Final Blog Post

Reflecting back on the beginning of the course and my prior thoughts and knowledge about race, medicine, and society; I have come a long way when it pertains to how society was, and how society is. I discussed in my notecard a lot about how I thought slavery was, how we got past those times and started advancing in society, and I was also interested in the types of medical advancements made at this time.

Examining Tuskegee was a big help in contributing to these questions that I had. Tuskegee helped me experience through text what African Americans had faced in times that I had questions about. They were put through hardship that I could not wrap my mind about in todays age. It is experiments like these that made society what it is today. Although saddening, we would not have the proper knowledge, ethics, and consent in the medical field without these experiments that took place. Throughout this course, we looked at race everywhere and, the different types of racial discourses, helped me grasp the concept that race is a social construct. I came to agree more with this idea as we fled through topics of the class. I believe that race as a biology came about in earlier times like these where slavery was a big issue, and African Americans were looked at as test subjects without a personal background such as Henrietta. This is where I believe that race as a biology came about when doctors started to have a specific stereotype and discourse between "white" and "black" which later translated in to a racial biology.

I have come a long way since the beginning of the semester in terms of understanding race and how African Americans were treated. In the beginning of this course, I was excited to explore new paths of which my mind had not traveled yet and to experience what times like this were and what privileges I have gotten to experience becauseof times like these. If it was not for establishing proper consent and treatment in the medical field, who knows where we would be now. If it wouldn't not have been for Henrietta and her cells, maybe doctors would not have evolved the way they have although we still have some ways to go in the medical field where discourses are still used.

Overall, I loved this course and the way it was taught. I liked how open the discussions were because not only was I learning from my professor I was also learning new things through myself, and through the work of my fellow classmates.