Wealth alone cannot overcome racial bias in healthcare delivery.

Evidence

Take the case of tennis superstar Serena Williams; she and her husband have a combined net worth of $189 million. She has access to the best healthcare that money can buy—but when she gave birth, her blackness undermined her care. As Williams told Vogue, she warned her attending medical team that she had a history of blood clots—only to be dismissed as “confused” when she told a nurse she thought she was experiencing a pulmonary embolism. (She was, and the delay in treatment set off a range of complications, including a hemorrhage.) Her wealth alone could not overcome the system—it took her influence and determination, as well as her resources, to keep her from becoming another statistic in the maternal mortality saga in which black mothers in America are at least three times more likely to die as a result of pregnancy or childbirth than white mothers. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 418

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the book’s core thesis elsewhere: facial neutrality of systems plus unequal starting conditions produces disparate outcomes even for high-wealth individuals.