Final Blog Post

My index card said: “My biggest question is how have our views of race helped better medicine, or have we run into other obstacles? Also, have we truly solved anything or tried to adapt as best we can? Are we still looking at the same issues, if so what are better/ more creative ways to solve the problem? I’m interested to see if there are any noticeable patterns, like a cycle with not being able to get resources. Also, it is interesting to see where this takes society in the future.”

Our views of race have better-helped medicine with getting African-American or any minority a doctor that they feel they can relate to and will not treat them in a distant way. I think there is a big misconception about what should be done to rehabilitate people. We just expect them to get better, yet Mario showed us that it is more beneficial to teach people how to use needles, provide them with places to get clean needles and create nutrition banks. In addition, I had a better understanding of how deeply the mistreatment of African-American bodies runs within history by reading about the Tuskegee Experiment. Through our class discussions, it seems that a lot of these issues have not be resolved but take shape in different forms of inequality. While reading about Henrietta Lacks, it is clear that the medical field has taken advantage of unaware patients, more so African-Americans. I say more so African-Americans because we learned that all people are subjected to biopolitics, but African-Americans are stuck in this cycle of lacking resources and not having their voices heard. I got a better understanding of how the black community tried to overcome these repetitive obstacles when reading about sickle-cell anemia. It was interesting to see how the illness became different images and narratives with successful people giving it attention. I think this book was the best example of the cultural aspect of biopolitics forcing the medical field to do research for the sake of this group of people. I really appreciate the perseverance and approaches that the Black Panther party took to try to better cater to their misunderstood and misrepresented community. I think the action was powerful and benefited a lot of people, such as with women’s rights. Over the year, African-Americans and minorities have been faced with a pattern of oppression and discourses but have developed creative ways, like the Black Panther party, to provide for themselves what white America could not do. It is significant that they took this stand because though it did not end this narrative about the black community, it did lessen that narrative of being this “helpless” demographic. Their self-sufficiency helped bring to light that this “welfare queen” stereotype is problematic and incorrect. In addition, Dr. Wailoo speaking was incredibly beneficial because it shows that pain transcends communication, which is an even bigger obstacle for minorities that lack a voice. I have white privilege, so it helped me to recognize that people that are not getting what they need based on the biases of those providing the care. I never thought that there needed to be a “proper” way to show pain. The novel that helped show how much white privilege that I own was “Black Man In A White Coat” because it showed the first person perspective of an African-American doctor and his struggles throughout his life to be constantly proving himself because of his race. I respect the success of other minorities and African-Americans more because I got to see the behind the scenes of how much more effort is needed to get where they than the effort that white people need to exert to get in that same position. I think the class discussions really helped to solidify and challenge ways of thinking to help gain a deeper understanding. Moving forward, I will be able to see more clearly why there are race tensions against white individuals and utilize the insight I have from this class to make more calculated decisions regarding the struggles of someone not born with the privilege that I have.