Recognizing racially motivated diagnosis and treatment

The racially motivated thinking and behaviors of American physicians receive inadequate attention in the medical literature and medical curricula. Doctors have always absorbed the racial stereotypes and folkloricbeliefs about racial differences that permeate the general population. Racial folklore about black people infiltrated all of the medical sub-disciplines during the twentieth century, and some of these inaccurate ideas remain influential today. These medico-racial stereotypes have produced racially differential diagnoses and treatments that can harm black patients. American medicine has demonstrated a disturbing unwillingness to acknowledge and address racially motivated medical thinking along with the race relations problems that continue to affect doctor-patient relationships. The "cultural competency" instruction offered at many medical schools has proven to be inadequate to reform racial attitudes in American medicine. Medical school curricula should, therefor, include a substantial curriculum on race relations in medicine as well as the origins and consequences of medical racism.