Doctor cheered for telling Oprah, Clancy supporters that black moms who kill their children need to be supported too—not just white women
“There are women of color sitting around this country in prisons for the same thing that we’ve never heard of.”
A room full of women who joined Oprah Winfrey cheered after a doctor said that child killers who are black need to be supported too, not just white ones like Lindsay Clancy.
An audience was taping Oprah Winfrey’s podcast on Thursday when they cheered for a call to support black women and other women of color who do not have “her privilege” after the admitted child killer’s trial ended in a mistrial with a hung jury. Clancy admitted to strangling her three small children to death with exercise bands.
While discussing the case, one of the guests in the audience, Dr. Kameelah Phillips, who is an OB-GYN, spoke about her concerns with postpartum psychosis, which Clancy claimed to be a victim of when she carried out the killings. Phillips said the country should not just have compassion for Clancy, but also for “women of color.”
“I want us to have the same passion for people who don’t look like Lindsay, who don’t have her same access. Who don’t have her same access and education, her melanin, her privilege,” Phillips said.
“There are women of color sitting around this country in prisons for the same thing that we’ve never heard of, and I just want to remind us to have the pink shirts and the energy for them as well,” she added.
The audience clapped in response to the comments. In the same audience, there were some that said they thought that Clancy was guilty of murder, although they appeared to be in the minority.
One woman, who also characterized herself as a mental health advocate, said that these “were not instant deaths” and that Clancy was “strangling her kids three times.”
“You’re telling me, like, even after the first time, she couldn’t snap out of it,” the audience member said. “You’re watching the life leave your kids’ eyes, you know. So I know I hear everybody’s opinions and God bless mothers, but at the same, I just don’t understand how we can empathize with somebody that– they weren’t strangers. They were her kids.”
During her trial, there were hundreds of women who gathered outside the courthouse to support her, dressed in pink. The jury was split 11-1, with one male, black juror being the holdout, saying that Clancy was guilty of murder while the others said they wanted to acquit for reason of insanity. Clancy was never diagnosed with postpartum psychosis before the killings took place. Her defense has said that she heard a voice in her head that told her to kill the children, but she never reported that to doctors previous to the killings.