
It was just a lotta love in the room, a lotta support.
NIKOLE: But Chrissy's excitement slightly dimmed
when the doctor who delivered her first baby
informed her that he didn't do deliveries of twins,
so she was forced to find a new doctor, and that new doctor happened to be white.
What was your new doctor like?
- She kinda treated me like, "Okay, another pregnant woman.
See you in four, five weeks."
This was a pregnancy where I needed my hand held.
- Mm-hmm. - I'm pregnant with twins,
I have a list of questions,
and she's not reassuring and she's not engaging.
It felt like a checklist.
My gut's sayin', "I don't, I don't like her."
But at this time, it's, like, the world's on fire,
so I can't really change doctors.
So, by, "The world's on fire,"
you get pregnant, and then we enter into the pandemic.
Yes.
- So, that complicates... - So, no one's--
- ...your ability to find a new doctor. - Everything. No one's gonna t--
No one's taking a new patient with multiples.
With multiples, you see two doctors every week.
- I saw her every four weeks. - Mm.
- Which gives you room for anything to happen.
And I couldn't get appointment with a high-risk,
and she didn't do anything to help me get an appointment with a high-risk either,
where she didn't check me any further.
She would just rub a Doppler across my belly.
"Oop, two heartbeats. See you in, um, four or five weeks?
Does that sound good?"
At about 22 weeks,
things start to really, physically, change for you.
I'm in pain.
I can't walk down a flight of steps or up a flight of steps.
I can't walk down a block,
and she's aware of all of these things,
and it still doesn't make her check me any further.
She goes, "Oh, well, maybe one of the twins
is sittin' on a pinched nerve."
I'm in pain, and you just normalized it for me.
♪
NIKOLE: The death of Black women's children,
and the dismissal of their pain, voices and experiences
is deeply tied to the legacy of slavery.
The invention of race in early America in order to create and sustain wealth,
shaped the sexual and reproductive lives of enslaved women.
And yet, their lived experiences went ignored and largely unrecorded.
But there are some records that do remain,
giving us a rare glimpse
into what enslaved women's lives were, actually, like.
♪
Here on 8th and Chestnut in downtown Philadelphia,
once stood the mansion of Pierce Butler.
In 1834, Butler married a well-known British actress named Fanny Kemble.
Two years later, Fanny's husband inherited the Butler plantation
located along the coast of Georgia,
and with it, more than 500 enslaved human beings.
So, when is the last time you were here?
DR. DAINA BERRY: Probably early to mid-2000s.
I think maybe 2003 or '04.
- So, it's been a while. - Yeah, it has.
- So, what's it like comin' back? - [sighs] Heavy. It feels heavy.
It feels as heavy as it did when I came before.
Brings back a lotta research memories. NIKOLE: Mm-hmm.
DR. BERRY: Tryna think about the people that were here,
who worked here.
You kinda feel their presence.
NIKOLE: Daina Berry is a renowned historian
who has extensively studied enslaved people in the state of Georgia,
particularly the lives of women.
So, this land we're standing on
- was, uh, called the Butler Plantation. - Mm-hmm.
- Um, can you just give me a brief history of this place?
Absolutely. Major Pierce Butler,
one of the fathers of the U.S. Constitution,
was the owner of this plantation
and also, Hampton Point Plantation on St. Simons Island,
which was another large estate that he owned.
He and his family had operated a rice mill here.
- And they had, as you see-- - Which is that there.
Yep. That's the mill.
They had almost a thousand enslaved people,
considering those that were on this particular property,
and those that were on Hampton Point.
- So, let's just pause there--
- Mm-hmm. - because a thousand,
that was massive.
- Yes. - That was not typical at all.
- Right? That would've put him-- - Right.
- I would imagine, somewhere top 1%--
- Absolutely. - of enslavers.
The amount of wealth that that would've been,
uh, was pretty astronomical.
In the winters of 1838 and 1839,
after Pierce Butler inherited the plantation from his grandfather,
Fanny joined him on visits to this slave labor camp in Georgia.
During those visits, she kept a daily journal
of her experiences and her encounters with the enslaved women there.
How does she respond when she comes down here,
and sees what that wealth has been built upon?
- She had mixed feelings. It's her raw, like--
It's, it's her personal journal, so she doesn't hold back.
So, some days, she's disgusted by Black people, and she says that.
She talks about them in very disrespectful ways.
And then, other times, she has empathy.
She's worried about, "Well, maybe I should talk to my husband.
They're asking me to ask for work relief."
And, and so, you see her sort of struggling with understanding
that now she's a enslaver.
She is the wife of an enslaver.
And what that means is something
that I think she's processing throughout the entire journal.
FANNY KEMBLE: "I have been interrupted by several visits,
"one from a poor creature called Judy,
"whose sad story and condition affected me most painfully.
"She complained of chronic rheumatism,
"and other terrible ailments,
"and said she suffered such intolerable pain
"while laboring in the fields,
that she had come to entreat me to have her work lightened."
♪
DR. BERRY: So, this is where they worked.
Twelve hundred acres of land.
This is all part of Butler Island plantation.
And they worked here from 4 A.M.
They came to the fields and worked in these rice marshes, rice lands,
until... the wee hours or until they finished their tasks.
NIKOLE: So, two of the overseers on this plantation were
Roswell King Sr. and Roswell King Jr.
You know, these were prominent men.
There's a town named after them in metro Atlanta.
And yet... we know that they were sexually exploiting
and sexually assaulting enslaved women on this property.
Can you talk about their treatment of enslaved women,
and the prevalence of rape, um, in plantation societies in general?
- I mean, there's been descriptions of how much they were raping
- enslaved women. - Mm.
- And multiple. Not just one woman, not a particular partner.
So, they say that both Roswell King Sr. and Jr. sired
many of the young "mulatto" children that were walking around
the Butler Island and Hampton Point Plantations.
When we think about this though--
I, I like that you asked the question about how prevalent this was
because, I think, it's, it's not any amnesia,
- I think it's erasure. - Yes.
- It's denial. It's denial that it even happened.
So, it was common.
It was so common that I feel like we have yet to fully uncover this
because people don't wanna think that it was, actually, as common as it was.
- In fact, the Roswells were so prolific with their sexual assault
that Fanny Kemble wrote that she saw a number of "mulattos,"
biracial children, mixed children running around the labor camp
- that looked just like them. - And so, she saw it, and recognized it,
and recognized those features looked like the Roswell King Jr. and Sr.
FANNY: "Judy told me a miserable story
"of her former experience on the plantation
"under Mr. King's overseership.
"It seems that Jem Valiant was her firstborn,
"the son of Mr. King, who forced her,
"flogged her severely for having resisted him,
and then sent her off, as a further punishment."
NIKOLE: The Kings kept track of the number of children born on both
the Butler and the Hampton Point Plantations,
and like so many other slaveholders and plantation managers,
their sexual exploitation of Black women was also incentivized by profit.
DR. BERRY: Women were valued based on their future increase.
So, even if they hadn't given birth, they're thinking,
"How many children is this person gonna have,
and are they gonna be healthy?"
And if a woman had children that made it to age five,
then they would consider that woman very valuable,
a very good breeding "wench."
NIKOLE: Even that terminology,
- "future increase." - Mm-hmm.
- That was terminology that was used with animals.
- Yep, absolutely. And, you see, when you look at the way
in which enslaved people were bred,
you can look at a parallel and find that animal husbandry
was done exactly the same way.
♪
LAURA SMALLEY: You know, just like a big, fine-lookin' woman,
big, fine-lookin' man, you know.
Old boss wants, you know, children's for them, you know.
They just fasten them up in a house somewhere.
You know, go on off, leave them in there.
Want to breed them like they was hogs or horses,
something like that, I say.
- Let's talk about that, that word, "bred" or "breeding."
I think my breath catches every time I see
- the phrase, "slave breeding"-- - Mm-hmm.
- and I, and I kinda don't even want to use it.
Yeah.
- But this is how the people who were owning
- enslaved people considered this, so-- - Mm-hmm.
- talk to me about this idea of, of forced reproduction,
and what this place teaches us about that.
- So, forced reproduction is making sure that enslaved women
are continuously giving birth,
those that are in the age range of being fertile.
Enslavers waited to find out when a woman-- a young girl
had her first menstrual cycle.
They were, like, literally, wanting to know.
Sometimes, they would force people to have relations,
and they would say that, "You two"--
"We've selected you two to breed with one another."
And imagine for a woman, and a man,
if they have other partners that they are--
consider that, that, that's their husband or their wife,
the enslaver didn't care about that.
They had-- They were looking at the body,
the stock, the physique, you know, all of that.
They, literally, paired two people up, locked them in a cabin,
and said, you know, "Until we see evidence of pregnancy,"
you know, "you're gonna be whipped 30 lashes a day."
It's unspeakable.
- It is. - And yet, we have to speak about it.
- We have to speak about it because we haven't.
People are in denial at how prevalent this was,
and, I think, to even say that this was breeding,
- is an important statement to make. - Yes.
Because the construct of race made
Black women's children innately enslavable,
enslavers were assured a profit with every birth.
And that assurance became even more important in 1808
after Congress banned the importation of Africans to the United States.
With the supply of newly enslaved people from Africa cut off,
enslavers had to rely on a single source to replenish their essential labor force:
the wombs of Black women.
The numbers are staggering.
In 1790, the first United States census
counted just under 700,000 enslaved people.
By 1860, despite the congressional ban
that had been in place for more than half a century,
the enslaved population had blossomed to nearly four million.
And the rape of Black women by white men
played a significant role in that increase.
Rape was so prevalent during slavery,
that today, a quarter of the genetic makeup of Black Americans
can be traced back to Europe through the paternal line.
While forced reproduction grew the numbers of the enslaved population,
the deplorable conditions that enslaved women lived in
resulted in countless miscarriages, stillborns and infant deaths.
There wasn't bed rest. There was no prenatal treatment.
They are, they're out here trying to endure pregnancy.
Talk to me about that.
- So, they're out here in-- working in this-- in these conditions
as pregnant women during their first, second, and third trimesters.
And when we read their stories, and we listen to their stories,
we can hear them pleading,
just like they did in Fanny Kemble's journal,
pleading for breaks, pleading for rest from their labor,
pleading for some time off.
But one thing that we find
is that they would give birth to 8, 10, 12 children.
They're giving birth, but the children aren't always alive,
so they're often giving birth to stillborn infants.
So, a woman might have 12 pregnancies and six live births.
So, half of their children are dead when they give birth.
- Mm. - So, so, infant mortality was high.
- Dr. Berry, when you were talking about the trauma enslaved women endured,
and, and how that led to these extremely high rates of infant mortality,
I couldn't help but think about how Black women today suffer
the highest infant mortality rates in the industrialized world.
How we are still seemingly carrying that trauma in our bodies,
and burying our babies.
- I would argue that there's a direct link and a contemporary connection
to maternal mortality today,
and infant mortality, and the challenges that women had
giving birth during slavery.
And I think that line goes all the way from slavery to the present,
and I think that we'll-- we see Black women today
struggling in similar ways
that they struggled during the institution.
♪
NIKOLE: After Chrissy Sample says her doctor dismissed the pain
she was experiencing during her pregnancy with her twin boys,
she finally got in to see a high-risk doctor.
And the news she received was the most devastating news
a mother can hear.
- She said, "Baby A doesn't have a heartbeat."
And I'm like, "Are you sure?" Like, "I just felt him."
And I couldn't understand. I'm like, "I don't--"
I'm like, "I don't understand."
It's like she was speaking French.
I was like-- I didn't have the, the words or the--
It's like when you have cry in your throat,
and you have to say somethin' so important,
but you can't get it out.
And I, I remember pickin' up the phone,
and calling my husband, and I'm trying to explain to him.
And she had to take the phone and tell him what is happening.
And then he's on the phone crying.
And she said, "Well... you can't give birth.
"You have to have Baby A and Baby B together,
or... you will lose them both."
- I can't even imagine--
- And it feels like you're--
I've been managing life and death at the same time,
where I have my baby that passed,
and I have to keep my baby that's alive, healthy.
So, you have to go home knowing
one of your babies--
- Mm-hmm. - that's in your body--
- Has passed. - has passed.
Yeah, I sobbed, I cried.
I remember sitting at night crying 'cause I'm like, "I, I felt him.
"I, I feel him. I feel his spirit.
I felt his kicks. I feel them moving together."
I wrapped my head around two babies, two of everything.
I'm looking at YouTube videos of how these twin moms do it,
and what life looks like, and everything has changed.
NIKOLE: Even when Black babies survive after they're born,
they're still twice as likely as white babies to die
before their first birthday.
DR. VERONICA GILLISPIE-BELL: If white babies were dyin' at this rate,
it would be a public health crisis.
There would be research being done.
It would not take all the deaths that have happened to cause attention to it
as it has for Black infants.
NIKOLE: Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell
is an obstetrician for the Louisiana Department of Health,
and she sees firsthand how race drastically impacts
the survival rates, not only of Black infants,
but of Black mothers themselves.
- PATIENT: Hi, Dr. G. - Hi. How are you?
- I'm doin' well. How are you? - I am good, I'm good.
NIKOLE: Black women die in childbirth
at nearly three times the rate of white women.
DR. GILLISPIE-BELL: Maternal mortality and maternal morbidity for Black women
is at a public health crisis level right now.
That's the best way to characterize it.
We know, in general, that our outcomes in the United States
are worse than any other developed country.
There is no reason that a Black woman
should biologically experience these outcomes.
NIKOLE: The reasons for the disparate outcomes
for Black women's reproductive health
can be complicated and multi-dimensional.
DR. GILLISPIE-BELL: There's a, a misconception
that these disparities are only limited to poor Black people,
or Black people without resources.
It doesn't matter whether you are socioeconomically advantaged,
socioeconomically disadvantaged, you're educated, not educated.
The single tying string is being a Black woman.
- Here we are looking at Serena Williams, in particular,
who was the world's, you know, best athlete.
She definitely has support,
she's definitely not dealing with economic issues,
and she still was dealing with the fact
that she almost lost her life after giving birth.
NIKOLE: The death of Chrissy's son, whom she and her husband named, Apollo,
cannot be attributed to poverty or poor medical coverage.
Chrissy is a middle-class mom with good healthcare benefits.
Instead, her birthing outcome might be a reflection
of the unconscious racial bias
that is a part of so many Black women's experiences in this country.
Research shows that race,
or more accurately, racism and racial inequality,
also contribute to higher death rates for Black women and their babies.
DR. GILLISPIE-BELL: The legacy of slavery
is so ingrained in our system, and we don't even see it.
So, if we think about slavery,
and we think about how the Black woman was utilized,
she was not allowed to take care of her kids,
she was not able to breastfeed her children,
and so, what has translated from that, today, in our bias,
is that Black women don't wanna take care of their kids.
When we have our unconscious bias and our unconscious beliefs
that cause us to not listen to Black women when they complain.
We have an unconscious belief
that Black women are supposed to have higher blood pressures,
and we are less quick to treat those elevated blood pressures,
that Black people don't feel pain in the same way.
NIKOLE: Biases, whether unconscious or conscious, impact medical treatment.
For example, a 2016 study showed that Black patients
get undertreated for pain relative to white patients,
in part, because some medical professionals
still believe that Black and white people are biologically different.
- And so, these are biases and these are things
that have happened durin' slavery that have just been perpetuated over time.
But they have, they have now come into our, our medical practice.
And again, bias is unconscious.
It is not somethin' that anybody's intentionally doing.
But as healthcare providers, it is on us,
it is our responsibility to understand our biases,
recognize 'em, address 'em, acknowledge them,
and start to make differences to change them,
so that we are not usin' those biases in how we treat our patients.
♪
NIKOLE: Three weeks after Chrissy Sample found out that her son died in her womb,
she abruptly went into labor
while homeschooling her eldest son, Cameron.
She was just 27 weeks pregnant.
So, you had a cesarean.
- Yeah, it was an emergency, and they had to, yeah.
And so, what's that moment like?
- I was scared, um, but I also-- I was drugged up,
and my husband's like, "He's here. You did it."
And I wake up from surgery, you know, hours later,
and my husband took-- made the arrangements with Apollo's body.
On a whole, they were just insensitive.
The chapel comes in, he's shouting, "You need to bury your baby.
Your baby needs to be buried."
And I couldn't even articulate the words.
And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we have to bury Apollo."
NIKOLE: Cassius survived his traumatic birth,
but weighed less than three pounds,
and had to spend his first two months in the neonatal intensive care unit.
DR. GILLISPIE-BELL: I think it's really hard for individuals
to accept what is happening in Black women's lives
because of the guilt that we feel as a nation.
If you say the word, "racism," to say the word, "race,"
it gives a very visceral response to a lot of people
because they do not want to be tied to slavery,
or even think about slavery, and what happened during the slave period.
It is a black mark, a blemish on America
to think that that's how individuals were treated.
And so, we want to separate ourselves from all of those activities,
but we can't because that is a part of our country,
it is a part of our culture, it's a part of our thinking,
it's a part of how we, we behave,
and we have to acknowledge it, so that we can change it.
♪
♪ Wednesday's Child by Alice Smith playing ♪
♪ Tuesday was not bad at all ♪
♪ Wednesday came with a flame ♪
♪ Thursday never be the same ♪
♪ Friday ships are not returning ♪
NIKOLE: Our society's racial classification system
that grew out of 250 years of slavery
didn't simply disappear when slavery ended.
Instead, white men in power passed new laws that criminalized
interracial sex and interracial marriage.
And their blueprint was Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924.
♪
The Racial Integrity Act
was designed by a physician named Walter Plecker,
who was Virginia's first registrar for the Bureau of Vital Statistics,
and a staunch white supremacist.
- Part of the reason that Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act in 1924,
post-emancipation, in order to make sure
that people's race was certified, and they prove what their race was,
and every aspect of their lives could be determined
by this accurate assessment of their race.
And that was partly because of this fear
that Walter Plecker had that there were
people who weren't truly white, who were pretending to be,
and getting the benefits of whiteness in Virginia.
- In 1924. Not ancient history. - Yeah.
- That's the year my grandmother and my grandfather were born.
Yeah, it's not that long ago.
NIKOLE: As part of the Racial Integrity Act,
Plecker instituted the infamous one-drop rule.
Can you explain what the one-drop rule is?
- The one-drop rule was the idea that
if you had any discernible amount of African ancestry,
you were to be considered Black.
And so, there were various tests for determining
whether you had some, what was considered,
"Black blood" at the time.
These were not just physical tests,
but tests looking at who your friends were,
what doctor you went to, what neighborhood you lived in.
It just became really important to police these delineations
between the people who had the privileges of whiteness
and those who had the subordinated status of Blackness,
especially, after slavery ended
because you no longer had this distinction of who was enslaved and who wasn't.
NIKOLE: The absurdity of race played out during the early and mid-1900s
in bizarre ways particular to the United States.
In 1924, New York socialite, Kip Rhinelander,
sued his new bride, Alice Jones, after discovering she was biracial,
claiming she hid her “negro blood."
The jury ruled in her favor, but not before she was forced
to partially disrobe in front of them so they could examine her body.
And then there's the case of Walter Francis White
who headed the NAACP from 1931-1935.
Walter White used the fact that he could pass for white
to travel into the Deep South to investigate lynchings
and other violence against Black people.
On one trip to Arkansas, he was discovered and forced to flee.
And a clueless train conductor,
not knowing White was the one everyone was looking for,
told him that he was leaving right before “The fun was going to start."
According to Walter White's obituary, he was, “Only five-thirty-seconds negro,"
but lived a life as, “A negro by choice,"
and the existence of people like him was what white supremacists feared most.
That's why when Walter Plecker created the Racial Integrity Act,
he went to great lengths to specify a person's racial makeup.
And some of the categories that still existed on the books
when Ashley and Samuel tried to get married, gave them pause.
So, the racial categories in your county in Virginia
were what we would consider fairly typical.
But you all found out that, in other places in Virginia,
there were a lot of interesting categories.
Can you talk about some of them? ASHLEY RAMKISHUM: Some of them I--
Some of them I didn't even know that they existed.
Like, I, you know, I knew "mulatto,"
but, like, "quadroon," and all these other terms,
I'm like, "What are those?"
And then when I started googling it, it's like,
"One-fourth Black in you," or, like, "Two-thirds Black."
And I'm like, "How do you... decipher that?
"How do you measure the amount of Black in a person,
and then give them a name, a completely different name?"
Like, that, that blew my mind. NIKOLE: Mm-hmm.
Virginia may have been the architect of laws policing interracial sex,
but most states readily adopted them.
At some point during the Jim Crow Era,
thirty-seven states had laws on the books
that prohibited interracial sex and marriage.
My home state of Iowa, with its tiny Black population,
legalized interracial marriage in 1851,
nearly a century before most of the country.
But making interracial marriage legal did not banish the ideologies
that made it socially unacceptable for a white person to marry someone Black.
And so, when my grandparents learned that my mother was in a relationship
with my father, they disowned her.
They eventually came around when my older sister,
their first grandchild, was born.
But through the years, I've thought a lot about how racial categories
created such a stigma around Black people
that it could turn parents against their own child.
NARRATOR: Number 395. Richard Perry Loving,
and appellants, versus Virginia.
NIKOLE: The Racial Integrity Act stayed in place until 1967,
when the Supreme Court ruled in the Loving versus Virginia case
that it was unconstitutional to prohibit people of different races
from marrying each other.
But the Supreme Court didn't overturn
that whole racial classification that Plecker enforced.
That structure was left in place.
And that's why people found out, even in 2019,
that they couldn't get married in Virginia
if they didn't check the box for what race they were.
- The marriages of three Virginia couples, they're on hold right now.
REPORTER: They argue the mandate to designate a race
violates their First Amendment rights.
NIKOLE: After their failed attempt to obtain a marriage license in Virginia
without identifying their race,
Ashley and Samuel joined a lawsuit with other couples,
challenging the racial classification requirements.
The couple ended up moving to Miami for work,
but when they applied for a marriage license,
they were met with the same requirements.
ASHLEY: So, I go online to the Miami-Dade clerk's website,
and I start applying for the marriage license.
And their automated system, again, had the drop-down menu for the race,
and there was no other option on that menu,
but to go down and click it, and I had to exit out.
And I remembered calling Sam, and I was like, "Here we go again."
MAN: All rise.
NIKOLE: Ultimately, the Miami clerk's office
found a way to issue the marriage license
without identifying their race.
MARRIAGE OFFICIANT: I pronounce Ashley and Samuel are husband and wife.
NIKOLE: And Ashley and Samuel were finally able to marry.
[people cheering, applauding]
Back in Virginia, a judge ruled
that the remnants of the Racial Integrity Act
should not continue to force people
to identify their races in order to get married.
The end of the Racial Integrity Act and other archaic laws that created race
doesn't mean that the racial categories and beliefs they enforced over centuries
simply disappear.
And the legacy of these laws still perpetuate false narratives
about Black women's sexuality, reproduction and motherhood to this day.
♪
NIKOLE: In America, race was constructed on the control of Black women's bodies,
often through sexual violence.
And that violence created harmful, false narratives about Black women's sexuality.
- So, all of these ways of thinking about the enslavement of Black people,
the control of Black women's reproductive labor,
and the control of their sexuality in the sense that
not having the legal right to consent or not to consent
is the foundation for many of the myths about Black women today.
Because it was all excused by a mythology that Black women
were inherently hypersexual, that we were licentious.
You know, we could not be raped because we were always consenting to sex.
And so, that idea of the Black Jezebel,
the temptress who tempted white men to have sex with them.
You know, these were ideas that were circulated to excuse
the rampant sexual assault of Black women by white men.
I know I'm not good enough for you,
but let me have your precious, white body just once.
NIKOLE: The caricature of the Jezebel was followed by other stereotypes
that have historically served to rob Black women of our humanity,
and are often so normalized that we don't even think about them:
the self-sacrificing, nurturing, asexual mammy.
I can't live with you?
Oh, honey chile, please don't send me away.
NIKOLE: The angry, emasculating, loud Sapphire.
- It's about time you met some decent people
instead of that horrible, uncouth group you associate with.
- Get some Kleenex, wipe your nose 'cause it ain't that damn sad.
NIKOLE: Narrative drives policy,
and too often, cultural stereotypes about Black people,
and specifically, Black women,
have informed public policy in truly harmful ways.
Well, can you talk about the social policies
implemented in the second half of the 20th century
that really were fueled by slavery-era notions of Black women's sexuality?
- You know, this idea that Black women's wombs
produce devious and dangerous lifestyle
in their children
is a major driver of public policy in the United States
for centuries.
But, especially, during the 20th and 21st centuries,
we can see it as behind really substantial policy changes.
I mean, think about Reagan's icon of the Black "welfare queen."
She's supposed to get pregnant
just to get a welfare check,
so that she can spend it on herself,
and completely neglect her children.
RONALD REAGAN: Her tax-free cash income alone
has been running $150,000 a year.
NIKOLE: Reagan's attack on Black mothers, eventually, led Congress to pass a bill
drastically restricting welfare benefits for poor families.
President Bill Clinton signed that bill into law in 1996.
And the tragic, only-in-America irony
is that it's unclear whether the Black woman Reagan made
into a poster child for welfare reform
was even Black at all.
Born into a white family, she became a con artist
who used different racial identities to her advantage.
- From now on, our nation's answer to this great social challenge
will no longer be a never-ending cycle of welfare.
NIKOLE: Not only did the policy fail to save the federal government money,
but researchers found that in the first 15 years of the law,
extreme poverty in the United States roughly doubled,
a reality that impacts Americans of every race.
We think about race as being about racism.
- Mm-hmm. - But it's power, right?
It's, it's who will have access
to these exclusive white institutions, right?
To public goods, to things like public schools,
access to government, access to employment.
That's really what this ordering is about,
and making sure that only people
in this very rigid category will get access to these things.
- Yeah, that's right. This is a power hierarchy.
Whether we're talking about where you live,
what kind of job you can have,
whether you're gonna be arrested and incarcerated or not,
what kind of healthcare you'll have,
and just in generally how you're valued in society.
NIKOLE: It's hard to resolve the stereotypes of Black women
with all the Black women I know,
beginning with my grandmama, Arlena,
who was so determined to give her children a better life
that she left her entire family in Mississippi
with nothing more than a suitcase,
and worked multiple jobs to provide for her babies.
I think of all my aunts, cousins, friends,
who like centuries of Black women before them,
love their children fiercely,
and fight to make the lives
of their families and their communities better.
♪
After two months in the hospital, baby Cassius was finally able to go home.
- I felt a great amount of joy being able to look at him,
and hold his little face, and everything you can think of.
Like, my job is here to protect you.
NIKOLE: And for Chrissy Sample and her family,
reaching the milestone of Cassius's first birthday
was cause for celebration and reflection.
[all singing "Happy Birthday"]
ALL: ♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
CHRISSY: When his first birthday come, it was like, "Oh, my God, I made it.
I made it... He's here. He's healthy."
[Chrissy's husband speaking]
- And, um-- WOMAN: We got you, bro.
- I just... wanna have a moment of silence--
[people shushing]
- I wanna have a moment of silence for, um, Apollo.
Please.
Hello, hello, hello!
NIKOLE: Like Black women often do,
Chrissy turned her traumatic experience into action
when she decided to share her story,
and connect with other Black mothers in her community.
In sharing your story and your loss,
and connecting with this whole community of Black women
that you probably didn't even know existed prior to what, what you went through,
what is your hope for other Black mothers going forward,
and the impact that you hope to have?
CHRISSY: I want Black women to know we have options,
and your birthing story doesn't have to end in tragedy.
Like, you can have a beautiful birth.
You can bring home healthy babies.
You don't have to damn near die,
and think about... leaving your previous children
to be motherless children.
These are the only worries that Black women go in,
in the hospital thinkin' like, "I might not make it."
That's not okay.
I, I would like to change that.
♪
NIKOLE: I think a lot about what it will take for this country
to speak the truth of what was done to Black women,
and reconcile the atrocities of the past,
so that Black women do not continue to suffer under this legacy.
I think about what it will take
for this nation to honor and respect Black women,
to see us, finally, beyond the constructs that race created.
- What do you see as the way forward for-- - Mm-hmm.
for healing and justice for Black women,
but also, for liberating our society of these categories--
- Yeah. - that harm us all, really?
Yeah, they, they do, and I think that
women who have been grappling with this,
who've been experiencing it,
and have been the greatest resistors against it,
uh, taking their leadership to imagine a society
that is truly based in caring, and in humanity
and in valuing human beings equally.
I think that should give us hope
that if we listen to the voices of Black women
and their visions for a transformed society,
we can collectively create a world that would be safer,
and healthier and more flourishing for everybody
than the kind of damaged society we have today.
♪
NIKOLE: It's the voices of Black people singing
about that damaged society that have helped to change it,
right from the very beginning.
WESLEY: The music was beautiful.
Comes from a place of, of great pain and uncertainty, but also hope.
That there's a whole cultural experience
that is fascinating and foreign to white people.
They're drawn to it, they are drawn to this music.
♪