The Systemic Plague: Racism in the American Health Care System
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2020-12-01
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Abstract
While health care for Blacks in modern America has improved since colonial times, there are still underlying systemic problems of racism in our health care system. In this paper, I discuss how health care for Blacks in America since colonial times form the present health care system and how those very instances shape the quality of health care that Blacks receive in today’s American society. I argue that the quality of health care for men and women not only significantly varies between races, but also according to the location of the hospitals. Many deaths that Black men and women experience are preventable if proper care is taken to preserve their health. The morbidity disparities shown between White and Black women during childbirth, for example, are prevalent even in other aspects of health care, such as with the number of individuals dying from COVID-19 cases in “White” hospitals when compared to those in “Black” hospitals. Black men and women between the ages of 18 and 55 are more likely to die than White men and women between the ages 18 to 55, because of experiencing inadequate care in hospitals due to the systemic racism that has shaped the quality of health care that can be received by Blacks in America.
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COVID-19, Apartheid, Systemic racism, Healthcare, Working class, United States, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), Social justice, Intersectionality, 2020 Sophomore Research Conference