How Implicit Bias Is Costing The Lives Of Black Americans, In Other Areas Outside Police Killings…

fAccording to experts, African-Americans are three times more like­ly to die from COVID-19 than their white coun­ter­parts. The Brookings Institution report­ed, “In every age cat­e­go­ry, black peo­ple are dying from Covid at rough­ly the same rate as white peo­ple more than a decade older.”
BBC arti­cle report­ing on the death of an African-American doc­tor in Indianapolis, Indiana, recent­ly, asked the ques­tion, ” Is every­one racist”?
The arti­cle cit­ed a 2015 paper pub­lished in the American Journal of Public Health that found “most health care providers appear to have an implic­it bias in terms of pos­i­tive atti­tudes toward Whites and neg­a­tive atti­tudes toward peo­ple of color.”

The ques­tion “are we all racist”? is a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion to con­sid­er as we pon­der the con­se­quences of death and destruc­tion on the black pop­u­la­tion; we already know the reasons.
Inherent in the ques­tion is the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that col­or bias­es may have bled-over into, and actu­al­ly may help shape how even black care­givers relate to black peo­ple, as opposed to the way they treat whites. A large per­cent­age of care­givers are actu­al­ly black, which makes the ques­tion even more perplexing.
It is not out of the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty that the long-held con­cept of white fem­i­nine fragili­ty and white male supe­ri­or­i­ty, [deserv­ing of def­er­ence], may inform how black care­givers relate to whites, instead of how they see their own kind.
There is a lot of anec­do­tal evi­dence that would sug­gest that this is indeed so, even though the sam­pling may not be sci­en­tif­ic, and could arguably be based on the geog­ra­phy of the care insti­tu­tion, etc.
All things con­sid­ered; how­ev­er, the evi­dence is clear across the board; implic­it bias­es affect the way peo­ple of col­or are treat­ed. But that is to be con­sid­ered in every aspect of American life; black lives are far less valu­able than white lives.

On October 17th, 1993, I took my wife to a Bronx teach­ing Hospital to give birth to our son, who we would lat­er name Kodi.
It was a Sunday morn­ing. I dropped her off at the hos­pi­tal entrance, where she was allowed to sit in a wheel­chair and was wheeled in while I went to park my car.
As soon as I entered her room a few min­utes lat­er, I real­ized that much was wrong; she was in extreme pain, which seemed out of the ordinary.
I prompt­ly went to the nurse’s sta­tion and made known my feel­ings known to them, and they made sure to tell me that I was just a stressed-out spouse who was just scared.
Though not con­vinced, I went back to her room, shoul­ders drooped, not sure who was right, they or me.
It did not take long for me to be back at the nurse’s sta­tion once again, to explain to them that some­thing was wrong.
Again they told me that I was pan­ick­ing, all was well, and so again, I went back to my wife’s room.

Well, need­less to say, my sec­ond for­ay to the nurse’s sta­tion was not going to be my last. My third vis­it was a more col­or­ful one that was more befit­ting the streets of Kingston, Jamaica, and of course, it acti­vat­ed a response.
In quick order, they were in the room, and then they want­ed to ush­er me out of the room, but I was going nowhere.
They then hand­ed me a gown and mask, and in less than a minute, the room was filled with Doctors, Nurses, and machines.
My unborn son’s heart had stopped beat­ing by then, so they restart­ed his heart using machines. In their hur­ry to pull him out there­after, they lit­er­al­ly pulled his hip out of place.
Our son was made to wear a brace of an extra dia­per rolled up between his thighs for months to get rid of a click in his hips, due to their apa­thy and negligence.
Was this implic­it bias? Some of the staff mem­bers were black oth­ers were white. Was it just that the staff in this one hos­pi­tal was lethar­gic and unprofessional?
Over the years, I have seen sev­er­al oth­er exam­ples of this kind of behav­ior that could rea­son­ably be viewed in the same light, includ­ing inci­dents that includ­ed my own per­son­al care that has been less than what would nor­mal­ly be expect­ed and oth­ers that were inspiring.
My wife has also com­plained about the care she received, or the care she has not received, in one par­tic­u­lar hos­pi­tal, but how are those com­plaints rat­ed when it is almost impos­si­ble to know whether white patients are treat­ed similarly?

The answer may be in the nation­al data that does indi­cate that black peo­ple are treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly than whites in care facil­i­ties, even when the care­givers are black?
The real­i­ty is that implic­it bias affects every stra­tum of American soci­ety; there is no rea­son to doubt the data; in fact, it pro­vides the stark con­se­quences of insti­tu­tion­al­ized racism.
The dead bod­ies of black peo­ple con­tin­ue to pile up due to racists poli­cies, whether from an unem­pa­thet­ic health care sys­tem, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry redlin­ing hous­ing poli­cies, or vio­lent police, many of whom itch to pull the trig­ger when­ev­er they see black bodies.
Dr. Susan Moore, 52, passed away at a local hos­pi­tal on Sunday, after com­plain­ing about how she was treat­ed at anoth­er Indianapolis hos­pi­tal, even after telling them that she was a med­ical doctor.
According to the report­ing, Dr. Moore test­ed pos­i­tive for Covid-19 on 29 November and was admit­ted with a high fever while she coughed up blood and strug­gled to breathe. But even as a physi­cian her­self, she said she had strug­gled with get­ting care. Dr. Moore said she had had to plead for antivi­ral Remdesivir dos­es and request a scan of her chest. At one point, the doc­tor report­ed­ly told her she did not qual­i­fy for the drug and that she should go home.
“He made me feel like I was a drug addict,” Dr. Moore said in a Facebook video. “And he knew I was a physi­cian. I don’t take nar­cotics. I was hurting.”
Donald Trump was not cough­ing up blood; nei­ther were any of the white men who got infect­ed at his super-spread­er events; they all qual­i­fied for the best treat­ment; no ques­tions asked.
Would that have hap­pened to a white woman? Would that have hap­pened to a white woman who is a doc­tor? Would the poor­est or lowli­est white woman be treat­ed that way?
No!!!

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
He’s con­tributed to sev­er­al websites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est videos.

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