and what do we say to death

baby purples martins have paused their slopping to

I’m Australian. Sure, we do have those doors, but the vast majority of places in Sydney are automatic sliding doors or old-fashioned manual push/pulls because we don’t need to block out the cold and wind the same way here.

So every day I experienced a culture clash with something as basic as what doors were normal for me.

Why should we give the physicians' medical narratives more credence than the numerous contentions of slaves, sharecroppers, and contemporary African Americans that they have been subjected to abusive medical research? Until now, the discussion has suffered greatly from our Western literary bias, which encourages us to believe planters' and physicians' writings about the health and medical issues of African Americans, but to give insufficient weight to a rich oral history passed down by African Americans, a history that has preserved the memory of medical abuses.

We quite logically see medical authority to medical experts, but this book will illustrate how race, culture, and economics have trumped medical and scientific truths at every turn. It will make the case that physicians had every motive to skew narratives against their Black subjects, not because they were especially racist or unfair (although many were) but because the culture of American medicine has mirrored the larger culture that encompassed enslavement, segregation, and less dramatic forms of racial inequity.

The bias against African American medical narratives emanates from culture and politics, including the Western literary bias against oral history."

Introduction- Medical Apartheid, Harriet A. Washington

But in dissecting the shameful medical apartheid, and important cause is usually neglected: the history of ethically flawed medical experimentation with African Americans. Such research has played a pivotal role in forging the fear of medicine that helps perpetuate our nation's racial health gulf. Historically, African Americans have been subjected to exploitative, abusive involuntary experimentation at a rate far higher than other ethnic groups.

Thus, although the heightened African American wariness of medical research and institutions reflects a situational hypervigilance, it is neither a baseless fear of harm nor a fear of imaginary harms. A "paranoid" label is often affixed to Blacks who are wary of participating in medical research.

However, not only is paranoid a misnomer but it is also symbolic of a dangerous misunderstanding. That is why I refer to African American fears of medical professionals and institutions as iatrophobia, coined from the Greek word iatros ("healer") and phobia ("fear"). Black iatrophobia is the fear of medicine."

As she glared at me, her face became contorted with anger, suffused with blood, and her breathing grew rapid. For a moment, I was stunned into silence, because nothing had prepared me for her reaction. After all, freedom of speech and academic freedom are sacred in this country. I was also a bit surprised that a white academic whose discussions and syllabus had events no interest or expertise in the matter should lecture me, and experienced African American medical writer, about health communication with African Americans.

She proceeded to inform me that there had been no medical research utilizing African Americans before the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, certainly not in the antebellum past, and when I asked her how she knew this, she countered, "Can you prove that there was?" When I responded simply "Yes," she disgorged a clumsy inquisition, unleashing a barrage of questions that showed she knew nothing about the subject at hand. I responded that my work was well researched and that she had raised an interesting question:

Was it indeed my work that would make African Americans wary of health care and medical research? Or had the work of those whose abused I proposed to chronicle already achieved this? The answer was all too obvious… Black Americans did not need me or anyone else to inculcate a fear of medicine. Medical history and practices had long since done so.”

Bear with the long post, teahearts. This is important.

It's summer slow season and June did not save us this year (we had no Pride rush this year, it's usually the only thing that gets us through the season), not to mention a few major invoices haven't been paid to us on deadline.

We would really love to keep our doors open and we have some big ol bills (now late) to pay that usually the last weekend of June handles.

Note: horrifyingly, this is what "successful" actually looks like for indies right now: simply staying in business at all. Between operating expenses getting spendier and Pride being pretty much nonexistent this year, we're about $10k shy of where we need to be this week (and ASAP to avoid accruing late fees).

Some great options if you want to help your fave tea shop survive the summer:

🍵 Don't need more tea and just want to spread the queer nerd cash cache around? We do have a shop financial health fund donation link!

🍵 We can handle regular orders out the wazoo. Bulk tea is non-taxable in the US, so that's better for us than a donation, plus is great to stock your cupboard, gift to loved ones, etc. Bonus: tea doesn't even think about staling for at least a year, so you can do your holiday shopping NOW!

🍵 Gift cards are a great way to give indies a cash infusion while spreading out the actual fulfillment workload! Always a lovely choice.

🍵 See also: reserving custom blend appointments to redeem later!

We don't want to burden already-stretched pockets. If $$$ is a stress for you, consider FREE ways to support us:

🍵 Share share share! Word of mouth, link-shares, socials posts about your faves, etc!

🍵 Ask your local cafe/retail store to ping us about wholesale!

🍵 Ask your office to stock your favorites of our teas!

🍵 Ask your team lead to use us for corporate gifts!

🍵 Leave us reviews! Google, Yelp, product pages on our website...reviews help so much!