First Black President

            This morning, my boyfriend and I read the news, and like every morning there was yet another article about Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump (election season!). As we talked about the possibility of having a woman for president for the first time in history I said out loud "Wow, we could have our First Black President and First Woman President back to back! What a time in history." And then it kind of hit me. Obama becoming the first black president was a big deal. But then, why was it such a big deal? Why is someone having a different color of skin becoming the first fill-in-the-blank-here such a big deal? I was not diminishing the accomplishment like you may be thinking. I was wondering, why does race even matter to begin with? Of course, I was thinking idealistically. In an ideal world race wouldn't matter. But this is not an ideal world and race does so unfortunately matter. I realized slowly that such great suppression of the black race in this country, that spread globally, really happened just yesterday – it was not that long ago in history. The same with women's rights. I am just hoping as time and history go on, that slowly this accomplishments, first black president, and accomplishments like it won't be such a big deal because they will simply be commonplace.

            As I was reading "Representations That Frame Health and Development Policy" from Global health: Why cultural perceptions, social representations, and biopolitics matter (Nichter, 2008) for our readings next week, I found the words I was lacking to convey this morning: "The questions of how and why [groups at risk] are exposed are often left unasked - and this can be highly problematic. Simply identifying a group as being at risk from an illness is an invitation for others to think that this is due to an inherent genetic or behavioral group trait. This impression all too often plays into a pre-existing negative stereotypes" (112). He later goes on to explain that we (researchers, students, health professionals) should consider rewording our questions from What risk factors does a person have to disease X? to What protective factors within a group prevent a problem from being worse than it is or from developing? He also describes how representations of "groups at risk" need to be seen in light of environments of risk if the group is not to be stigmatized. Race of course has implications nationally and globally. Although this book was written before 2000, I haven't seen this type of wording before. I wonder if we rephrased our research questions and took "at risk" groups on from a different angle, if we could begin, or increase, the reduction of racism and negative health and negative stereotypes.

Nichter, M. (2008). Global health: Why cultural perceptions, social representations, and biopolitics matter. University of Arizona Press.