Writing 39 C

The United States of America has often been touted as one of the greatest nations in the world, the land of freedom and opportunity. It’s history however, shows a violent and discriminatory attitude towards racial and other minorities, especially African-Americans. The racism of the past has not been without effect, and it definitely has not gone away. In the present day we see the damage inflicted on healthcare access for African-Americans. Historical experiences with racism in medicine has scared many African-Americans from utilizing healthcare resources when necessary, to the detriment of their wellbeing.

There is a historical basis for the fear African Americans have of health care. Damaging medical events for the African American community in the past have caused an array of issues. Events such as Henrietta Lack’s cells being stolen from her and contributing to the creation and advancement of things such as; chemotherapy, the polio vaccine, in vitro fertilization, among others (Skloot, 2) Doctors of the past had no qualms about stealing from and abusing African Americans for their own gains. Black people are right to be scared of healthcare providers since racism is still alive and well. It was felt that black people were being taken advantage of (Skloot, 5) since their consent was disrespected so majorly in the case of Henrietta Lacks. One way these actions were justified was by the belief that black people were inferior to white people, and therefore so were their bodies (Kretchmer). This disrespect does not go unnoticed by the African-American community, the HeLa cells being stolen from her is one of the most known medical controversies against black people.

Another example would be the Tuskegee study, mentioned in “Bad Medicine: The Harm That Comes From Racism”. Frakt discusses the extent of this “study” and the damage it has caused. He mentions that “To do so [understand syphilis], the [African American] men were lied to about the study and provided sham treatments. Many needlessly passed the disease on to family members, suffered and died.” It was a horrific event that did not accomplish anything medically. It only served to alienate the African-American community and cause them suffering. This “study” caused a huge issue between African Americans and the healthcare system. He further mentions that this particular study could easily be attributed to present day black people being unwilling to seek healthcare (Frakt).

Not only was the Tuskegee experiment extremely harmful to the black community, it was based on bad science. Medical authorities of the past had a poor and racist understanding of black bodies, believing African Americans were mentally underdeveloped and sexually overdeveloped (McVean). Not surprisingly, racism controlled the narrative about black people, and still does to this day.

It doesn’t just stop there however, “Dead black bodies, robbed from their graves, were a continuous source of surgical and anatomical experimentation.” Doctor J. Corey Williams writes. Not only that but slaves were often dissected against their will. In fact, medicine was often built around slavery to justify the abuse of humans. There was even a “runaway slave disorder” spouted by the medical community to keep African Americans in check, and the beliefs about them strong (Williams). It is also mentioned that later on that schizophrenia was used to portray black activists as mentally ill while they were fighting for their rights in the Civil Rights era (Williams). Healthcare was weaponized against black people for daring to fight back. Clearly these doctors were not trustworthy.

The effect of this poor history is seen today. The connection between bad experiences with a provider and broken trust causes minorities to not want to seek out healthcare providers anymore. Older minorities have an unwillingness to access healthcare because of a combination of bad history and personal experiences. (Rhee) A combination of past and present racism in healthcare causes this reluctance to seek healthcare. It is a fear for the African American community that they will be treated poorly because they know they have been in the not so far away past by the medical community. This is obviously very bad since everyone needs healthcare to stay healthy. This is detrimental to African-American communities' health in general.

The second image depicted below shows how African-Americans are a lot less trusting of healthcare than white Americans. Clearly a historical precedent needed to occur for this large of a disparity to be present now. All of the aforementioned events compound with present day experiences to dissuade African-Americans from seeking healthcare.

Trust is very necessary in the field of healthcare since we need to be honest to our providers to get the best healthcare possible. The connection between bad experiences with a provider and broken trust causes minorities to not want to seek out healthcare providers anymore (Benkert). History cannot be erased, so therefore healthcare providers of today need to work extra hard to show that they are trustworthy. The bias that is still present is only making things worse, and not many people are working to fix this relationship. African-American people should not have to be scared that a traumatic event like those of the past will happen again. They shouldn’t have happened in the first place.

All these events show exactly how racism is ingrained in our healthcare system and why it is such a large issue. There is no one solution, but the most important one to have racial bias training for healthcare professionals. “To fight racism and discrimination, we all need to recognize, name, and understand these attitudes and actions. We need to be open to identifying and controlling our own implicit biases. We need to be able to manage overt bigotry safely, learn from it, and educate others. In “Racism and Discrimination in Health Care: Providers and Patients.” Tello offers this solution: “These themes need to be a part of medical education, as well as institutional policy. We need to practice and model tolerance, respect, open-mindedness, and peace for each other.” If these sort of education programs are implemented then trust can start to be regained. Another way to improve this is to do more research on minorities' health, to replace the white-centric view of patients and health. When we can understand the differences between different groups, medical professionals will be better able to provide satisfactory care to minorities. And most importantly, there must be a long standing history of positive experiences to combat the negative ones to help bridge the gap for everyone.