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A review by yourbookishbff
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Required reading for anyone working in healthcare or academia, this memoir traces decades of the Blackstock's family alongside centuries of systemic racism, weaving these two threads into a single, universal story of anti-Black racism and an urgent call to action. Blackstock shows us her journey through medical school, residency and fellowship, and particularly her point of crisis in academic medicine. We see her experiences of interpersonal racism with patients and colleagues alongside her gradually broadening awareness of just how significantly systemic racism is harming today's patients. She elegantly brings us in close - in one chapter, identifying three specific patients who changed the course of her career, and in another, contrasting two neighboring emergency rooms - before panning out so that we can see the whole picture, centuries of abuse and untrustworthiness in our healthcare system and in our society at large.
Beyond, even, the burdens of racism for patients, we see the burdens of racism for healthcare workers and physicians in Blackstock's story. This is most evident in her time at NYU, where she exists as one of only a handful of Black physicians - at a large, leading academic medical center in one of the country's most diverse cities. She is then burdened with diversity, equity and inclusion responsibilities, and her experience shouldering this underappreciated and under compensated role - at the expense of her physical and emotional health - and the resulting futility of the role itself and her work, is maddening to witness. This is the labor Black folks in professional settings dominated by white people face routinely, and she vulnerably shows the reader the burn out she and so many others are facing.
This is urgent, timely, and compelling all the way through, and I know it's rapidly expanded my own understanding of the layers of anti-Black racism in our healthcare system and the work required for equity.
Beyond, even, the burdens of racism for patients, we see the burdens of racism for healthcare workers and physicians in Blackstock's story. This is most evident in her time at NYU, where she exists as one of only a handful of Black physicians - at a large, leading academic medical center in one of the country's most diverse cities. She is then burdened with diversity, equity and inclusion responsibilities, and her experience shouldering this underappreciated and under compensated role - at the expense of her physical and emotional health - and the resulting futility of the role itself and her work, is maddening to witness. This is the labor Black folks in professional settings dominated by white people face routinely, and she vulnerably shows the reader the burn out she and so many others are facing.
This is urgent, timely, and compelling all the way through, and I know it's rapidly expanded my own understanding of the layers of anti-Black racism in our healthcare system and the work required for equity.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage, Racism, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Pregnancy
Moderate: Racial slurs
Discussion of birth trauma, maternal mortality. On page miscarriage.