#wc4bl statements

In August, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump asked Black and Latinx voters, “What the hell do you have to lose?”

Months later, Mr. Trump has vividly illustrated exactly how much people of color have to lose.

He has attempted to impose travel regulations that limit our ability to visit our families, seek economic opportunity, or flee violence. He has reminded us of the precarity of our existence in this country by further empowering Immigration and Customs Enforcement to separate families and rob immigrants of promised protections. He has demonstrated disregard for our educational advancement by allowing an inexperienced lobbyist to defund the public school system our Black and brown children depend on. He has stifled democratic participation by people of color by choosing an overtly racist individual to lead the nation's Department of Justice.

The GOP’s American Health Care Act would have been yet another assault on people of color in this country. It would have added 24 million people to the ranks of the uninsured, likely widening the racial health insurance gap that Obamacare managed to narrow. It would have cut 14 million people from Medicaid over the next ten years. By cutting care for those who need it, the bill would have awarded an average of $7 million apiece in tax cuts to the country’s 400 wealthiest individuals.  In sum, the GOP’s bill to replace the ACA was a massive transfer of wealth from the ill (disproportionately people of color) to the wealthy (who are disproportionately white).

Republicans’ failure to repeal the ACA is thus a victory in the struggle against racism in medicine. The defeat of this uniquely vicious and inhumane bill has not, however, corrected the racist foundations of our healthcare system. White Coats for Black Lives continues to call for several fundamental changes to our healthcare system, including:

Medical school admissions practices that create a physician pool reflecting our nation’s demographics: at least 13% Black, 17% Latinx, and 1% Indigenous people.

The creation of a single-payer health insurance system that eliminates insurance status discrimination as a means of “color-blind” racial discrimination.

Full access to medical care, including specialty care at academic medical centers, for people of color.  

We invite others to join us in two current efforts directed towards these goals:

Students across the country are grading their schools using the Racial Justice Report Card. Contact us to find out more about bringing the RJRC to your school.

WC4BL will be joining other national groups on April 8 for Defend Health: Day of Action for Improved Medicare for All. Please let us know if you would be interested in organizing or joining an action at your school.

We, the medical students of White Coats for Black Lives, mourn the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, grieve with their loved ones, and stand in solidarity with the Black community and their allies in Baton Rouge and St. Paul as they protest the continued violence against Black people by police. We also mourn with the families of the officers shot and killed in Dallas in their time of loss. All of these situations are examples of unjust deaths, and even as we protest the use of excessive force and police brutality, we remain committed to justice above all.

In this time, we find it necessary to reflect on the root cause of the violence we see in the headlines daily: institutionalized racism. Police brutality is a manifestation of the blatant disregard for Black -- and brown -- lives in this country. The murders of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and many, many other Black people -- of all gender identities and sexual orientations -- remind us that Black people’s lives are always in danger. We feel strongly that honoring those who have been killed does not mean merely remembering them, but actively committing to abolish the systems that killed them -- systems that were not built by mistake. While we continue to push back against police violence, we know there are many ways Black lives, and Black well-being more broadly, are being taken in this country. Police-involved shootings are just one of the more immediate and visible ways. However, we cannot forget that this fear-inducing mechanism of maintaining control is only part of a larger system of racism and anti-blackness, which form the foundation of our country.

There has been a recent push to name police violence as a public health issue, but as medical students and professionals, we must also make sure we are committing to a broader definition of health. Many Black activists have utilized the WHO 1948 definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” While the current movement is called Black Lives Matter, we must make it clear that we are not just merely fighting for Black people’s right to live. That is not good enough. We are fighting for Black people’s full right to health. It is not just police violence, but racism that is a public health issue. The Black Panther Party made this clear almost 50 years ago when they not only named racism as a direct threat to Black health, but charged the US government with creating the systems of oppression that resulted in the poor health of Black people. [1]

As medical students, we recognize that the mechanisms that killed Alton Sterling and Philando Castile are the same mechanisms that are harming and killing people of color in our hospitals. As an organization predominantly comprised of people of color, we cannot accept condolences from racist institutions that not only built themselves on Black and brown bodies, but continue to do nothing about the racism that still runs rampant. To those who want to act in solidarity: Not doing anything is not, and has never been, an option. Racist systems do not perpetuate themselves. If these institutions, and the individuals who comprise them, do nothing, they are responsible. [2]

We must act. Racism -- not merely personal or implicit bias -- is built into our society and our institutions through laws and policies that provide specific advantages for white people while disadvantaging all people of color. In order to support Black lives and well-being, we must join in the struggle to eradicate racism itself. For medical students and professionals, this requires us to look internally at the institutionalized racism in our own profession and the other institutions in our society that threaten the well-being of Black people -- from housing to education to mass incarceration. Additionally, we must partner with members of our community and our colleagues in other health professions to push for institutional change at large and to support organizers and activists who are on the ground and engaging in this work.

This work is not easy, but it is necessary and important. We must affirm that the lives and health of Black and brown people matter to us, that we see the racism they experience, and that we will use our white coats to advocate for a society free of white supremacy and racism. Only then will Black lives truly matter.

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[1] In 1972, the Black Panthers’ Ten Point Program was revised to call for free healthcare: “We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventive medical programs to guarantee our future survival...” (Resource: https://web.stanford.edu/group/blackpanthers/history.shtml)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 7, 2015

Contacts: White Coats for Black Lives National Working Group, [email protected], (215) 385-3975

MEDIA ADVISORY

Medical students to hold national protests for racial justice.

Students at medical schools nationwide to demand that their schools enroll Black, Latino, and Native American students and ensure access to healthcare for patients in their local communities

What Silent protests at medical schools in New York, Philadelphia, Houston, San Francisco, and elsewhere calling on medical schools and academic medical centers to move beyond mission statements and slogans in their efforts to promote racial justice.  Specifically, students will be making two demands of their schools:

Enroll an incoming medical school class that that is representative of the American people: at least 13% Black students, 1% Native American students, and 17% Latino students.

Ensure that members of medical schools' local communities, particularly people of color, have full access to care at academic medical centers without financial hardship.

Students will be highlighting disparities between the stated values of their medical schools and their actual actions using the hashtag, #ActionsSpeakLouder.

Who Medical students, coordinated by the national medical student organization, White Coats for Black Lives

When Various times (check local actions; list below), Wednesday, Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day and the one-year anniversary of last year’s national White Coat Die-Ins to support the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Why Racism is one of the major health problems in the United States; excess mortality claims 83,000 Black lives each year, making racism a more potent killer than prostate, breast, or colon cancer. Addressing racism and its consequences must therefore be a central goal of American medical schools as they carry our their two key functions: educating future physicians and caring for patients.  

Currently, Black and Latino people represent roughly 30% of our nation’s population, but only 8.5% of the physician workforce.  To achieve a representative physician workforce, medical schools would have to enroll exclusively Black, Latino, and Native American medical students for more than ten years. Physicians of color are more likely to provide care for America’s underserved communities, and patients of color report higher satisfaction when their doctor shares their racial background.  Increasing the numbers of Black, Latino, and Native American doctors is a therefore key step in eliminating health inequities.

Moreover, many of our medical centers contribute directly to health inequality by excluding patients of color from their hospitals.  Although it is illegal for hospitals and practices to discriminate against patients based on race, it is legal and indeed common practice to deny care to patients on the basis of their insurance status. For example, at many academic medical centers, patients with Medicaid insurance cannot make appointments in faculty practices; instead, they are seen in trainee and student-run clinics. Given that Black, Latino, and Native American patients are much less likely to have private insurance than their white counterparts, such a system effectively ensures that they do not have access to the cutting edge care that academic medical centers pride themselves on providing.

Over the past several days, Black students at the University of Missouri and other schools have courageously demanded that their institutions promote racial justice and create safe environments for students of color. In response, students at Mizzou and elsewhere have endured harassment, slurs, and threats of violence. White Coats for Black Lives stands with Black students at Mizzou and other universities who struggle daily to receive their education in a hostile environment. Furthermore, WC4BL recognizes that racism pervades not only our undergraduate institutions but also our medical schools and health care system, and we are committed to fighting for racial justice in all of these spheres.

WC4BL is therefore calling for medical students to show their solidarity with Mizzou students by holding teach-ins or discussion groups about racism on National Black Out Day, Wednesday, November 18. Students can determine their own content for these events; we suggest creating space for medical students of color to share their experiences, discussing an article about the events at Mizzou and around the country, or conducting a workshop about race and racism at your own institution. We have compiled a resource list with articles to assist students in organizing an event. After the teach-in, we are also asking students to take group photos like the ones above from Wake Forest (black clothes, white coats) and post them to social media using the hashtag #MedStudents4Mizzou.

The WC4BL National Working Group in the Journal of Urban Health:

The WC4BL National Working Group in the AMA Journal of Ethics: