"Race and the White Coat"

A subject that most people avoid discussing is racism/bias. The act of being biased has been happening since the beginning of time and has been continually passed down through the generations.  Dr. Rahul Parikh explains how racism even affects doctors and their patients in his article, Race and the White Coat. (pg. 213-216) He shows how African American people are often treated enormously different or not at all. Frequently they have trouble obtaining health care which makes it hard for doctors to treat them. Thus, they end up in the emergency room extremely ill. Often times, the sicknesses could have been cured if they had been treated by a doctor right away. In light of these observations, various studies of doctors were completed and the results were quite surprising. One study in particular indicated that numerous doctors think of African Americas as “uncooperative” or “bad”, which in turn affects how doctors care for them. When reading this article, my eyes were opened to the fact that racism is still an issue. Often times before even meeting a person of another race; we have already categorized them into a stereotype.  We do not even give people a chance to prove themselves different from the stereotype we have put them into. I realize now that the issue of being biased and occasionally having negative thoughts about other races will never completely go away, but the way that the minority is currently cared for by doctors and health care companies is something that can and should be changed.