yearbook. The graduate Ralph Northam M.D. was becoming a practicing physician. What I was seeing before my very own eyes were the roots of a phenomenon we recognize as medical racism.
The way I like to define medical racism is the differential provision of care and treatment of diseases based on race. Quite simply, patients of one race get care that is consistent with the standards, while patients of a different race, usually minorities, get different care that may be sub-standard and potentially dangerous. Let me provide an extreme example.
About 10 years ago, while I was at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland was the keynote speaker for a program commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King. Congressman Cummings described an incident many decades earlier where his grandfather was critically ill.
Two white physicians, an older doctor and a younger doctor, arrived at their home. After examining his very sick grandfather, the younger doctor proclaimed, “If we do not admit this man to the hospital immediately, he will die”. The older doctor responded “So what? He’s just a nigger.”
His grandfather was not admitted by the doctors and he passed the next morning. This is an extreme case of a man getting sub-standard care because of his race. Simply because he was