Ryan Darovitz

A Different Time

Looking out into the open air

Silence everywhere.

All hindered by an invisible enemy, a virus

So feared that normal

Doesn’t exist.

With silence comes violence.

Riots, looting, madness.

A somber chaos erupting,

With tempers flaring and tensions high.

With violence comes a certain sorrow.

Life after life withers away

By the second, uncontrollable

Putting a sad nature upon our society.

This tragedy cannot continue,

We must fight back.

Not divided against each other,

In Chapter 33, there is further evidence of racial prejudice despite this taking place well after Lack’s demise. Paul Lurz, director of performance and improvement at Crownsville Hospital, said, “We had a serious asbestos problem. Most of our records from the fifties and earlier were contaminated. Instead of cleaning each page of the records to save them, the administration decided to have them carted away in bags and buried.” The abstract topic really isn’t noticeable here until you look at the context. These records were at a hospital dubbed “The Hospital for the Negro Insane”. The asbestos happened at this hospital due to the fact that it wasn’t maintained or kept up, and that happened due to the fact that it was a hospital for African Americans, especially considering big ideas from previous posts. In addition, if it was a white hospital, those pages would have almost certainly been cleaned and saved, and the asbestos problem likely would not have happened. Even though the record they needed was found, this whole situation still illustrates racial prejudice in a nonverbal way.

A secondary source that adds a modern day touch to the abstract topic is one on racism’s relevance to society today. Specific examples of racism today are mentioned, and these examples do relate to the prejudice that Lack’s and her family experienced, albeit on a smaller scale. The Black Lives Matter movement is also mentioned, furthering that modern day touch.

In chapter 17, Louis Lefkowitz, New York State Attorney General, expressed his beliefs regarding the situation with HeLa cells and the fact that the Lacks family just plain out doesn’t know what is happening to them. He says, “Every human being has an inalienable right to determine what shall be done with his own body. These patients then had a right to know…the contents of the syringe: and if this knowledge was to cause fear and anxiety or make them frightened, they had a right to be fearful and frightened and thus say NO to the experiment.“ There is an immediate connection here between the abstract topic of racial prejudice and this quote, an even stronger connection than the once I discussed previously. Everyone has unalienable rights, everyone has the right to know what is happening. But the Lacks family, they had no idea what was happening. They were fearful, they were anxious, they were frightened. They didn’t have a choice in the experiment. This is all because of racial prejudice and segregation at the time; African Americans didn’t have these unalienable rights. They were all treated way worse than their Caucasian counterparts.

A secondary source that relates to what is discussed above is an article discussing racism and its connection to both health and the story of Henrietta Lacks. The article offers further context on the story of HeLa cells, and that not many people knew about who was actually responsible for the creation of these cells, because they were African American. This heavily relates to both the abstract topic and the quote discussed above, in the fact that racial prejudice is the responsibility of all of these outcomes.

After Lacks died, mass production of her cells, known as “HeLa Cells” commenced almost right away. However, Henrietta’s actual name only got released to the public once, and the name was spelled wrong. Despite reasoning pointing towards “protecting the privacy or rights of her family”, this was likely a result of racial prejudice, my abstract topic. Also, African Americans didn’t have this privacy or rights in this era. Further connecting the topic here, Lacks’ family didn’t even know that Lack’s cells were still alive and being mutated. They had no idea what was being done, or that anything was being done. Again, when combining these facts with the African American laws/rights in this era, this points to the abstract topic, racial alienation. Instead of being honored to have a family member that had unique cells, Lacks’ family was frightened by it all because of the color of their skin.

A PDF article that I found on the internet relates well to the abstract topic, and provides a further understanding to how bad it really was for African Americans in the 50s. It also provides some context to further support the passages mentioned above. Information in the article clearly supports the fact that African Americans had little to no rights on privacy, and that the misspelling was due to racial prejudice.

The abstract topic of alienation due to race continues to be prevalent into the middle portions of the book. At the end of chapter 11, Lacks sadly succumbs to her diseases and passes away. However, similarly to the pain referenced in the last post, there is a connection here between the abstract topic and Lack’s death. Lacks had another seizure-like instance of extreme pain; however doctors did not do much other than strap her down to a board to somewhat control her movements. Since the doctors practically knew that Lacks was going to die (and she did die hours later), why didn’t they just peacefully send her off with an injection or gas? It’s almost like they wanted her to suffer the most pain possible and have as most hopelessness as possible. The doctors just watched her suffer. This is likely due to Lack’s race, which relates to the abstract topic. Even if they didn’t have the technology to peacefully end someone’s life, it would still connect to the abstract topic due to the lack of resources that the African American hospitals had, which was mentioned in earlier posts. In short, Lacks died in such a horrible way in part due to racial prejudice.

The abstract topic of “Alienation because of Gender, Race, Class, or Creed” continues to be prevalent throughout Lacks. One part in particular, at the end of chapter 8, caught my eye due to the connections between Skloot’s writing and the abstract topic. Skloot illustrates the sheer amount of pain that Lacks experienced during her first few days in the hospital. Despite the fact that the doctors “tried everything”, the pain that Lacks suffered was also likely caused by racial prejudice towards whites. As noted earlier, African Americans received lower quality treatment, especially due to lack of resources. It is likely that there were medicines to ease the pain that worked, but they were only available to the whites due to the prejudice. This caused Lacks to suffer. Despite the author not mentioning anything about prejudice or even the words “black” and “white” in the surrounding paragraphs, the connection is immediately made due to the concepts and connections brought up earlier between the book and the abstract topic.

Upon reading the first few chapters of the book, the abstract topic of “Alienation because of Gender, Race, Class, or Creed” is immediately apparent, with the first examples being the grounds of Johns Hopkins Hospital. Most notably, in the very first paragraph of the book, Lacks notes, “...she’d jumped out of the car, pulled her jacket over her head, and scurried into the hospital, past the “colored” bathroom, the only one she was allowed to use.” This not only introduces and connects this abstract topic into the book, it sets the atmosphere that this book takes place in; before MLK, before the Civil Rights Movement. Another notable passage that connects to the abstract passage is as follows, “The public wards at Hopkins were filled with patients, most of them black and unable to pay their medical bills.” Since Hopkins was the closest hospital that treated African Americans for miles, there were many patients there as well. It’s hard to imagine the pain and disease that these individuals went through, Lacks herself even.

As some of you know, I have a job at Jets Pizza at the corner of Auburn and Crooks. Here I will share the experience of working at Jets on Halloween night, the busiest night of the year.

As kids come home from school and gear up for trick or treating, Jets is hard at work taking care of the last minute things in a several day preparation period to ensure everything is in stock and ready for the busy night. Soon after, the orders start coming in.

And they don’t stop. For three hours.

As dressings are made and sauce is poured, the dishes and pans pile up, and the organized chaos ensues. Employees struggle to find the smallest of space. The phones don’t stop ringing, they just don’t. Our pickup time is 45 minutes and deliveries are an hour and 30 minutes out. Employees desperately try to keep up on deliveries, pizza making, washing the dishes, and scraping the pans, but they just fall behind. The pizzas and toppings go by the minute, and more dough and cheese is prepared towards the end of the night. As the night falls and the orders dwindle down, employees still spend hours finishing the dishes and pans, as well as making the occasional order or two and upkeeping the store. By the end of the night, everything is done and Jets is ready to close for the night.

Seems like a straight-forward answer right?? No, not really. While most just simply want to be ready for college, for me, it’s much much more.

There are many things that I want from my education. Starting basic, I want to help others, but I also want to help myself. Of course I want to go to a good college and become an engineer. However, if I combine all of these wants together, I immediately see a connection. These are all things that I want to do, by heart. Diving even deeper, all of these require a substantial amount of effort in education. So much so that it becomes rather exhausting very quickly. I want to be able to have the freedom to do what my heart desires, and not spend countless hours dedicated to my education and a test. So, to culminate everything, what I want from my education is the urge to do what my heart wants me to do. I want school to enable me to go out there and make a difference in the world. I don’t want to only care for myself, I want to care for others too by serving them, while also ensuring that I am stable. I want to become some sort of engineer, probably civil, although that can change. I want education to make me feel free. I am more than just a test score.