20 Years Ago Today I was Diagnosed with Breast Cancer: A Racial Privilege Retrospective
Today, October 1, is the 20th anniversary of my breast cancer diagnosis. On that day, my kiddos were 14-months and 4-years-old. I didn't know then that I'd have to wean my baby so my milk ducts could shrink enough for a mastectomy. I didn't know I'd go through four months of chemotherapy. Or that twenty years later, I'd be a healthy 61-year-old disinclined to wearing what my kids used to call my Foob—my prosthetic false boob.
I also didn't know that I was white. Not in the way I know it now. Over the course of treatment, through the vulnerable post-treatment months, and while re-establishing myself as a healthy person, I researched how I—fit, organic-eating, unmedicated, therapy-lover—could have gotten cancer.
From the flyer for the 2009 presentation.
My research turned into a two-hour public presentation with 20-page handout that I delivered several times around town and distributed on DVDs. I called it "Four Stories And More: Tales From Cancer Panic to the Ways of Well-Being". Two years of deep research revealed four clear conditions contributing to cancer: environmental, physical, emotional and spiritual. It made total sense that I had gotten cancer, and that so many others had, too.
None of the research, I see now, pointed me toward the most influential factor in my survival: the structures of racialized oppression. It wasn’t featured in books about the stress-disease connection, articles about reproductive toxins in beauty products, or websites documenting how cancer cells thrive on sugar. And, I wasn’t looking for it.
So today, inspired by the pull of the anniversary and the action I’ve found best animates my commitment to collective liberation, I'm sharing what I know now. This is a racial privilege retrospective: not a lauding of my riches or an opportunity for self-shaming, but an honest assessment of how the system of racialized advantaging works. Not out there in someone else's life, but right here in my own body. Be forewarned: this reflection could be triggering, both for those experiencing strong feelings when faced with the privileging of people who identify as white, and for those uncomfortable acknowledging their privilege as white-identified people. These are unequal triggers, with substantially different impacts.
I felt a deep sense of being wronged by my diagnosis—as if I didn't deserve it. After years of therapy and healthy eating, I felt entitled to not get cancer. I wonder now if people who struggle to get health care, who live on processed food because it's the only thing nearby or affordable, who feel that our culture doesn't think they matter—do they feel the sense of entitlement to health that I felt? Or do they feel their diagnosis was an inevitability? I didn't question this twenty years ago.
What I did feel on October 1, 2003, when I learned that the lump I had found was abnormal, was astonishment at the world suddenly turning pink. October 1 is the first day of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Suddenly billboards, bus placards, and commercials were plastered with pink shirts on perky, grey-haired, jogging women or a woman smiling from under her sunhat pruning roses—all of whom were white. Everything was discussed in hushed tones. Many assiduously avoided saying the word cancer; in a support group, I heard people use "the C word". I got the distinct feeling I was supposed to feel helpless, not an agent or advocate for myself, and that my best course of action was hugging pretty soft, fuzzy pink things.
I was accustomed to advocating for myself, to having access, care, support, and backing. I leveraged all of this to offset my chances of recurrence. Among my assets: a health team I handpicked with both Chinese Medicine and Naturopathic cancer care specialists, a lymphatic drainage therapist (who remapped my lymphatic system after 18 nodes were removed), a therapist, a couples' counselor, a holistic physical therapist, and a qigong instructor (a movement-based mediation form known for health benefits). I had skills from my bachelors’ and masters' degrees to employ for research and discernment; I had the full-time income and insurance benefits of my then husband's post-Ph.D. job; and we had the invaluable support of both of our parents. They helped us rent a little house up the street—to lodge daily helpers like themselves, for the kids to hold nanny shares and play dates, for me to retreat to during the worst days of chemo (which it turned out I only needed twice; chemo was not the barf-fest I’d anticipated).
I didn't imagine then what I imagine now: what if my grandparents hadn't arrived in this country just as Jews were being seen as white? What if my grandfather couldn't have changed his last name to sound less ethnic "for business purposes"? What if he couldn't have gotten one bank loan, then another, to try (and fail) at numerous businesses, while his daughters found their way into New York city colleges? What if my parents had had to take care of either of their parents in our home while raising four kids?
These What Ifs didn’t happen and the further benefits of racialized structures showed up in my cancer care. Here's one example: redlining helped us earn money on property once we were able to buy it; our houses, while not extravagant, earned laborless income and a deduction from taxes that renters don't get; those savings grew in the stock market, again without labor or the toll of income tax; which led to my parents contributing to the out-of-pocket costs of my care team; which meant I could rest, eat well, and focus on my kids instead of work during treatment.
And another through-line: I grew up when being counter-cultural was the norm. In open classrooms and alternative public schools, I called my teachers by their first names, used my voice, and went braless without being seen as disrespectful or threatening. I cultivated skill in being unconventional. While so many fought daily to survive being culturally marginalized, I was culturally normalized enough to be lauded for standing out, not targeted. I chose a graduate school where I could determine my own curriculum, went to alternative practitioners wildly generous with their time, eschewed professional attire. By the time of my diagnosis, I was accustomed to leveraging my agency and access, and getting my needs met—unburdened by damaging biases, prejudiced assumptions, or expectations of criminality.
So now I wonder: what would I have done differently if I had known I was white? What else would I have included in my presentation if I’d understood how structural systems of oppression generate poverty, and cultural norms around these systems communicate who matters and who doesn't? How might I have acted differently?
It hasn’t taken long to generate a substantial list. First, I’d recast the original four stories within the framework of racialized oppression, adding (at a minimum):
Environmental: how policies and corporate bullying land the most toxic of factories, plants, and dumps nearest people already impoverished and excluded from decision-making, creating intense exposure and health disparities.
Physical: how the harms landing daily on the bodies of Black Americans living in a culture founded on their not mattering causes an accumulation of physical conditions called ‘weathering’ that lead to significantly shorter life spans.
Emotional: how mental health support for Black, Indigenous and people of color is severely underresourced, because being certified as a conventional therapist costs tens of thousands of dollars and takes several years to acquire.
Spiritual: how traditional, culturally-specific, and indigenous ways of healing are shunned, unavailable, or assimilated under the influence of white dominant culture.
And then there are all the other things I’d do, as someone committed to the practice of anti-racism, of seeking humanity and liberation for everyone. This list gets longer every minute, as I think of the things I did for myself 20 years ago, and take responsibility for expanding it out to others with less racialized privilege:
I'd pay attention to who's in the room, and who's not. The waiting room, the hospital floor, the treatment suite, the support group room, the parking lot, the bus stop, the Foob store, the organic grocer. I'd notice how the absence of poverty matches the presence of health. I'd look for disparities and inequities, and talk and write about what I'd see.
I'd raise funds for individuals facing cancer (or an organization supporting those individuals), who have been excluded from generational wealth building, educational opportunities, accessible healthcare, stable housing, and other basic rights.
Last chemo infusion, March 2004
I'd ask my community not just to help with a pre-chemo work party at my house, but to also join me in a community-based work party for an organization that supports Black, Brown, Indigenous, and immigrant peoples dealing with cancer.
I’d design a workshop or caucus agenda for white folks to explore what they already know, have been shielded from knowing, or have avoided acknowledging about how our race privilege contributes directly to the story of who gets cancer, and who doesn’t survive it.
Thanks to all who helped me through that challenging time. And to all who have helped me arrive at where I stand today.
May we all find our way to all of us thriving.
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