On Thursday, May 18, 2026, an Uber driver asked if I was heading to the clinic to get my teeth pulled. I told him no; I was going to save them. He shrugged, admitting he was already missing three teeth in the back. When I asked if he planned on replacing them, his response was telling:

“I’ve been married for 42 years, so basically there was no need.”

He let it land right there, assuming the conversation was over. But his words stayed with me through my surgery, through the gauze, the rinses, and the painkillers.

It made me realize a fundamental asymmetry in how we care for ourselves:

So often, men fix themselves up for women, but women fix themselves up for themselves.

Even when it is entirely cost-prohibitive, as almost everything is in this country, we seek the upgrade because it makes us feel good, cared for, and healthy.

Case in point, I’ll never forget when President Obama passed the Affordable Care Act; a record number of Black women stormed the doors of primary care providers, as if it were Black Friday. And because we went, we pulled our families, our partners, and our loved ones along with us.

Yet the structural safety nets of American healthcare remain woefully inadequate, particularly in oral health. In consultation with my periodontist—a man who looks and smells like a Greek deity—he noted that his profession addresses the fundamental, structural aspect of the mouth. Yet, we consult periodontists last. Periodontitis is a silent, asymptomatic thief. You might see a little blood in the sink when you brush, but toothpaste and mouthwash advertisements whisper that there is an easy, superficial fix.

There isn’t. The mouth is the gateway to health.

Untreated, the advanced stages of periodontal infection can destroy the bone and enter the bloodstream. It can kill.

It is a danger the public rarely associates with a toothache. We saw this tragic reality in September 2023, when former NFL player Mike Williams passed away from severe complications and infections directly stemming from untreated dental problems and periodontitis. It wasn’t a one-off; it was a stark warning of what happens when we ignore structural health.

I passed on what my doctor told me to my driver. I explained that teeth constantly search for balance. Without a partner tooth to meet when the mouth bites down, an isolated tooth will literally root its way up or down, drifting in a desperate, destabilizing search for alignment. My doctor showed me this migration on my own X-rays, and the driver’s eyes widened; he admitted that it was exactly how he ended up losing three teeth. As we pulled up to the destination, my parting words to him were simple:

“Go see your dentist. Do it for your wife, so you can have a few more years with her.”

He confessed he had always thought chiropractors and dentists were just a scam.

Misinformation brings me to the heavier gravity pulling at my mind—the macro-foundations of our society.

While navigating my own health, I carry the profound weight of a mother’s grief. When my daughter was dying from breast cancer, her biggest concern wasn’t her own fate; it was that she didn’t want me to experience the agonizing pain she felt as the cancer traveled to her brain. Even in her final months, she wanted to contribute to my dental fund, joining her sisters and my mother. That is what Black women do for each other. We protect one another. I was slipping her a few extra hundred dollars a month to handle the incidentals not covered by the excellent healthcare marketplace coverage that President Biden made possible through Congress. When my baby passed away, acting as her estate administrator, I saw how generous her coverage had been—her brain surgery was fully covered, leaving only a few unexpected bills at the very end. The system, when it chooses to work, can save us from financial ruin.

But the system is currently dismantling itself.

According to reports from the Economic Policy Institute, the modern economy is actively leaving Black women behind. In 2025 alone, roughly 600,000 Black women lost their jobs in the public sector—a space where we have historically been fully present, serving our communities and our government. This economic purging is not accidental. It follows a coordinated legal assault on our progress. When Edward Blum and the American Alliance for Equal Rights sued the Fearless Fund, they forced a halt to a venture grant program designed specifically for Black women startups, stopping just short of the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled the targeted funding unconstitutional. Now, corporations are quietly shuttering their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs—not because they violate the law, but because they fear the political wrath and executive orders of the current administration. The study of American history makes it clear that the refusal to implement universal, free healthcare in the United States is deeply tied to a racialized refusal to allow Black Americans to thrive, even if it means white Americans suffer alongside them.

Ask yourself, why is there a target on the backs of those sitting on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder?

Think about the architecture of a building, a body, or a society. What is another name for the bottom support that holds up the entire weight of a system? It is the foundation

If you know anything about structural engineering, you know that if the foundation is not maintained, protected, and deeply cared for, the entire structure built upon it will inevitably collapse.

Black women have long been the foundational bedrock of American labor, community, and democracy. Unlike the myth of Atlas—a solitary man holding up a cold globe—our communities are matrifocal. It is the women who lock arms to hold up the world.

When you target Black women, when you strip away their economic security, their healthcare, their legal protections, and their funding, you are driving a chisel directly into the foundation of the nation. You might think you are only hurting the person at the bottom, just as my driver thought missing teeth were a localized, harmless loss. But without a partner, the remaining structures shift, drift, and unravel. If you weaken the foundation because you do not care about the people who form it, you guarantee the destruction of everything it supports. If Black women collapse, the entire house comes tumbling down.

~Mel

When you ignore structural health whether in a jaw or a society the remaining structures drift, unravel, and collapse.