Serena Williams: doctors to blame for black women’s deaths

— Tennis star’s reckless accusation of lethal lack of care goes unchallenged in the media —

Serena Williams is the greatest ever tennis player. Roger Federer comes close, but he’s not quite the best. I’ve admired Williams for a long time. Her tennis is exceptional, her career astonishing. But her achievements and fame place her in a powerful position. She can influence public opinion, if only by reinforcing what many of her admirers already believe. When she speaks, millions listen. And that brings with it important responsibilities.

She recently gave birth to a daughter, Alexis Olympia Ohanian, Jr. Interviewed a few days ago about her return to tennis, and about the birth, she made an extraordinary claim. She said that the deaths of far more black women than white women in the US, during pregnancy or childbirth, are caused by uncaring doctors.

“Doctor’s aren’t listening to us, just to be quite frank,” Williams said in the short BBC film. “We’re dying, three times more likely, and knowing that, going in, are some doctors not – you know – caring as much for us is heartbreaking.” (sic)

Her message was unequivocal: by not giving the same quality of care they give their white female patients, doctors are causing the deaths of some of their black female patients.

She was aided in her expression of outrage by the BBC, which shoehorned into the film a caption saying Williams’s comments show she is following Francis McDormand’s recent call at the Oscars for greater equality. It was clear the BBC was happy to go along with Williams’s accusation, accepting it at face value, as if it were obviously true and all part and parcel of the striving for equality. No challenge was made by the BBC to her comments. No other opinion was given in the accompanying news story, no alternative interpretation suggesting why three times as many black women do indeed die in pregnancy or childbirth, compared to white women. Deemed to be about equality and – however outlandish the claims – therefore unquestionably right and good, no details were provided and no evidence was sought. And, if you’re a celebrity or prominent sportsperson, it seems it’s often even easier to get away with saying anything you want, however dubious the claim and whichever group of people you smear.

I’m not one to unquestionably accept the relentless flow of gender- and race-related news. A lot of it is levered into largely unrelated news stories and much is later found (but rarely shown by the same media) to be based on tenuous links, unproven assumptions and downright untruths. Or all along was utterly irrelevant to the story at hand, with opinions being wrung out of interviewees after persistent questioning. Some of this news is important and worthy, but a great deal is nonsense, serving merely to indulge the egos of all those who now occupy positions of power and influence in politics, the civil service, the media, the legal profession, the charity sector, education, the arts, religion and of course entertainment. To look at a lot of news today, the issues given prominence and how they’re framed, you wouldn’t think the views of the majority of the public, across a broad range of issues, are at odds with those of this professional, metropolitan class. Many abhor their obsessions and moralising, their ceaseless searching for some perceived injustice to be stamped out as they strive to engineer a new society, while making as many people as possible feel bad about themselves, about how they live and about what they believe. But after I saw the interview with Williams, while I thought the comments possibly misguided, even I very nearly moved on. I had started to become inured to the identity politics-driven agenda set by much of the news media.

But Williams’s accusation is a very serious one to make. A doctor’s sole purpose is to protect health, cure illness and save lives. They work according to a strict ethical code. They have trained for many years and do an extremely demanding and important job. Yet a great number are being accused of being so deeply racist that they are being negligent in their treatment of some women because of the colour of their skin, to the extent that those women needlessly die.

It began to trouble me that this serious claim had been made, in such a confident but casual way, and that it had only been reported by the BBC. Not even the conservative press had taken it up, which they often do if they want to ridicule what they see as absurd, controversial or unfounded comments and opinions. So I asked myself, is Williams’s accusation true? My initial feelings were that it can’t be. I, and I imagine most people who aren’t so fixated on issues of race and gender that it defines their entire life and identity, just as would a religion, will find it hard believe. Doctors, of all people, at a time in women’s lives when they need the best available medical care, stand accused by Serena Williams of routinely, racially and fatally discriminating against them.

It seems even researchers don’t know the answer with absolute certainty. But they have a pretty good idea. And it appears none make the claim Williams did. But if not a result of lack of care, why is there this three-fold death rate disparity in the US?

Facts over opinion

Researchers point to a number of possible reasons for the disparity, all of which provide insights which are now being used, through education, community projects and wider access to healthcare through government funding, to try to fix this terrible problem. In North Carolina, for example, the death rate among pregnant black women has been halved in recent years. For white women, in the same state, the mortality rate has risen a little. Regarding black maternal mortality rates, some medical academics posit as part of the cause, a higher rate of general health problems in black women, disadvantaging them when they become pregnant. Data also shows a higher fatality rate among those whose pregnancy was unplanned, whatever their race. Again, black women are over-represented in that group. A third factor likely to have great significance is that black women are more reluctant to seek medical monitoring and help, especially in early pregnancy. No judgment is being made about black women in these academic studies. Some of the data relates to lifestyle choices, but it also seems reasonable to believe, unless one is an extreme libertarian, that structural inequalities play an important part, with a consequential lack of opportunity and reduced expectation. The studies are a way to try to delineate and understand the issue, with a view to reducing the death rate.

In light of these studies and the improvements being made in some states, Williams’s claim, on its own a bizarre one to make, begins to look even more outlandish. That neither she nor the BBC thought it so, and thought it unnecessary, even in passing, to ask themselves if other factors were at play, suggests to me that something else lies behind her utterance. Even CNN, a company now seated firmly on the identity politics bandwagon, which last year reported on this issue, never made such a damning, unsupported – and frankly prejudiced – claim.

While the research more than likely points to, among many other things, black women in general receiving less good care, no one, except it seems Serena Williams, claims the failing lies with doctors themselves. Black women receive less good care in general, partly because they are often on low incomes and have less access to good health care.

There may, of course, be a rabidly racist doctor or ten, somewhere. But their number could never reasonably account for the high death rate. The only person who could make the leap and think doctors’ behaviour and beliefs do account for it – in other words that there is very large number of incredibly racist and dangerous doctors in the US – is someone whose mind is working in a very specific way. The sort of mind, in fact, indulged by a media frenzy of seeking out victims wherever they can be conjured up, that’s not only caught up in the personally satisfying narrative of oppressors vs the oppressed, but who is so to such an extent that they think it acceptable to blithely attack, from a position of influence, many good people in just a few short sentences with no evidence.

This is just one example of a never-ending stream of similar news stories, each being progressively woven into the fabric of an identity politics-driven news agenda. In a cavalier fashion, Williams and the BBC, aided by the silence from the rest of the media, were happy to denounce those who help mothers bring the marvel of life into the world, merely to satisfy their own ideology. That they did so, and probably will again, shows intellectual laziness, self-indulgence and a willingness to say almost anything which comes into their head, however odious, so long as it reinforces their own partial worldview. Williams’s words and the fact they were given implicit approval, show that things are getting more hysterical.

So, as you may expect, I recommend Williams should stick to tennis. She’s very good at it. I consider myself lucky to be alive today to witness such mastery. As for BBC News and BBC Sport, it’s time they asked themselves whether they have now abandoned some of their professional values and their commitment to standards of good journalism.

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