Racism in the U.S. Healthcare System

by Samuel Gomes Rodrigues Jr. 

The treatment of working-class people, particularly people of color, and especially women, within the United States Healthcare System are some of the most egregious moments to occur in medical history. Malpractice based on racism has been reported and studied for multiple years. The majority of these incidents have affected Black women disproportionately. Many Black women have been reported to receive inequitable care, over surveillance of patients and their families, and structural care issues. Historically it was standard medical belief and practice that Black women were genetically predisposed to having a stronger tolerance for pain compared to White women, thus needing less care and attention. This systemic inequality, primarily affecting Black and Indigenous American women, have caused high mortality rates for pregnant mothers and newborns.  

Anyone who has studied history knows that these methods are not new and were somehow worse in the past. In the 1960s and 1970s the Indian Health Service, an operating division within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, coerced and forced Indigenous American women to be sterilized. Between 1970-1976, 20-50% of Indigenous American women were sterilized. Black people were also historically subjected to inhumane and unethical experiments. One of the most infamous was the Tuskegee Experiments where Black U.S. Air Force pilots were unknowingly infected with syphilis. In 1851, the American physician Samuel A. Cartwright hypothesized that freed African-Americans wished for freedom from chattel slavery due to mental illness. In 1958 African-American pastor and Civil Rights activist Clennon W. King, Jr. was arrested and confined to a mental institution for trying to enroll in the University of Mississippi for a summer graduate course. The arresting officer’s comment on why King spent twelve days institutionalized was quoted saying, “Any n*****r who tried to enter Ole Miss must be crazy.” In 1968 and even through the 1970s psychiatrists were known for regularly diagnosing Black Civil Rights activists with a “form of schizophrenia” that would be shown by various “symptoms” such as, “projection”, “anger”, “projected anger”, and “hostility”. 

Today systemic racism is still a significant obstacle for working-class neighborhoods, especially those with a significant population of racial minorities. Studies and reports have shown that these neighborhoods have a tendency to have a higher chance for hospitals to close down, with hospitals in predominately Black communities being most likely to close down. On average Black residents tend to live farther from health providers than White residents. A few years ago, the United States government openly acknowledged that, “inadequate health insurance coverage is one of the largest barriers to health care access, and the unequal distribution of coverage contributes to disparities in health.”. An example of this is shown by the fact that low-income Black residents receive lower quality health insurance or no health insurance whatsoever compared to high-income White residents. Healthcare is a Human Right. It is reprehensible and saddening at the fact that Corporate America’s deep-seated racism has tainted basic medical care.    

Retrieved from the American Council for a National Health Service – Home – acnhs.org

Bibliography 

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