proc prun / roses
Health Affairs (2023)
Poem published in Health Affairs’ October 2023 special issue on structural racism and health. Full poem available open-access here:
proc prun / roses
“blessed be thy hands
thy methods keen to fracture
bone and flesh and street and story
turn them into factors
blessed be thy tongue
thy unprincipled components—
tell me:
which component of “No.”
don’t you understand?
run;
error 76-332: Syntax error, statement will be ignored”
Abstract
Guided by Black feminist philosopher Kristie Dotson’s conceptualization of epistemic violence, this piece engages poetry as praxis to reflect on matters of (mis)representation, procedural justice, and epistemic justice within public health knowledge production on place-based racial health inequities. Drawing from social epidemiology—and written in part as SAS code—the poem engages and interrogates epidemiology’s dominant paradigm as observed via reductionist and apolitical examinations of place-based health inequities experienced by communities of color. In doing so, it surfaces oft-ignored considerations of agency, power, and (spatial) stigma as relevant to how communities of color are (mis)represented via dominant research practices—especially mapping techniques. In this capacity, it challenges public health’s affinity for epistemological, procedural, and methodological norms that effectively silence/erase community knowledge(s) and nuance in favor of reductionist empirical representations coded and mapped by researchers who, quite often, have never stepped foot inside the communities they aver to model. Relatedly, it alludes to and draws out considerations for underrepresentation and decolonization as germane to a field in which credentialed researchers, grant review panels, editors, editorial boards, and “peer” reviewers remain overwhelmingly and disproportionately White. In this spirit, this creative work of public health scholarship engages and enacts Ford & Airhihenbuwa’s public health critical race praxis principles of “voice” and “disciplinary self-critique,” illuminating the inherent contradictions of a place-health and racial health equity discourse that fails to consider the racialized power dynamics underlying its knowledge production enterprise as part of the antiracism challenge.
“blessed be the flower
the whole flower
the full garden
we full bloom
we pretty
we rooted
we longifuckintudinal
promise—
put that on my grandmother
on god, my word, my home
my homies versus your GEEs
and see
who comes out
“marginal”
run;
error 76-332: Syntax error, statement will be ignored”