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Damon Tweedy knew he was a rarity.
In 1996, the year he entered medical school at Duke
University, just seven percent of all medical students in
the U.S. were black. That minority-within-a-minority, he
says, led to unintended racism in the classroom.
Working at the hospital, he also saw racism’s effects: many
of Tweedy’s patients were black, and the state of their
health opened his eyes. He’d grown up in a solidly
middle-class neighborhood with two parents who demanded
education. Those were things that most of Tweedy’s black
patients never had and that mattered.
As he worked his way from student to intern to resident,
Tweedy gained experience and tried several branches of
medicine before deciding on psychiatry as a specialty. But
long before that, he worked in Labor & Delivery and learned
that “more than 70 percent of black children are born to
unmarried women,” a rate that’s more than twice that of
white babies. He saw the effects of poverty while
volunteering at a “safety-net clinic” in rural North
Carolina. There, he found that “poor blacks were four times
as likely as the general population to receive care” at such
facilities.
Hypertension is “50 percent more common in black people than
in whites…” Homicide is the leading cause of death for
black male teens, which can lead to survivor guilt. AIDS,
once a death sentence, is treatable today – although “black
people… are more than eight times as likely as whites to be
diagnosed with HIV.” Overall, “Being black can be bad for
your health” but there are windows of good news…
When you first glimpse Black Man in a White Coat, you
may wonder if it’s about health or if it’s a memoir. It’s
both, actually, but that scarcely matters when a book is
this good.
With a calm voice that belies the urgency he so apparently
feels about the subject, author Damon Tweedy, M.D. explains
why African Americans need to pay better attention to their
health and the care they get.
How the system fails black patients is of particular
interest to him (he, in fact, relates an anecdote of his own
as illustration), and he offers opinions on the Affordable
Care Act. In between this obviously useful info, Tweedy also
shares with readers his long and personal path to becoming a
doctor and how he grew with each step.
This is one of those books you wish wouldn’t have to end.
It’s interesting, gently humorous, and – more importantly –
it may save lives. And if those aren’t good enough reasons
to want Black Man in a White Coat, then read it just
for the health of it.
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