The contemporary fear and mistrust Black people have toward medicine, and the beginnings of their legitimate discontent, derives from the fact that “white medical educators and researchers relied greatly on the availability of African American patients … for dissection, surgery, and bedside demonstrations.”
1(p77) This is one origin of negative racial attitudes within the health professions. Unfortunately, far too many of these attitudes, dating from the time of slavery and Jim Crow, exist as contemporary vestiges of the past hiding in our health care delivery system, exposed from time to time by landmark studies like the US Department of Health and Human Service’s
Report of the Secretary’s Task Force on Black and Minority Health (also known as the
Heckler Report)
2 and the Institute of Medicine’s (now the National Academy of Medicine) report
Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care.
3
The freedom from slavery that was guaranteed in 1863, a major leap forward for the nation, did not grant equal treatment to Black people. One of the most evident manifestations of the persistent discrimination and racism that still exist today is in our health—specifically, health disparities. Although a substantial body of evidence has established that racial and ethnic minorities in the United States have lower life expectancies and suffer more from numerous health conditions than their White counterparts,
3 the health of Black people has not always been documented. A 1977 report by Lee and Lee noted that “the standard histories and the best known accounts of the black condition [during slavery] provide little more than anecdotal information on black health and black mortality.”
4(p170)
