Author: Dream Without Borders

I figure if someone is willing to write a book about dentistry and dental health geared for general public reading, then I am going to read it. Well  Donna R. Williams-Ngirwa has written just such a book; and I just ordered it. Over the past three years I have read several academic and clinical articles on dentistry and dental health, most with dreaded statistic about minority populations encounter with dental well being, but few offering any comprehensive interventions or insight as for tackling the issues that create the dreaded statistics. In these articles, the Asian population fair the worst, and not far behind are African American and African Diaspora in the US. Not surprisingly, my current interest (almost obsession) with reading articles on dentistry, is inspired by my own personal journey. Some years ago being informed, when I inquired for guidance as to what I could do to stave of a pending issue, that is was “it’s a common problem among African American”. My response: “it was that it may are common, but what can I do to not succumb.” My responsibilities was met with what could be described as dental profession eye rolling. You know what I mean, it was the equivalent of ‘get over it, it’s just a matter of time and you too will have it, because you are BLACK‘. I would like to say that I walked out of the office and never went back, but this was not the case. The dentist had already started work in my mouth that needed an additional four visits to complete. In my mind, he would damn well complete the work and then I am happy to see the back of him and his office; or more precise, he would see the back of me.

But truth be told, I have always been curious about this dentistry, especially as it relates to enslavement and the use and abuse of enslaved bodies and how that translated into the current. But that’s for another post.

I am encouraging all who can and are interested to read Donna R. Williams-Ngirwa 2019 publication: The Power of a Smile

Though I have issues with the visual representation presented here (I mean the graphic image by Alexander Glandien that accompanies the article; on numerous levels it is a dubious editorial choice), I nonetheless share Peggy Orenstein‘s New York Times opinion article because of the subject matter is of urgent importance. In recent years I have been in several forums in which discussions of sex and sexuality are articulated as if young people, particularly boys and young men, already KNOW. The assumption here is that young people (of all genders) have been born with or cultivated through cultural osmosis honorable internal ethical guidelines to which, though not celebrated in popular culture, they have the fortitude to adhere. Yet, as far as I am aware, there isn’t a place in US culture (other cultures may address this better) where young people (or adults for that matter) can talk with honesty and straightforwardness about sex. The culture does a lot of talk AT sex, or about the mechanics of the sexual act, but there is much more to sex than mechanics. If this were not so, cultures (religious, secular and everywhere in the between) would not dedicate so much effort to manage who has sex with whom and under what conditions sexual encounters are ‘legitimized’ in a culture. Oh, and, I am not only referring to sex acts that result in or are dedicated to procreation. Thank you Peggy Orenstein for your article.