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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER .
ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S TOP TEN NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK SELECTION .
A BOOKLIST EDITORS' CHOICE BOOK SELECTION
One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black AmericansWhen Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites."
Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
List of contents
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
PART I: DISPARITIES
1: People Like Us-11
2: Baby Mamas-29
3: Charity Care-54
4: Inner-City Blues-78
PART II: BARRIERS
5: Confronting Hate-105
6: When Doctors Discriminate-129
7: The Color of HIV/AIDS-153
PART III: PERSEVERANCE
8: Matching-181
9: Doing the Right Thing-203
10: Beyond Race-224
Notes-247
Selected Bibliography-289
Acknowledgments-293
About the author
DAMON TWEEDY, MD is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine and staff physician at the Durham Veteran Affairs Health System. His first book,
Black Man in a White Coat, was a
New York Times Bestseller, selected by
TIME magazine as one of the Top 10 Non-fiction books of that year. He has also published articles about race, medicine, and mental health in medical journals and print publications including
The New York Times and
The Washington Post.
