Penny Legate: Better cancer treatment thanks to white privilege

Penny Legate is a well-known personality around the Northwest. She’s used that status, and her personal experience, to shed light on difficult topics. Now, she’s shining it on white privilege.

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Legate has frequently talked about her daughter’s battles with drug addiction, and eventual death from overdose. Now, the former TV anchor has a battle of her own — against breast cancer. She has been going through treatment for nearly a year.

She is being treated for the illness, but she argues that she has an advantage getting that treatment over others. That advantage is white privilege.

“It’s a vast inequity,” Legate said.

White privilege and cancer treatment

For example, consider another woman just like Legate, living in Seattle. The difference — she’s African American.

“Somebody I know who comes from great wealth right here in Seattle. She’s Ethiopian, and a good friend,” Legate said. “She consulted with some of the doctors that I interviewed – I didn’t end up using them, but they are still great. When she developed a complication after her mastectomy, they said, ‘Stop complaining, I’m sure this pain is all in your head.’ I couldn’t imagine a doctor telling me that.”

“And she had the same thing happened with a plastic surgeon – same treatment,” she said. “I thought, ‘Why would they treat her that way?’ I figured, ‘Oh, she’s African American and I’m white.’ It dawned on me. It had to be the difference because this woman is the most stoic, lovely non-complaining kind of person.”

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It goes further than dismissive doctors, Legate argues. She notes that as a person with white privilege she gets access to treatments beyond basic western medicine. She gets access to acupuncture, or mindfulness therapy. Legate has discussed these sorts of things with her friend.

“She said the difference between African American women and white women who have breast cancer is that the white women are told, ’We are going to do everything we can to get this disease. We are going to do everything we can to save you,’” Legate said. “African American women are told, ‘There’s not much we can do. Go home and get your affairs in order.’”

Legate now works to spread word of places like Cierra Sisters — an organization that assists people of color navigate the medical system.

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