first portion of Black Man In A White Coat

In Damon Tweedy’s Black Man in A White Coat, Tweedy reveals his years in Duke medical school and the experiences and patients he faces as an African American resident in the different hospitals. What I found to be interesting throughout this section was Tweedy’s discovery of the socioeconomic factors his African American patients were in and how they heavily impacted their health and treatment given to them. In the beginning of his narrative, Tweedy almost seems to blame these patients for not understanding or being able to avoid these health issues. After treating these patients and gaining insight on their lives outside of the hospital, I feel like he begins to see that these higher rates of disease and health problems within the African American community arise from the social and economic stance African Americans have been cornered into. African Americans’ higher rate of being in the in the lower class with higher risks of obtaining diseases throughout this book and in present day, in my opinion, is due to the racial hierarchy that has been present since slavery and has influenced the health discourses we have discussed in class.

In Tweedy’s patient Leslie, the effects of her social and economic status prior to her hospital visit caused her to be admitted to the Emergency Treatment center of Grady Memorial Hospital.In Leslie’s case, she arrives to the hospital at which Tweedy is working at with an abruption of her placenta. This abruption was brought on by her abuse of drugs when asked if she had used any drugs by Tweedy, Lesie denied, but then was asked aggressively by a seasoned doctor, Dr. Garner, she had confessed to smoking crack two days prior to this visit. It was revealed that she had in her first half of her life been mothered by a Heroin addict, molested, and abandoned by her mother before being taken in by her uncle. After begin taken in by her uncle, she began to do better for herself by going to school with dreams of being a nurse, but was led astray. Her life then consisted of being with a man who dealt drugs and prostituting for money and drugs to get by each day. Since there was no system in place or ogrganization made available to help her and others within the lower class African American population who had addiction, she kept abusing drugs and landed herself in the hospital and the death of her baby. Confused as to why Leslie did not tell him she had done drugs, he also could not understand why she would smoke crack while pregnant: “And smoking crack while pregnant... didn’t everyone know that was bad?” (Tweedy 35). Tweedy’s assumption that Leslie would automatically stop using drugs or had the opportunity to stop was driven by the ideals and opportunities he was able to have. 

Since Tweedy was able to attend college and become a doctor, he had opportunities and knowledge that Leslie never had the chance of obtaining due to the life she grew up in. The racial biases originating from decades of discrimination had affected her family and kept them cornered into a life with limited opportunities to education, health insurance, and an all around better life.