Transcripts For CSPAN3 Linda Villarosa Under The Skin - The

Of new orleans folks in the house. This is kind of old home week because Linda Villarosa been a friend to us for at this point. We have celebrate lindas work across many genres and we are really, really, really honored to get to celebrate this book. Tonights event is cosponsor by the feminist Womens Health center and just in a moment, i will introduce m. K. Anderson, who is the director of Development Communications at the feminist Womens Health center. To tell you a little bit about their work, first, i want to introduce van newkirk. Were having a little bit of tech issues with vans internet, so were going to keep working on that. But when our newkirk the second is a Senior Editor at the atlantic and the host and of the Peabody Award Winning flood lyons, a narrative podcast about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. For years, newkirk has covered voting rights, democracy and justice with a focus on how race and class shape the in the worlds fundamental structures. Then is a 2022 Andrew Carnegie fellow and was a 2020 James Beard Award finalist, a 2020 11th our fellow at new america and a 2018 recipient of the America Society of magazine editors as emmy next award. So were going to welcome ben back up here in just a moment. But first, i am going to welcome linda. Linda is a journalism professor at the City University of, new york and a contributing writer at the new times magazine, where she covers the intersection of race health. She has also served as executive editor at and as a science editor at, the New York Times. Her article on, maternal and infant mortality, was a finalist for the National Magazine award. And she is a contributor to the 1619 project. So welcome to. And we are really, really, really glad to have you here. I want to bring van back. And while we were doing that, im going to turn it over to empty, anderson, as i said, marc is the director of development and communications at the feminist Womens Health center, the feminist Womens Health center is a Reproductive Health and justice organization. They provide direct services, including care, and they provide education, advocacy and leadership development, opportunity. They also build movements, people across all axes of oppression so that we have the right resources, respect to make empowered, informed decisions about our own bodies and health. You can learn more about their work at feminist center, dawg, and ill that in the chat. I want to welcome in Kate Anderson to just tell us a little bit about feminist center whats going on there right now and then thank you so much for cohosting this event tonight. Thank you. Yeah, were happy to here. Of course. Charisse is an incredible resource in the community. And this book, i think, really highlights a lot of the issues of the summer and tries to confront in providing care people. But as e. R. Says feminist Womens Health center, a Reproductive Health care provider. We also do education, outreach and advocacy. So have a lot of opportunities for, folks, to get involved, especially now whats happening. The big Abortion Case kind of looming so for our Clinical Services we provide abortion care up to up to the legal limit which is 20 weeks in georgia right now. We also provide a lot of services. So your annual your Birth Control options and we also have a trans health initiative. Well, that provides hormone replacement therapy and trans affirming wellness care. So on the educational tip, we do a lot of outreach sex ed, especially bipoc communities. So we have a letting latina voices Initiative Live in time as opposed to latinas, which trans Health Promoters and Latino Community to reach out and kind of talk about, you know, topics that are often taboo. The Latino Community, especially with sex. We also have a black womens wellness project. Of course, which is led by a black organizer here, just introduces excuse, educates the community on wellness issues in that community as well. And we have our advocacy program. So we have a full time lobbyist fighting at the State Capitol to prevent even bands from coming through, trying to restrict Abortion Access and also just restrict our freedoms. Because the folks who are trying push these abortion bans are also the folks who are trying to criminalize being trans in school and trying criminalize poverty. So were down at the capitol, every day of legislative trying to, you know, make sure that our voices are heard. So if youre interested in those services and you want to learn more, im going to drop the link to register for our newsletter. Were going to have a newsletter coming next week with all of our events and so if youre really interested in this issue and you want to get involved with the center, sign up for our newsletter and. You can find out more information there. Thanks. Thank, m. K. Its really wonderful to have all and so grateful for all the work that feminist does and course. So while were working on getting band back up the, why dont you begin by just telling us a little bit about how this book was born . Well, first of all, thank you. I am so. I wish we were in person, but im so honored to be there with everyone. Atlanta is really important to harris. Books is really important to me. It was one of the first bookstores i ever an event at when i had and soul, my first book and. I wrote the book in atlanta much of it working with what was then the National Black Womens Health project at the little house. Now sister song and sister love other rj organization are located. Well, i started the book in. I got the book deal. Doubleday in 2018. But i was so resistant to writing book at all and my editor, i write my magazine pieces really, really long and my editor would always cut things. And then i would push back a little bit and shed say, save it for the book. And i said, well, theres no book. Im not writing a book. And shed say, well, you should write a book because you have so much stuff you were writing, you cutting so much, you should write a book. The my piece on maternal and infant mortality out in the New York Times magazine in 2018. And i, my friend Andrea Bernstein came over and she said, you need to a book. I said, im not writing a book. I dont even have an agent. She said, im going to introduce you my agent. I said, i dont want to. She said, i already did. So i had the meeting with the agent. I said, i dont want to write a book. She said, youre here, literary agency. Youre going to write a book, and thats really was very reluctant. But then also realized that it was important to me to kind of synthesize the ideas that i had been about, especially at the New York Times magazine, but also before that in essence, and to really give people were st were hungry for the information and to have it all in one place. So thats kind of how it got started. I then good day. Yay. Glad you got it. This is. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, my internet is conspiring against me, but i am happy to be here and to celebrate your book. Thank you. Im so happy. Be in conversation with you. So much. First question just got taken. I have another question for you and that is you have this career youve been writing about these issues and, health care and the environment and just how the live conditions, black folks, black of people who are on the margins and but this book is not just about information that you compiled. Its about how your perspective changed. Can you tell us about how it changed and why i i am from this family, you know, strivers and believing in uplift and. My grandparents came from mississippi chicago during the great migration and then my parents i dont want to be in chicago anymore. I want to take my my sister the girls to the suburbs where they can we can have better life. And i know that we can this and we can work hard. We can get our education. And we were that kind of family and that was i was raised its like each one teach one lift as you climb and, you know, sort of i guess bootstrap kind of black bootstrap was booker t washingtonian and then i got to essence magazine in the late eighties. I fit right in because thats how that was the thinking there. It was a little bit more political than that, but it really was about we have this audience of black women. We a very deep reach of black in the United States and we have a chance to really change the you know, just make the race better uplifts, uplift the race. And for me, it was about help. I knew about Racial Health disparities. Its not a secret. Its, you know, racial help disparities have been have existed since weve been on these shores in you know, in america. And i thought if people know better, theyll do better. But it took me a minute to realize people even when people do better and do everything and do their best, then there still is this Health Disparities, Poor Health Outcomes still exist. And it happened in my family strivers. And it happened in some ways to me with my own birth and see it in my friends. And i really see it now that ive sort of opened the lid on it and started talking about it. Now i hear every kind of story and this lived experience, storytelling is, you know, really important to couple with the kind of Evidence Based Research reporting that i also do. And love going back to my own days in Public Health, always struggle with term Health Disparities because i feel like it kind, just sanitized the or packages what a stunning difference ways of life and material conditions for people youre talking about on both ends both in a birth and in early death. A significant difference in how people live and die. Can you tell us more about. What is actually one of the things that are going this thing we call health and these gaps that kind of get sanitized at like who are really you asked that because i just kind of push over that go right through it and i thank you for allowing me to slow down a little bit and to think that. And i think the big idea of book is that america has arguably the best health care in the world, definitely the most expensive. And we spend so much money on health care more than every other country. We also have, you know, our good we have good Clinical Health care have good innovations. We have technology, yet we have Poor Health Outcomes, relation to other wealthy countries in the world. And it starts at infant mortality and Maternal Mortality and. Then it ends with Life Expectancy y, but its always treated as a mystery whats going on in the United States where, you know, when you look at the inequality of our health care and then you drill down into race, it starts at birth. A race, Racial Health disparities and ends with death. Looking at Life Expectancy. So a black you know, black are, you know, where one i think its up about nearly twice as have the white almost two times the level of infant mortality where they you know, black women are 3 to 4 times more likely to pass during pregnancy and and then, you know were also have a lot of nearmisses and then the end of life Life Expectancy different for black people and it used be when i first started writing this book, the life gap was 3. 5 years. So black folks, 3. 5 years less. But after by the time i was finishing the book, it had stretched to six years. And then i think the stat around Life Expectancy that hit me was looking at my mothers from so my mothers the inglewood section of chicago people live to 60 and then nine miles north in streeterville people live to age 90 and its the largest. And inglewood is a black community. Thats where it was used to be, a Promised Land for coming up south and then. So why would there be a you know, why would people only be living to age 60 and why would there be a 30 year gap, you know, with only a nine mile distance and you know, a black Community Versus a White Community . And youre sort of like, you know, wow, i have to say, wow. So you talk about three theories in the book well forth but three that you dont quite agree with that purport explain these differences is you know black people are somehow or genetically different or even inferior and they are succumb to illness more easily. The other is black people are just more poor, right . Theyre just more likely to be poor and they dont have access to the same Resources Health care, etc. And the other is they black somehow are behaviorally deficient or uneducated. Tell me about the fourth option. The option is really that something is wrong with our communities. I think thats my is that my fourth option is that something is wrong with our communities and thats what i was thinking about chicago so and i remember, you know, not going to say the name of the former president , but that person was looking at and, you know, calling it out and saying so terrible, its such a crime ridden look at how how how can people live like this when my mother and i went back there, we were shocked by condition of her community. We went back to early 2020, just before the pandemic, but then looking into it, its like, oh, this is a community that was redlined. So people werent know black people in the black community werent to buy homes your home is your biggest wealth asset and you know thats how people pass along generational wealth is through a home and so you werent allowed to own a home and then. It was funny because i was doing these and i was all over redlining and i finished an interview with dr. Gayle, who is going to be the next president of spelman there in atlanta. And she had her assistant call me back and she said, tell linda not to forget about contract buying and i was like, oh, whats contract buying . I did i hadnt heard of that. And so she gave me a link. I read about it. It was the, the, you know, the, the, the rule that black folks couldnt buy a home except on a contract so that meant we had no equity and then if you didnt if missed a payment on your home because you didnt have a mortgage or you didnt have that kind of equity that other people had, then you could lose your home. And then i asked my mother, i said, how did grandfather, you know, on that building he bought in the forties . She said, i dont know. He bought it on some kind of contract. He was always terrified that he would lose it and i thought, oh my god. Then my mother went school with lorraine hansberry. Lorraine hansberrys father sued. You know, he was a lawyer and he sued around this whole buying thing. And i thought, god, you know, here are these people who come to this place trying to have better life. And then this happens and these are clearly, you know, talented, wonderful, sparkling group of people, including my mom and lorraine hansberry. And why did this is what to this community. Its not fair. Talked about this before about the nexus of issues environment and of health and from my perspective you know you know everything but i want to know if theres anything you encountered while reporting and researching for this book that surprised you i think it wasnt really a surprise but it had it i to force myself to have a little bit more of you im im always very you know my sort of back story in my what im doing on the down low in my reporting is to this is not just poverty that im very quick to say that this is not just poverty middle class black people also have a hard time america and it affects our health. I think that what i needed to get a a better understanding was is the socalled social determinants of to say and get a you know sort of think more about health and wealth the intersection and when was writing the story about my mothers neighborhood in chicago, i interviewed a friend of mine, dr. Eric whitaker, who was in grad school with me and a physician. Hes president obamas really good friend. And i was interviewing him. And i remember he started this clinic in my moms for mostly for black men. It was a black mans clinic. And i remember he stopped doing it and i said, what happened . And he said, and it because it seemed like a success story, they were getting men into this clinic and and he said it does its something is going on in this community that having a clinic doesnt help its not enough. And he started talking about you know, talking to people in chicago about investing and sort of wealth building in chicago rather than being so focused on just Getting Health Care to people because wasnt enough and because know if the whole Community Around is crumbling, then having one Little Health care center isnt going to, you know, really do enough. And i remember thinking thats a shift for me. Its shift for me to think about this and to think more intentionally about the combination. You know the intersection of health and wealth. Now i want to make sure that to everybody to pop in a quest