EqualHealth
Equal Health’s Campaign Against Racism (CAR) condemns recent white supremacist attacks on Anti-racist agenda for medicine. CAR is in solidarity with the authors of “An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine” and calls for the collective condemnation of the white supremacist attacks and the uplifiting of organizing to dismantle structural racism.
On March 17th, the article titled An Antiracist Agenda for Medicine was published in the Boston Review co-written by CAR co-founder Michelle Morse and CAR member Bram Wispelwey. The objective of the piece was to lay out the abject historical failure of color evasive (or what many term colorblind) solutions to racial equity in healthcare and to offer new directions (the healing ARC model). The authors called for a structural shift in racial equity work that should take the form of federal reparations and institutional accountability, asserting that only race explicit programs will directly target the underlying cause of racial health inequities and mitigate the current impact of racism in medicine. They described their critical work in addressing patterns of racist patient care as mirrored in hospitals throughout the US healthcare system, including their own.
Predictably, there was white supremacist backlash on social media, with publishers being quick to generate the appearance of a broader reactionary movement. Fox News was the first American news source to attack the article with a publication of their own (see link below). However, that article itself noted the op-ed had “caught attention” but failed to clarify that it was enflamed by an editor and supporters of Quillette, a known refuge for white supremacist perspectives and discredited, racist “science.” There were racial slurs, harmful rhetoric, and concerns of safety through a bombardment of messages and threats directed to Dr. Michelle Morse, a Black woman, a physician and friend to so many of us.