Lifestyle
Following in her mom's footsteps, a doctor fights to make medicine more inclusive
Dr. Uché Blackstock is the author of Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism In Medicine.
Diane Zhao/Penguin Random House
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Diane Zhao/Penguin Random House
Dr. Uché Blackstock is the author of Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism In Medicine.
Diane Zhao/Penguin Random House
When Dr. Uché Blackstock was a medical student at Harvard, she had a near-death experience that gave her a sobering outlook on the state of medical care in the U.S. Suffering from excruciating stomach pain, Blackstock took herself to the E.R., where, after hours of waiting, she was told she had a stomach bug and sent home.
But in days that followed, Blackstock felt worse; it would take two more E.R. visits before she was diagnosed with appendicitis. Because it took so long for the diagnosis, her appendix ruptured, requiring emergency surgery, followed by a painful recovery that sent her back to the hospital. Later Blackstock was left to wonder: Would her treatment have been different if she weren’t Black?
“It really took a few years of processing what had happened for me to recognize that it may have been because I was a young Black woman that this diagnosis got missed,” Blackstock says.
Blackstock is the founder and CEO of Advancing Health Equity. In her new book, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism In Medicine, she explores systemic inequity in health care, tracing its origins back to the beginnings of Western medicine and to her own experiences as a medical student and doctor.
In March 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Blackstock was one of the first medical professionals to raise the alarm that the virus was having a disproportionate impact on minority communities.
“For years, we’ve been talking about the Black maternal mortality crisis. But in terms of COVID’s impact on Black communities, that conversation had not started yet,” Blackstock says. “So I wrote my first op-ed on what I was worried about would happen to our communities from COVID within the first two weeks – before the end of March.”
But Blackstock is optimistic about the next generation of Black medical students, who she says are pushing for changes to the existing system.
“With the killing of Mr. George Floyd and Ms. Breonna Taylor … a lot of medical schools received demand letters from their Black students about what those students thought we should be learning,” Blackstock says. “I would say medical schools are on their way. They have a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Interview highlights
On her mother, Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock, who died of leukemia at age 47
My mother was a brilliant woman. She was amazing. She was a trailblazer in her own right. She grew up in central Brooklyn. She had a single mom, she had five siblings, and they grew up in public assistance and so life was always very, very difficult for her. She was the first person in her family to graduate from college and then go on to Harvard Medical School, which is something that she never even probably had thought of as a little girl. But I celebrate her and I celebrate her accomplishments. But I also recognize how both racism and poverty makes the road so much harder, and that there were other brilliant, brilliant children that she grew up with that I’m sure also could have made it to Harvard Medical School and beyond, but did not because of the practices and policies that we have in place that chronically deprive our communities of the resources that they need.
On always wanting to be a doctor because of her mom
This is what happens when you have the most loving mother who is also incredibly well respected by her patients and by her colleagues. So it was sort of like, I think both Oni and I looked at her and said, you know what? We want to be just like her. We also want to be a doctor. And I think also, we were surrounded by Black women physicians: Our pediatrician, all of my mother’s friends, on our block we had other Black women physicians. So it was a reality to me. …
Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock with her twins, Uché and Oni — both of whom followed in their mother’s footsteps by graduating from Harvard Medical School.
Courtesy of Uché Blackstock
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Courtesy of Uché Blackstock
Dr. Dale Gloria Blackstock with her twins, Uché and Oni — both of whom followed in their mother’s footsteps by graduating from Harvard Medical School.
Courtesy of Uché Blackstock
I’m getting a little emotional, but this book is also an opportunity to give her a voice to people who may not have heard of her or have met her. I always say that when people meet [my twin sister] Oni and me that they’re meeting our mother, because this woman literally poured blood, sweat and tears into us. I think because she had grown up in poverty, because she was the first to go to college and med school, she wanted a very different life for us than she had for herself. And sometimes I worry. I remember when we turned 18, she said, “I’m so tired,” and I don’t know if she may have been in the early stages of her illness then, but she said, “I am so tired. I put so much into you both.”
On how students in medical school are often taught that there is an essential biological difference between Black and white bodies — and how that teaching impacts care
That is sort of the take home-message we get. We’re taught that there are different normal values for kidney functions, that Black patients have a certain set of normal values than non-Black patients. We’re told that about lung function; that there’s a difference between Black patients and non-Black patients. And this isn’t something that is necessarily recent. A lot of these beliefs are centuries or decades old. …
So often you would read a textbook and it would say that the risk factor for diabetes or the risk factor for high blood pressure is race. Race cannot be a risk factor because it’s a social construct. What is the factor is racism or the impact of the practices and policies of systemic racism on our communities and on our health. … A lot of these studies have come out more recently to show that that so-called “race correction” factor that is used for kidney function has actually led to a delay in Black patients being referred to for specialty kidney care. Also, it’s led to delays in putting them on kidney transplant lists. So it’s compromised their care even further. They have not gotten the health care that they need for this chronic and potentially deadly disease. It almost compounds the everyday racism that they face, that there are these beliefs that are inherent within the health care system that prevent them from getting the resources that they need.
On the 1910 Flexner Report, which closed most of the historically Black medical schools in the U.S.
The Flexner Report was a report that was commissioned by the American Medical Association and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation. And essentially they commissioned an educational specialist named Abraham Flexner to go around to the 155 medical schools in the United States and in Canada, and to essentially standardize them, compare them to the standards of Western European medical schools. And so, of course, the Black medical schools, because of the legacy of slavery and the lack of wealth and resources, did not have the resources to remain open. So, essentially, Flexner recommended that five out of seven of those Black medical schools be closed and they were closed, leaving Howard and Meharry. …
In a study that came out in 2020, in the Journal of American Medical Association, it was estimated that those five schools, if they had remained open, would have trained between 25,000 and 35,000 Black physicians. When I read that, I started crying because that is such a large number of health professionals that could have cared for hundreds of thousands, probably even millions of Black patients, who could have mentored medical students, who could have done research in our communities. And so it is a tremendous loss when you think about the closure of those schools. But it also makes sense when you look at the percentages today of Black physicians. We are less than 6% of all physicians in the U.S. – and that is one of the reasons.
On how the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action may impact Black medical students
I compare it to the Flexner Report. So you have a policy that impacts schools, led to the closure of schools, led to that tremendous number of Black physicians not being educated, essentially eras[ing] them. And I thought about the recent SCOTUS decision, it’s going to affect academic medical centers, it’s going to affect medical schools, and, I think that, long term, if it’s going to affect the diversity within medical schools, then we know that ultimately [it] will affect the number of Black physicians. And we are actually more likely to go back to our own communities to care for patients. We are more likely to work in underserved areas. … We may not see it for generations, but I think that SCOTUS’s decision is going to have a long-term impact on Black health, if medical schools and other higher-education institutions are not able to … have legal workarounds to address those changes in race conscious admissions.
On tangible ways to improve the system
Academic medical centers and medical schools … need to work on focusing on how to train students and residents to adequately and competently care for a diverse patient population. That is your priority, whether it’s in terms of developing curriculum that is focusing on anti-racism, or making sure your faculty understand how to teach in a way that really respects the honor and dignity of all the students that they’re teaching and the patients that they’re going to serve, or even to policymakers, making them understand that health is in all policies. … So I tasked different groups, even white health professionals. I said, this is not just our problem. This is not just the problem of your Black colleagues. This is not just the problem of your Black patients. They are dying prematurely. It is up to you also to speak up. It’s also up to you, to us to work on behalf of our communities. I think ultimately every health professional would say I want the best for my patients, right? But that is not happening.
Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Carmel Wroth adapted it for the web.
Delroy Lindo is nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor for his role in Sinners.
Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP
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Rebecca Cabage/Invision/AP
Over the course of his decades-long career on stage and in Hollywood, Sinners actor Delroy Lindo has experienced firsthand what he calls the “disappointments, the vicissitudes of the industry.”
On Feb. 22, at the BAFTA awards in London, Lindo and Sinners co-star Michael B. Jordan were the first presenters of the evening when a man with Tourette syndrome shouted a racial slur.
Initially, Lindo says, he questioned if he had heard correctly. Then, he says, he adjusted his glasses and read the teleprompter: “I processed in the way that I process, in a nanosecond. Mike did similarly, and we went on and did our jobs.”
Lindo describes the BAFTA incident as “something that started out negatively becoming a positive.” A week after the BAFTAs, he appeared with Sinners director Ryan Coogler at the NAACP awards.
“The fact that I could stand there in a room predominantly of our people … and feel safe, feel loved, feel supported,” he says. “I just wanted to officially, formally say thank you to our people and to all of the people who have supported us as a result of that event, that incident.”
Sinners is a haunting vampire thriller about twins (both played by Jordan) who open a juke joint in 1930s Mississippi. The film has been nominated for a record 16 Academy Awards, including best actor for Jordan and best supporting actor for Lindo, who plays a blues musician named Delta Slim.
This is Lindo’s first Oscar nomination; five years ago, many felt his performance in the Spike Lee film Da 5 Bloods deserved recognition from the Academy. When that didn’t happen, Lindo admits he was disappointed, but he had no choice but to move on.
“I have never taken my marbles and gone home,” he says. “And I want to claim that I will not do that now. I will continue working.”
Interview highlights
On his preparation to play Delta Slim
Various people have mentioned … [that] my presence reminds them of an uncle or their grandfather, somebody that they knew from their families, and that is a huge compliment, but more importantly than being a compliment, it’s an affirmation for the work. My preparation for this started with Ryan sending me two books, Blues People, by Amiri Baraka — who was [known as] LeRoi Jones when he wrote the book — and Deep Blues, by Robert Palmer.
Lindo, shown above in his role as Delta Slim, says director Ryan Coogler “created a sacred space for all of us” on the Sinners set.
Warner Bros. Pictures
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Warner Bros. Pictures
In reading those books and then referencing those books, continuing to reference those throughout production, I was given an entrée into the worlds, the lifestyles of these musicians. There’s a certain kind of itinerant quality that they moved around a lot. The constant for them is their music, so that there is this deep-seated connection to the music.
On being Oscar-nominated for the first time — and thinking about other Black actors, including Halle Berry and Lou Gossett Jr., who had trouble getting work after their wins
I will not view it as a curse, because I am claiming the victory in this process, no matter what happens. … In terms of this moment, I absolutely am claiming, as much as I can, the joy of this moment. I’m not saying I don’t have trepidation, I do. It’s the reason I was not listening to the broadcast this year when the nominations were announced. I did not want to set myself up. But I’m … attempting as much as I can to fortify myself and know in my heart that I will continue working as an actor. I absolutely will.
On being “othered” as a child because of his race
Because my mom was studying to be a nurse they would not allow her to have an infant child with her on campus, so as a result of that, I was sent to live with a white family in a white working class area of London. … I was loved, I was cared for, but as a result of living with this family in this all-white neighborhood, I went to an all-white elementary or primary school. And I was literally the only Black child in an all-white school.
So one afternoon, after school had ended, I was playing with one of my playmates … And at a certain point in our game, a car pulls up, and this kid that I was playing with goes over to the car and has a very short conversation with whomever was in the car, which I now know was his parent, his father. He comes back and he … says, “I can’t play with you.” And that was the end of the game.
On the experience of writing his forthcoming memoir
It’s been healing, actually. I’m not denying that it has opened me up. I’ve been compelled to scrutinize myself. I’m using that word very advisedly, “scrutinized.” It’s a scrutiny, it’s an examination of oneself. But in my case, because a very, very, very significant part of what I’m writing has to do with re-examining my relationship with my mom. And so my mom is a protagonist in my memoir. I’m told by my editor and by my publisher that one of the attractions to what I’m writing is that it is not a classic “celebrity memoir.” I am examining history. I’m examining culture. I’m looking at certain passages of history through the lens of the “Windrush” experience [of Caribbean immigrants who came to the UK after World War II].
On getting a masters degree to help him write his mother’s story
My mom deserved it. My mom is deserving. And not only is my mom deserving, by extension, all the people of the Windrush generation are deserving. Stories about Windrush are not part of the global cultural lexicon commensurate with its impact. The people of Windrush changed the definition of what it means to be British. There are all these Black and brown people, theretofore members of what used to be called the British Commonwealth. And they were invited by the British government to come to England, the United Kingdom, to help rebuild the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the destruction of World War II. My mom was part of that movement. They helped rebuild construction, construction industry, transportation industry, critically, the health industry, the NHS, the National Health Service. My mom is a nurse.
The reason that I went into NYU was because my original intention was to write a screenplay about my mom. I wanted to write a screenplay about my mom because I looked around and I thought: Where are the feature films that have as protagonist a Caribbean female, a Black female, where are they? … I wanted to address that, I wanted to correct that, what I see as being an imbalance.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Britney Spears
Open to Treatment Plan After DUI Arrest, Source Says
Published
Britney Spears‘ team is hoping the judge mandates treatment for the pop star over jail time following her Wednesday DUI arrest … and Britney isn’t fighting them on that, TMZ has learned.
Sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ … Britney is willing to comply with a treatment and support plan.
We’re told her team is in the early stages of developing a plan and they’re exploring multiple options, including mental health services, detox, and dual-diagnosis programs.
It’s unclear whether she would do inpatient or outpatient treatment, and it’s also unclear whether she would enter treatment before her May 4 court date.
Broadcastify.com
We broke the story … Britney was pulled over by California Highway Patrol officers around 9:30 PM Wednesday in Westlake Village, CA, not far from her home. She was later taken to a hospital — not for any injuries, because we’re told she didn’t sustain any — but to draw her blood to determine her blood alcohol content.
According to CHP, she was arrested for “driving under the influence of a combination of drugs and alcohol.”
Sources familiar with the investigation told us an unknown substance was found in Britney’s car, which was sent to be tested.
Britney’s manager, Cade Hudson, previously told TMZ … “This was an unfortunate and inexcusable incident. Britney will take the right steps, comply with the law, and we hope this marks the start of long-overdue change in her life. She needs help and support during this difficult time. Her boys will be spending time with her, and her loved ones are putting a plan in place to set her up for success and well-being.”
Michael B. Jordan plays twin brothers Smoke and Stack in Sinners.
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Warner Bros. Pictures
Ryan Coogler’s supernatural horror stars Michael B. Jordan playing twin brothers who open a 1930s juke joint in Mississippi. Opening night does not go as planned when vampires appear outside. “In a straightforward metaphor for all the ways Black culture has been co-opted by whiteness, the raucous pleasures and sonic beauty of the juke joint attract the interest of a trio of demons … they wish to literally leech off of the talents and energy of Black folks,” writes critic Aisha Harris. The film made history with a record 16 Academy Award nominations.
We asked our NPR audience: What movie would you recommend to someone who loved Sinners? Here’s what you told us:
Near Dark (1987)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow; starring Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, Lance Henriksen
If you want another cool vampire movie with Western kind of vibes, check out Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark — super underseen and kind of hard to find, but really gritty and sexy and another very different take on what you might think is a genre that had been wrung dry. – Maggie Grossman, Chicago, Ill.
30 Days of Night (2007)
Directed by David Slade; starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston
It follows a group of people in a small Alaskan town as they struggle to survive an invasion of vampires who have taken advantage of the month-long absence of the sun. Both this and Sinners revolve around a vampire takeover and the people’s fight to outlast the “night.” – Nathan Strzelewicz, DeWitt, Mich.
The Wailing (2016)
Directed by Na Hong-jin; starring Kwak Do-won, Hwang Jung-min, Chun Woo-hee, Jun Kunimura
In this South Korean supernatural horror film, a mysterious illness causes people in a quiet rural village to become violent and murderous. A local police officer investigates while trying to save his daughter, who begins showing the same disturbing symptoms. The film blends folk horror, religion, and psychological dread, exploring themes of faith, evil, and moral weakness. Like Sinners, it centers on a supernatural force corrupting a close-knit community, builds slow-burning tension, and examines spiritual conflict and human frailty. – Amy Merke, Bronx, N.Y.
Fréwaka (2024)
Directed by Aislinn Clarke; starring Bríd Ní Neachtain, Clare Monnelly, Aleksandra Bystrzhitskaya
In this Irish folk horror film, a home care worker, Shoo, is assigned to stay with an elderly woman who’s convinced she’s under siege by malevolent fairies. Like Sinners, Fréwaka blends folk traditions and social commentary with horror. The social failures Shoo copes with (untreated mental health issues, religious abuse) are just as frightening as the supernatural forces. – Kerrin Smith, Baltimore, Md.
And a bonus pick from our critic:
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
Directed by George C. Wolfe; starring Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman
This is an adaptation of August Wilson’s play about a legendary blues singer (Viola Davis) muscling through a recording session with white producers who want to control her music. Chadwick Boseman’s blistering in his final role. – Bob Mondello, NPR movie critic
Carly Rubin and Ivy Buck contributed to this project. It was edited by Clare Lombardo.
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