Thread by @AnantBhan

"How does one honor and protect the sanctity of one’s own Blackness while also giving so much of oneself to a health care system that in many ways continues to dismiss, ignore, and mistreat Black people?"
nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

"It was a random day just like any other when I suddenly stopped being just a Black person in America. I looked around at the sea of white faces that seemed to fill every space I entered, and I realized for the first time that I was now a Black person in medicine."

"Until fairly recently, it was easier than one might think to minimize the effects of racism on my life. But the more I learned about the physiology of the human body, the more I was forced to confront the degradation of the Black body."

"I became frustrated and discouraged. As a Black woman physician in possession of all the knowledge that comes along with that title, I realized that you can do everything humanly possible to set yourself on an upward trajectory, but you can never outrun the truth of the past."

"No matter how many kale smoothies I drink or how many miles I run, I am still twice as likely as a White woman to die of heart disease, diabetes, or cancer and more than three times as likely to die in childbirth."

"How does one honor and protect the sanctity of one’s own Blackness while also giving so much of oneself to a health care system that in many ways continues to dismiss, ignore, and mistreat Black people? How can either of my existences thrive while the other survives?"

"Why does my professional development in medicine make it more difficult to overlook all the ways in which Black patients are discounted? Did my medical degree come with a pair of glasses that allow me to see injustice everywhere?"

"The one thing I know for certain is that being Black in America is what I was born, but being Black in medicine is what I have chosen. I have dedicated years to learning to see the world from a clinician’s point of view because of my Blackness, not despite it."

"Maybe that perspective, my perspective, will reveal something that has yet to be seen."

#racism #medicine #meded