George Floyd’s Autopsy and the Structural
Gaslighting of America
The weaponization of medical language emboldened white
supremacy with the authority of the white coat. How will
we stop it from happening again?
By Ann Crawford-Roberts
June 29, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
The world
was gaslit by misreporting about George Floyd’s
initial autopsy report. As concerned physicians, we
write to deconstruct
the misinformation
and condemn the ways this weaponization of medical
language reinforced white supremacy at the torment
of Black Americans.
Gaslighting is a
method of psychological manipulation employed to make a
victim question their own sanity, particularly in
scenarios where they are mistreated. The term comes from
a
1938 play and, later, a popular film, wherein a
predatory husband abuses his wife in a plot to have her
committed to a mental institution. He dims the gas
lights in their home; then, when she comments on the
darkness, knowingly rejects her observation and uses it
as evidence that she’s gone insane. It’s a torturous
tactic employed to destroy a person’s trust in their own
perception of reality. It’s a devastating distraction
from oppression. It’s insidious. And it happened
recently when millions of people who had seen nine
agonizing minutes of murder were told by an autopsy
report that they hadn’t.
In America,
widespread anti-Black violence is often paired with
structural gaslighting. Racism, after all, thrives
when blame for its outcomes are misattributed. When
Black families are
refused loans in criminally discriminatory housing
schemes, their credit is blamed. When youth of color
are
disproportionately stopped and frisked, they are
told the process is random, and for their safety.
And when Black
people are killed by police, their character and even
their
anatomy is turned into justification for
their killer’s exoneration. It’s a well-honed tactic.
One analysis of the national database of state-level
death certificate data found that fewer than half of law
enforcement–related deaths were reported. In addition to
this undercounting, police actions were further
minimized by the use of diagnostic codes that
incorrectly labeled the cause of death as “accidental”
or “undetermined” rather than police-related. For
centuries, our systems have relied on this psychological
torture—a host of mental gymnastics—to deny the truth of
what Black people have always known. The cause of death
is racism.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
On May 29, the
country was told that the autopsy of George Floyd
“revealed no physical findings that support a
diagnosis of traumatic asphyxiation,” and that
“potential intoxicants” and preexisting
cardiovascular disease “likely contributed to his
death.” This requires clarification. Importantly,
these commonly quoted phrases did not come from a
physician, but were taken from a
charging document that utilized politicized
interpretations of medical information. As doctors,
we wish to highlight for the public that this
framing of the circumstances surrounding Floyd’s
death was at best, a misinterpretation, and at
worst, a deliberate obfuscation.
A timeline of
events illustrates how a series of omissions and
commissions regarding Mr. Floyd’s initial autopsy
results deceptively fractured the truth. On May 28, a
statement released by the Hennepin County Medical
Examiner’s office reported ongoing investigations and
acknowledgement from the forensic pathologist that an
“autopsy … must be interpreted in the context of the
pertinent investigative information.” As per
standardized medical examination, Floyd’s underlying
health conditions and toxicology screen were documented.
These are ordinary findings that do not suggest
causation of death, yet
headlines and the
May 29 charging document falsely overstated the role
of Floyd’s coronary artery disease and hypertension,
which increase the risk of stroke and heart attack over
years, not minutes. Asphyxia—suffocation—does not always
demonstrate physical signs, as other
physician groups have noted.
Without this
important medical context, however, the public was left
to reconcile manipulated medical language with the
evidence they had personally witnessed. Ultimately, the
initial report overstated and misrepresented the role of
chronic medical conditions, inappropriately alluded to
intoxicants, and failed to acknowledge the stark reality
that but for the defendant’s knee on George
Floyd’s neck, he would not be dead today.
By Monday, June 1,
in the context of widespread political pressure, the
public received two reports: the preliminary autopsy
report commissioned by Floyd’s family by private
doctors, and—shortly thereafter—a
summary of the preliminary autopsy from the Hennepin
County Medical Examiner’s Office. Both reports stated
that the cause of Floyd’s death was homicide: death at
the hands of another.
By inaccurately
portraying the medical findings from the autopsy of
George Floyd, the legal system and media emboldened
white supremacy, all under the cloak of authoritative
scientific rhetoric. They took standard components of a
preliminary autopsy report to cast doubt, to sow
uncertainty; to gaslight America into thinking we didn’t
see what we know we saw. In doing so, they perpetuated
stereotypes about disease, risky behavior and
intoxication in Black bodies to discredit a victim of
murder. This state of affairs is not an outlier—it is
part of a patterned and tactical distortion of facts
wherein autopsy reports are manipulated to bury police
violence and
uphold white supremacy. As Ida B. Wells
said, “Those who commit the murders write the
reports.” A similar conflict of interest between police
departments and medical examiners offices continues
today.
As physicians, we
will not be complicit in the ongoing manipulation of
medical expertise to erase government-sanctioned
violence. Though we are relieved that two independent
examinations invalidated the preliminary findings in the
charging document and the headlines that deceitfully
undermined Chauvin’s culpability in Floyd’s murder, our
initial incense is not replaced by celebration.
For three days,
Black Americans sat—and still sit—with the
all-too-familiar pangs of being told that the truth is
not true. Of fearing that the law would believe a
physician’s report over the reality they saw with their
own eyes, and have lived with their own lives. It's a
miscarriage of justice that deepens the cut; not only
can Black people be killed with impunity; a physician’s
autopsy report can be twisted to replace the truth.
Medical science
has long been used for the consolidation of power rather
than for solidarity with the oppressed. We see how Black
mothers are
blamed for their own mortality in childbirth and how
starkly
high rates of COVID death in Black communities are
preposterously misattributed to differences in
hormone receptors or
clotting factors; all the while letting racism off
the hook.
We wish to remind
fellow physicians that medical science has never been
objective. It has never existed in a vacuum; there have
and will always be social, political and legal
ramifications of our work. Our assessments may be
employed in criminal justice cases; our toxicology
screens may have profound effects on the livelihood of
patients; our diagnoses may perpetuate sexist and racist
stereotypes. Our lack of ill intent cannot be our
alibi—we must be accountable for not just our work but
also how it is used, lest our medicine becomes the very
weapon that harms. Medicine requires inclusion of the
social context of disease in order to uphold its sacred
oath of doing no harm. If we focus only on molecular
pathways and neglect to articulate the role of
structural inequities—of racism—in our country, our
reports on the causes of death and injury in our
patients will erase the roles of their oppressors.
We also write to
remind our physician colleagues that the medical field
is a place ripe for gaslighting. Bolstered by the
perceived strength and legitimacy of a white coat and a
stethoscope, our diagnoses and conclusions—about
physical or psychological “abnormalities,” about causes
of illness and death—have the power to eclipse reality,
as we’ve seen in the case of George Floyd. Often, we
stand by while other agents co-opt our frameworks,
obscure our research and weaponize our language in the
service of oppression.
The declarations,
the truths, the realities of Black people in America are
too often disregarded. Across the nation, Black people
are suffocating under the weight of anti-Black hatred.
They cannot breathe. And even as they gasp for air,
structural gaslighting operates to deny the truths of
the causes of their suffocation.
We write as
physicians to denounce this psychological manipulation.
We write to apologize for the discrimination our
patients of color have received in the hospital under
our watch, we write in gratitude for the tireless labor
of Black activists, and we write to condemn how medicine
has been weaponized in the service of white supremacy.
We write to validate what Black people already know—have
always known—that racism is a most pressing public
health crisis. We pledge to fight this crisis as if our
own breath depended on it.
Ann Crawford-Roberts, M.D., M.P.H., is a
psychiatrist in Los Angeles. - -
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Second Autopsy
Finds That George Floyd Died of Asphyxiation
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