Feb 11, 2022
When Damon Tweedy began medical school, he envisioned a bright
future where his segregated, working-class background would become
largely irrelevant. Instead, he found that he had joined a new
world where race was front and center. The recipient of a
scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy
soon met a professor who bluntly questioned whether he belonged in
medical school, a moment that crystallized the challenges he would
face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after
lecture, the common refrain for numerous diseases repeated as “More
common in blacks than in whites.”
Tweedy’s book, Black Man in a White Coat, examines the complex ways
in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the
difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As
Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he
discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients.
Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural,
and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the
black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy
is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common amongst
black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book,
Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the
disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately
seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate
care.
Originally published in September of 2015.
Visit YouTube.com/TalksatGoogle to watch the video.