24 April 2016

Racism in/and Medicine

In The Pain Gap: Why Doctors Offer Less Relief to Black Patients (2016, The Daily Beast), Keith Wailoo (Princeton professor in History and Public Affairs) discusses how the treatment of patients' pain by medical professionals is affected by systemic racism.

This article/ issue would be useful in discussions of how structural violence -- the kind of 'normalized' violence that is often difficult to see -- has concrete effects for those it is directed against. It also speaks to how our understandings of health and how we treat illness is also culturally constructed, and is directly affected by other cultural norms, beliefs, and practices such as North American understandings of racial difference.

You can also check out Wailoo's website where he provides further links to popular media on the how pain (and healthcare) is political.