The Colorism Elephant in the Room
Thank you again for signing my petition and/or following my narrative about an abusive experience I had with a OB/GYN in New York City, this journey has been fraught with challenges and I was further dismayed when associates of Dr. Michelle Yvette Francis accused me of only openly discussing the assault because “Roslyn is infuriated that Dr. Francis is light skinned”. I know that these are associates of hers because there was mention of my health information within the same forum that was not included in any part of my narrative regarding the assault (so much for HIPPA). I have sat with this accusation and now choose to address the colorism elephant in the room.
Instead of displaying some form of remorse, providing evidence of intellectual depth or reflection about medical ethics and basic human decency, Dr. Francis and her crew suggest that despite the fact she made crude racial remarks, called me a misogynist when I expressed health concerns about fibroids, waved around cervical medical instruments in the air while shouting at me before they entered my body, and then put her fingers in and out of my vagina without warning or consent, then later raised her hand to me as though she was going to strike me while declaring that due to my ancestral national origin I should not be worried about my fertility the only possible reason I have gone through the lengths to advocate for myself and empower other women to do the same is because I am some bitter dark black subhuman degenerate that is infuriated at my former OB/GYN for having a lighter complexion than me.
Even for someone that I no longer have a high opinion of, this is stooping egregiously low and not the type of reasoning I would expect from any professional woman of any color or creed. If anything, it is further evidence that she does not carry herself professionally, has a world view tainted through internalized anti-Black racism and is yet again projecting her demons on to me instead of looking in the mirror. I never even tried to make the case that I was mistreated due to my darker complexion, but since she and the peanut gallery brought it up, it is more likely that she had an issue with my darker complexion.
A clergywoman recently offered to pray with me about the situation and fervently petitioned that God would protect my spirit from being broken again. The reverend happened to be a fair complexioned Puerto Rican woman of a certain age that exclaimed that she knows why this happened to me. I looked at her with wide-eyes and said please help me understand.
“Roslyn, look at yourself, listen to how you sound, the problem with a lot of Black and Brown people when they get a title or position is that they suddenly become above, this was all about her ego and putting you in your place.”
I explained that I never said that I was above anything, you knew me when I was a college student, if anything I go above and beyond to give back to our community because I never want to forget what I had to overcome before moving into the banking industry. “Roslyn, even when you were a little pup you made an impression, you’re an old soul.” Rev. put her hand gently over my hand, “You’re so intelligent, doing so well, and come across worldly, you do not see yourself the way other people see you, she had to do something to make you feel small because you triggered her insecurities, that is what this is all about, you have to let it go.” I began to cry and swiftly left thereafter.
I was sadden and then angered by this interaction with the clergywoman because I knew there was a strong possibility that she was right. I did some quick math, I added up the comments from the message board where Dr. Francis’s associates made the accusation regarding “light-skin” envy and overlayed it with the counsel from the reverend and eureka! I saw some light! While I had been objective and overworking my synapses to do research about women’s health, the Black maternal death crisis, and the nuances of unconscious biased, in the words of the songstress Sade… it all hit me like a slow bullet.
The image of Black women and especially dark-skinned Black women has been so defamed by mainstream media that I do not fit inside the expected “box” society’s caste system assigned me at birth.
If and when a woman of my complexion or darker is not living the struggle tropes that are expected of us it upsets the caste system and therefore triggers people. This explains why when I said I did not need birth control, Dr. Francis suggested that I should get an IUD because if I left her office that day and had a one night stand of unprotected sex then “you would be good”. Why would you paint a woman that has never been pregnant with an assumption of reckless promiscuity?
If you were to do a quick google image search of “white moms” and then open another tab and search for “Black moms” you will see starkly different images. The images of white moms are feminine, dainty, and endearing, while the search results for black moms mostly yield raw pornographic frames of mostly dark-skinned women.
Dr. Francis asked me if my sister who is fluent in Korean is Black. Ironically, my sister is of a fairer complexion than Dr. Francis, all thanks to the mixed genealogical pool that most people that identify as “Black” have. Per the doctor’s suggestion, I could hypothetically pounce on the first man in my neighborhood that is of my complexion or darker. That union could result in me pushing out a “high yellow or fair” baby. If you do not understand why this is the case, just revisit 10th grade biology class when they show the diagram of different flower colors breeding, the feasibility of me having a light-skinned child would be the result of recessive genes coupling. My mother, grandmothers, and great grandmothers are all mostly of a fair complexion, which is not surprising given the heavy presence of Irishmen landowners a century ago that were concentrated in the parishes that a handful of my direct ancestors descended from.
If she assumed that my sister was the same complexion as me, then AHA! The narrative is that brown or dark Black women are not supposed to know foreign languages or be capable of learning or travel freely abroad especially to somewhere as far away as Korea because travel as well the other experiences I have had sound like they would “cost money” and women that look like me are not supposed to be “successful” in the western sense of the word or have the means to do these things. Dr. Francis had an issue with me and mistreated because I am a brown-skinned professional Black woman that shows up in manner that reflects the exposure and experiences that I have had. The problem is that I showed up in the room just as my authentic self, jovial and cordial. I did not come into the appointment stroking her ego or worshipping her as I “should have” been doing because in her mind I am a “Lower Black”.
I was supposed to jump and say “Yes” at the suggestion of an IUD because “she knows more about me than I know about myself”.
The fact that I said I would consider that course of treatment in the future infuriated her…as a patient compounded with my assumed lower status as a brown-skinned Black woman I was not supposed to have time to think about the options that work best for my lifestyle choices, I need to have my reproductive powers contained and controlled “like the rest of them” so that I do not “drain taxpayers”.
Now I get it I committed a crime in the eyes of an insecure unnecessarily competitive 50+ Black woman and had to be punished, when she came into the room I had my multi-color fox fur hanging on the back of the door, a purple Gucci frame case in the chair next to my Tahari sweater and matching velvet long pleated skirt (God forbid I dressed like other women in my industry at a managerial level). I just came for a well-woman exam because COVID had caused a backlog in all of my doctors’ appointments not because I had a specific issue, I guess darker Black women are not supposed to be proactive about their health as well. It is now clearer to me that had I come into the appointment oozing over with foul smelling venereal diseases, bruises covering my naked body from an abusive partner with house slippers off to the side instead of my designer leather boots and some random bonnet on my head instead of the neat bun I had in my hair, and wild stories like those portrayed in movies like Precious, then my appointment would have went entirely differently. She would have saw me, heard me, and been sure that she was “better than me” because that’s what this is about for her. It is about competition and not the fact that she abused her position as a doctor and violated a younger Black woman that trusted her to provide care to the most tender parts of her. If she had evidence to immediately mark herself as “better than me” the angry outbursts would have never occurred. So because I am not sexually active and do not give myself away to every erect penis in her mind “I think I am better than her or other Black women”, but had I been on my 5th abortion from partners names that I cannot remember like the Black women Maury has made millions exploiting on national TV, then I would have been the lowly darker Black woman that she could talk down to and then pat herself on the back later that evening convinced she had done good work.
This is why Erica Rubinstein, the hospital executive did not want to meet with me if I had an attorney present. As a brown-skinned Black woman I was supposed to naively agree to let an institution use the replay an assault that occurred during an OB/GYN exam while my legs were in the air and the January window draft brushed my bright pink labia because I was supposed to be too dumb to know that I was assaulted in the first place.
In fact, given the assumption of hypersexuality and vulgarity thrown on to Black women of my shade and darker it was not a big deal because in her mind “they are all out there anyway and of low morality let’s just give her space to vent and check a box”. I was not supposed to be able to afford an attorney or expected to do any form of sound due diligence entering into what was painted by Erica Rubinstein as a “partnership” with a billion-dollar medical institution. I would bet my entire 401k, IRA, and Roth that the letter I received from Erica Rubinstein was either written or at minimum edited by an attorney employed by the hospital, but I “Ms. Darkie” am not supposed to have the benefit of any type of advisor. I, just like the Black women that came before me can just be used up, exploited, and discarded for whatever the more powerful institution can extract out of me in order to play into the façade that they are an equitable medical establishment.
I totally get it now, I am just a worthless subhuman being that by the luck of the draw came out brown-skinned and thus not worthy of basic human decency during health appointments and certainly should not expect for the institution to manage the situation appropriately.
A simple apology was too much for me to ask for from this doctor because “I do not know my place”.
Mount Sinai, thank you for adding insult to injury, this certainly bodes well for a world-class institution.
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