Throughout this past year and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, African American patients have entered the health care system with distinct disadvantages which are seen as systemic injustices today. In recent months, African Americans have experienced extreme inequalities when it comes to receiving not only healthcare but resources to cure an illness that is potentially life-threatening. In the article “Racial inequities in COVID-19 — the impact on black communities” posted by Medical News Today, Prof. David R. Williams and Dr. Lisa A. Cooper acknowledges the fact that “By creating unequal access to resources and opportunity, racism is a fundamental cause of racial inequities in health” ³. This quote portrays African Americans’ struggle to receive medical care on top of the worry of racial bias potentially playing a role. The struggle that they face is suppressing their rights to have access to the best medical care, just as anyone else does, the color of their skin should have no impact on that. As stated in an article by the New York Times, decades of research show that “black patients receive inferior medical care to white patients” ². This article conveys that African Americans have clear disadvantages that should be taken into consideration and fixed immediately. African Americans or a person of any race should not have to face inequalities and or challenges in the health care system when trying to receive serious medical help. This is seen as a systemic injustice today because African Americans are facing life-threatening challenges that are affecting many people’s lives in various ways. Another example of why this is seen as a systemic injustice today is that African Americans have “less access to quality healthcare” in many African American communities ¹. This was shown this past year throughout the COVID-19 pandemic with African Americans being denied a say in regards to medical resources such as ventilators. This issue has been seen in many cases all over the world and shows how great the mistreatment of African Americans really is. Receiving medical attention should in no case be denied to a person due to their race. The struggle that they face is suppressing their rights to have access to the best medical care, just as anyone else does, the color of their skin should have no impact on that. Looking more in-depth on these challenges that African Americans face within the healthcare system allows me to connect my understanding of this topic to the topic of the “one” and the “other” from the short story written by Simone deBeauvoir. In this systemic injustice example, the “one” can be seen as the healthcare system and the “other” would be African Americans that are trying to receive medical help. This is an example because the healthcare system is looking down on them as if they are not worthy of quality medical care. These examples of systemic injustice have greatly affected the African American community throughout not only receiving medical care but for people within the medical field having some sort of human decency to understand that humans should be treated equally no matter their race.
(1)https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/hast.1135
(2)https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/us/coronavirus-african-americans-bias.html