Photo: Barbara Dawson
On December 21, Barbara Dawson, a 57-year-old Black woman, died at Calhoun Liberty Hospital in Blountstown, Florida, after police and hospital staff forced her to leave.
Dawson is the sixth Black woman in the U.S. to die in police custody in 2015 after Sandra Bland, Kindra Chapman, Joyce Curnell, Ralkina Jones and Raynette Turner.
In the early hours of the morning, Dawson insisted that she was still not feeling well after being discharged, yet the hospital “banned” her and called the police. She collapsed and became unconscious in the parking lot when police unplugged her oxygen, handcuffed her, and brought her to the cruiser.
Hospital staff took Dawson back into the emergency room only after repeatedly trying to help the police stuff Dawson’s unconscious body into the cruiser. Police claim they thought she was resisting arrest. She died an hour later due to a blood clot in her lung.
“She was causing a disturbance in the hospital with her language and the volume of her voice,” according to Blountstown Police Chief Mark Mallory. There is little doubt that hospital staff and police would have reacted differently to a man or a white woman with serious, ongoing health issues.
At a time when national attention is focused on police brutality, Dawson’s death illustrates how racist health care also works to undermine Black lives.
In the U.S., a disproportionate number of the millions of people without health insurance are Black and Latino. Lack of public assistance, growing poverty and unemployment, and the concentration of more Black people into low-wage jobs have worsened this problem, especially among Black women.
Racism in hospitals is also a huge problem. According to Vernellia R. Randall, Professor Emeritus at University of Dayton School of Law, racism in hospitals and health institutions manifests in policies that restrict admission, the closure, relocation, and privatization of hospitals that serve minority communities, and the transfer of unwanted patients by hospitals.
This racism, both institutional and personal, harms Black people. When it comes to time spent with physicians, quality of care, and quantity of doctor’s office visits, there are drastic differences between white and Black people. Whites receive more thorough diagnostic work-up, better treatment, and better care than Black Americans.
In fact, Randall concluded in her book “Dying While Black” that U.S. health policy is in violation of several provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), adopted unanimously in 1965 by the United Nations General Assembly.
The racist U.S. health care system has an especially devastating effect on Black people given that “African Americans are sicker and dying at a higher rate than white Americans.” This racial health divide is a result of capitalist structures of racism and poverty stretching back generations.
As fatal examples of this racist system, Calhoun Liberty Hospital, Blountstown Police Department, and the individuals directly involved must face charges
of criminal negligence and equal rights violations for the death of Barbara Dawson. Justice moving forward demands holding institutions accountable.
An investigation has been launched and the family plans to file a lawsuit. As Dawson’s family and friends mourn her untimely death, progressive people must also be their vocal supporters in the streets.
Justice for Barbara Dawson!
