Panel: »Rassismus in der Medizin«

Listen to the panel on Podigee! (in German)

Transcript of the panel (in German)

It was not only in the crisis situation of the global pandemic that it became clear that experiences of racial discrimination are a decisive factor in how seriously people are taken as patients and in their descriptions of complaints, what priority is given to their lives globally in medical care, how much mental suffering is hidden by experiences of racism in health care. Again and again, people who deviate from a constructed white norm are wrongly treated or their symptoms are not recognised. Illegalised people have little access to their human right to bodily integrity. Medicine is a system that emerged from colonial contexts, much of its knowledge gained through inhumane research on BiPoC. Even in state contexts, people who were actually in medical – i.e. healing – contexts are still treated like criminals due to structural racisms. In medical contexts, the category of gender cannot be thought of separately from race, as both are intertwined. More and more doctors, patients and interest groups, such as Black in Medicine or the Bundesfachnetz Gesundheit und Rassismus (Federal Network on Health and Racism), are trying to draw attention to the issue and achieve structural changes in discrimination-sensitive research, training and care. At the discursive kick-off of the focus, treating and treated persons, experts and activists discuss the contexts of racism in medicine.