INVISIBLE VISITS
Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System
by Tina K. Sacks, PhD.
Oxford University Press

”Although the United States spends almost one-fifth of all its resources funding healthcare, the American system continues to be dogged by persistent inequities in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and women. Invisible Visits analyzes how middle-class Black women navigate the complexities of dealing with doctors in this environment. “

Please join us in a community discussion concerning the gaps in perinatal health care and community services that contribute to the high rates of Black maternal and infant mortality. This discussion is needed to provide clarity on challenges, barriers, service gaps and needs to improve birth outcomes for our African/African Ancestry moms and infants. "Currently the rate of mortality of Black infants continues to be two to three times higher than the rates of other ethnic groups statewide."
"Saving our babies begins with all of us"

Why are Black Women still disadvantaged by the US Health Care System?

Why are Black Women still Disadvantaged
by the US Health Care System?

0:34 – Numerous studies show stark disparities in health outcomes for Black women as compared to almost all other groups of women. But just what is it about the intersection of race and gender that causes Black women to experience such stark disparities?

The #Reframe Conference:
Inner Landscapes & Media Futures

This is a public event designed for those who embrace, and work at, the intersection of ideas and for those wanting to connect with leading figures at Sundance, On Being podcast, Harvard Neurology, Stanford Design School, and elsewhere -- in an intimate setting.

A critical analysis of how Black women navigate the complexities of a medical institution that has not been designed to meet their needs.
Indigo Curated Writer Talk w/ Tina Sacks

INVISIBLE VISITS

Black Middle-Class Women in the American Healthcare System by Tina K. Sacks

The United States spends one-fifth of its resources funding healthcare—yet the system is dogged by persistent and pernicious inequalities in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities and women. In this country a Black women is 22 percent more likely to die from heart disease than a white woman, 71 percent more likely to die from cervical cancer, and 243 percent more likely to die following child birth. 

Tina Sacks & Dawn Marie Dow
"Cultural Capital, Systemic Exclusion and Bias in the Lives of Black Middle-Class Women"
Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society and Center for Research on Social Change
April 2, 2019

“At this April 2 event at UC Berkeley, Dawn Dow and Tina Sacks discuss their new books on African American women. Dow’s book, Mothering While Black: Boundaries and Burdens of Middle-Class Parenthood (UC Press 2019), examines the complex lives of the African American middle class—in particular, black mothers and the strategies they use to raise their children to maintain class status while simultaneously defining and protecting their children’s “authentically black” identities.”

The Ongoing Significance of Racism in American Medicine
Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Tina K. Saks
February 24th, 2019

“You can’t get a shot. I’ve never gotten a shot by a white person ever . . . they had me terrified [of being treated by a white doctor].” Her family’s concerns stemmed from their understanding that their great-grandfather died as a result of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The US Public Health Service began the “Study of Syphilis in the Untreated Negro Male” in 1932.”

Maintaining social welfare programs in the Trump era
by Tina K. Saks

What are some of the current challenges to maintaining social welfare programs for the nation’s most vulnerable people in the Trump era?

Tina Sacks, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Social Welfare, gave a lecture on this topic on Jan. 30, 2019, as part of a series of talks sponsored by UC Berkeley’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI).

Why middle-class black women dread the doctor’s office
UC Berkley News
In conversation with Yasmin Anwar

”The anxiety of being black, female and at the mercy of the U.S. healthcare system first hit Tina Sacks when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Bette Parks Sacks, then in her 50s, intuitively knew something was wrong but, like many African American women, was afraid her doctor would give her the brush-off.”

Serena Redux: Waiting to Exhale
Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Tina K. Saks
October 9th, 2018

“By now, much has been written about the Serena Williams-Naomi Osaka-Carlos Ramos fiasco at the 2018 US Open. During the women’s final, the umpire, Carlos Ramos, issued Williams a warning for suspected coaching from her player’s box. When Williams strongly denied she was being coached, which is strictly prohibited in tennis, Ramos levied another penalty against her, stripping her of a single point. “

“The state of North Carolina has been in the news quite a bit recently. From discriminating against trans* people using the restroom of their choice, to voter ID laws, to its importance as a swing state in the 2016 presidential election, North Carolina is having a moment.“

How Big Data failed Baltimore
MSNBC
Economy / Equality
Tina K. Saks

”In the days following the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who sustained a fatal spinal injury in Baltimore police custody, I was taken back to my time in Baltimore, at the height of America’s “tough on crime” era.”

Death by a Thousand Budget Cuts: The Need for a New Fight for Poor People’s Rights
Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict & World Order
Tina K. Saks
January 17, 2017

”As of January 2017 it appears that, we, indeed, have everything to lose. Donald J. Trump’s rhetorical exhortation to urban—i.e., Black—voters during the 2016 presidential campaign seems all too real now that he has ascended to the US presidency.”

“A Thousand Midnights”: Chicago and the Legacy of the Great Migration, The New Yorker
Tina K. Saks
January 8th, 2016

“When I was growing up, my mother, Bette Parks Sacks, often told me stories about her youth in Mississippi. She spoke in a slow, sweet drawl, despite the fact that she’d spent her entire adult life in Chicago. I knew of the hardships and beauty of the South, transmitted to me through vivid recollections of her childhood and adolescence.”