the blissfulness of ignorance. Being unaware of your current state of health is more soothing than finding out something may actually be wrong. Living in the unknown doesn’t force us to face past actions that may have triggered health issues: whether its sexual activity, substance abuse, diet, etc. Here is when you realize how much we believe in the age-old axiom, “out of sight, out of mind.”
Black men’s subscriptions to flawed notions of masculinity only compound the issue. Our definitions of what it means to be a “real” man are generally shaped by societal and traditional masculine norms, which condition us to be self-reliant and conceal any sort of weakness. Revealing health issues to our closest friends and families puts us in a vulnerable state that jeopardizes our “manhood.” In a sense, black men feel there’s a stigma and embarrassment associated with sickness when in actuality it’s just being human in its most rudimentary form.
Another layer we must analyze is black men’s mistrust of the healthcare system. The lack of trust is rooted in racial and prejudice undertones. The relationship between patient and physician is just that – a relationship – and the foundation of trust is broken within the black community. One must look at the historical contexts of blacks and the health care system to truly understand.
Historically, black bodies have been the victim of forced medical and surgical experimentations only to have the results used as justification of their oppression and exploitation.
Dr. J. Corey Williams explained, “In the Antebellum period, blacks were forced to participate in dissections and medical examinations. The psychiatric diagnosis of drapetomania, or “runaway slave syndrome,” was created to diagnose and pathologize African slaves who fled their vicious slave owners. To run away from slavery was considered a disease. The treatment was often amputation of extremities.”
He continued, “Later during Reconstruction Era, white American doctors argued that former slaves would not thrive in a free society because their minds could not cope psychologically with freedom. In the Civil Rights era, psychiatrists used the concept of schizophrenia to portray black activists as violent, hostile, and paranoid because they threatened the racist status quo.”
The infamous Tuskegee Experiment entailed the