Recently I attended my 25 year-old son’s college graduation in Bismarck, North Dakota; he received a Doctor’s degree in Physical Therapy, he was the only Black graduate of a class of 48 students.
As I sat through my son's graduation ceremony I thought about that earlier this month April 4th marked the
50th anniversary of the racist political assassination of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. That in 50 years in the post-civil rights era my son
would be the only Black person graduating in his class.
I looked at a recent study
stating less than four percent of the physical therapy professionals
are Black and less than one percent of those are Black males. Will it take another 50 years ‘2068’ to
increase Black male Doctors in Physical Therapy to 2 percent!
Indeed, like the paltry number of Black male Doctors in
Physical Therapy, the percentage of Black male medical doctors are very-very
low. Currently there are fewer Black males applying to and attending medical
school than in 1978; Black men enrolled in medical school in 1978 was 542 than
in 2014, when only 515 enrolled.
David Williams of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health’s remarked that America needs more Black doctors, particularly Black
male doctors, so that Black people will have more access to providers who are
culturally connected to them who understand their lives and their challenges as
much as their clinical needs.
Williams cited one study that found that white doctors
were less empathetic to Black patients near the end of their lives than Black doctors
were. Another study found that a group of medical students thought wrongly that
Blacks’ blood coagulates faster than that of whites, and that Blacks have more
pain tolerance than whites. Increasing the number of Black doctors can increase
the cultural competency of non-Black doctors around them to better understand
the culture and circumstances of Black patients.
Many reports, surveys, and studies have found that
Black doctors are far more likely than white doctors to establish practices and
provide health care in Black communities; and that Black patients have
expressed greater confidence in and satisfaction with the quality of care that
they provide.
There’s been barely perceptible progress over a 50-year
period with only 3.8 percent of medical doctors being Black and nowhere near representing
15 percent of their percentage of the US population.
Due to racism that causes
the uneven and poor quality of public education I don’t see the number of Black
male medical professionals improving too much in the future; as professor Kimi Wilson stated:
“I’ve learned how schools have traumatized generations of Black
children in their quest to learn math and science. Thus, we as a nation must
come to terms with who is encouraged and supported in Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) education - because
clearly it isn’t Black people. I urge Black adults to visit a math and science
classroom in their local schools and observe the type of pedagogies and
learning occurring among Black children. Are Black youth positioned to
transform their communities using math and science? Are images of Black
mathematicians and scientists visible? If the answer to any of these questions
is no, Black boys will remain distressed, and this places math and science
education for them in a state of emergency.”
Regarding my son’s success in achieving a Doctorate in
Physical Therapy, a major contributing factor along with his hard work 'commitment', was his
exposure to strong Black males and participating in a Male Responsibility
program that instilled in him Black self-esteem/self-confidence and educational
expectations.
From my perspective as a mentor it will take Black male mentoring
intervention to play a very key role in encouraging and supporting (tutoring) Black
boys to pursue careers in the medical profession.
