Chapter 1
The African American Medical Setting
By : Tasluba Isra
African Americans have faced a lot of systemic injustices and inequalities in the United States. Stemming from selling and trading African Americans like pawns on a checkerboard to treating African Americans like different flowers in a garden that are carefully separated into distinct patches with each having a different amount of resources and circumstances. The fight for equality has come a long way for African Americans but there are still various prevailing injustices such as voting rights suppressions, housing discrimination, economic inequalities, and an unspoken topic, healthcare disparities.
In a setting where an individual places their trust in another person for the care of their body, well-being, and life (both in a physical and emotional way) it can create profound unease. Entrusting someone with your body becomes deeply concerning when the patient feels as if they are in a setting that forces them to be faced with an attitude and prejudice. This has a huge impact on the treatment of African Americans.
Here are just a few examples of African Americans suffering from unjust prejudice in a medical setting.
Brittney Grey :
Recently, Grey received a laparoscopic procedure. However Grey was terrified as she had to make a second trip to the ER because she felt a protruding object inside of her. Once she was in the ER, a doctor was able to remove a curved metal object from inside of her. Instead of receiving an apology from the doctor who did not take a metal object that was placed inside of her out, a professional stated “Don’t worry it was sterile when we placed it in”. In addition, when Grey was in pain and called the doctor, the doctor claimed that “she was not going to give her more opioids because she did not want to build a habit. (It is less likely that african american patients receive prescribed medicine for pain because doctors have the prejudice that african Americans are more likely to develop drug addictions)
Bruce Tucker:
Bruce Tucker was a 55 laborer who fell off a brick ledge and suffered from a fatal brain injury. The next afternoon, his heart was placed into a white executive. However, the family never knew or consented to taking Tucker’s body until the funeral home had contacted the family of Tucker and told them that Bruce Tucker was missing both his kidneys and his heart.
Greg Jackson Jr:
When Greg Jackson jr was shot, the most painful part of his memory was the injustice he faced when he was shot. He claimed that he was treated as a criminal rather than a victim of being shot. After he was rolled off the ambulance stretcher, police officers greeted him instead of doctors and nurses. The police officers interrogated him with multiple questions like “why he was out late” “what roles he played during the altercation” and “where he was when the shots rang”. He went through 3 rounds of questioning before he was medically insured by hospital staff, who did not intervene with police. By the time he was rushed into the operating room, doctors told him that he had lost so much blood that without surgery he would only have 26 minutes left to live.
These are just a few examples of injustices within the medical community for black African Americans. In fact, there is an 8% gap between white and black individuals’ mortality rates which could have been lower if African Americans received the same increase of preventative services as white individuals. We as a community of youth and the future generation are responsible for the future that we will be living in. It is our responsibility to raise awareness and promote equality and fight bias against african americans in the medical care system.
