The relationship between Skloot and Deborah Part III

An essential section in part III of Lacks is when Skloot and Deborah are looking through the autopsy reports. It is significant that Deborah trusts Skloot in the first place to do right by her mother and trust her with the story. There is a vulnerable point when Deborah is unsure of her trust for Skloot. I believe that this mistrust can be based on racial discourse with previous journalists and reporters.

There is racial discourse because Deborah has always had this disadvantage because of her race, especially in this part of the story. Deborah desperately wants to know this vital information about her mother and sister but has to rely on Skloot do define what these words mean. She can look them up in a dictionary, but her urgency for the truth can not be satisfied fast enough to keep looking up the terms. I believe because of her economic status and race, she was subjected to a harder life, which compromises her medically due to her lack of education.

Skloot says, “I won’t, I said, and then I made a mistake. I smiled. Not because I thought it was funny, but because I thought it was sweet that she was protective of her sister” (Skloot 475). This gesture between these two people of different backgrounds goes a long way, maybe partly because of culture but mostly because of racial stigma. Deborah interpreted her smile in a mistrustful and deceitful way because this is how she has always been treated by people who are white and think of themselves as “superior,” like that of the Hopkins doctors. The doctor that autographed the inside of the book handed her his work with words that meant nothing to her because she did not know the meaning and did the equivalent of “laughing in her face.”