When Bill Gates’ ex-wife Melinda Gates, suggested Black people should be given priority in COVID vaccination, right after healthcare workers, it backfired on her. Black communities didn’t feel a doctor’s office was a safe place. They saw the initiative as another attempt to conduct mass testing of a new drug on people of colour. Why are people of colour in the US so distrustful of the medical profession? For centuries, the US medical system failed to serve people of colour. Enslaved people became unwitting test subjects, their bodies were sold to medical students for experiments. Doctors didn’t even ask slaves about their health, their only purpose was to declare slaves fit to work. As years went by, the situation didn’t change much. The people of colour continued to receive less testing and inferior treatment, while also suffering from long-lasting misconceptions about their health and bodies. The one about Black people being more resilient to pain exists till the present day.
When Sandra Lindsay, a Black nurse from New York, received her COVID vaccine, she said one of the reasons why she was the first to do it, was trying to restore faith in medicine within Black communities. This was a noble act and it did have an effect, but there is still a long way to go until the medical system will regain the trust of people of colour. Watch our episode for more details on the story.
Medical Racism in the US
