As seems to be the case in every aspect of society, there seems to exist a racial disparity in the way people are medically treated. There are many arguments involved in the debate about whether doctors should racially profile their patients, most of which mimic a general perception in that they understand parts of the complex system of racism in the 21st century, but ignore other facts that are plain to see should one only look. These arguments and their shortfallings relate to the idea that people often overlook the intersection of race with every other identifying feature. One could find this in the social concept of colorblindness or in the fact that white seems to be the default race to those who have never thought about it, even in academic
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What Dorothy E. Roberts presents at the end of “Is Race-Based Medicine Good for Us?” is a social justice approach to answering her title’s question. She says that it’s possible for the discourse to shift from attempting to address white privilege and political/social racial disparities such as mere access to good healthcare, to an attempt to eliminate these problems from the narrative by finding “genetic explanations and technological solutions” (Roberts 542). She argues that, even through genetic research, the conclusion met would be that “Black people’s health would improve far more by universalizing health care, equalizing the education system, removing environmental toxins from Black neighborhoods, stopping employment discrimination, and reducing poverty” (Roberts 542). This suggests that any discussion of race or the possibility of racial profiling should include examination of the social struggles faced by the Black community and other communities of color. It’s likely that the answer to any question one might have lies, not specifically in genetics, but in a person’s position in …show more content…
When doctors indicate that they know how to treat a person based on their race, many are thinking of race in terms of present-day. Instead, according to Sally Satel in “I Am a Racial Profiling Doctor,” they should be considering the reasons behind the statistics they base their choices on. She notes that “the genetic variant for sickle cell anemia cropped up at some point in the gene pool [in Africa],” which would, as opposed to the simple fact that a person is Black, account for the disease being more commonly found in Black people than in white people (Satel 3). This serves to explain that simply medically treating a person differently because they’ve checked “African American” on their paperwork relies primarily on bias, which has no place in
What Dorothy E. Roberts presents at the end of “Is Race-Based Medicine Good for Us?” is a social justice approach to answering her title’s question. She says that it’s possible for the discourse to shift from attempting to address white privilege and political/social racial disparities such as mere access to good healthcare, to an attempt to eliminate these problems from the narrative by finding “genetic explanations and technological solutions” (Roberts 542). She argues that, even through genetic research, the conclusion met would be that “Black people’s health would improve far more by universalizing health care, equalizing the education system, removing environmental toxins from Black neighborhoods, stopping employment discrimination, and reducing poverty” (Roberts 542). This suggests that any discussion of race or the possibility of racial profiling should include examination of the social struggles faced by the Black community and other communities of color. It’s likely that the answer to any question one might have lies, not specifically in genetics, but in a person’s position in …show more content…
When doctors indicate that they know how to treat a person based on their race, many are thinking of race in terms of present-day. Instead, according to Sally Satel in “I Am a Racial Profiling Doctor,” they should be considering the reasons behind the statistics they base their choices on. She notes that “the genetic variant for sickle cell anemia cropped up at some point in the gene pool [in Africa],” which would, as opposed to the simple fact that a person is Black, account for the disease being more commonly found in Black people than in white people (Satel 3). This serves to explain that simply medically treating a person differently because they’ve checked “African American” on their paperwork relies primarily on bias, which has no place in