(Im)Possibilities

Professor McCoy sent out an email about an opportunity to earn extra credit by going to an event on Wednesday, November 29^th, and then reflecting on our experience. Our school hosted Christopher Soto, aka Loma, a poet and activist, to address the issues of “incarceration, undocumented status, and non-binary identities” through his poetry reading as part of the Geneseo’s Cultivating Community. Continue reading “The Importance of Collaborating, “U-Knight-ed” as One”

When we listened to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast this semester, it was very eye opening and a new topic I had never thought about. It challenged my very way of thinking. The episode we listened to talked about the “backfire effect” which is essentially how people react to information that is initially found to be true, but is then found to be false. I learned that people will accept information that aligns with their beliefs a lot quicker than they will believe information that goes against their beliefs. I began thinking of one of my close friends, who does exactly this, particularly involving politics, and it made me wonder. Why is it that he clings to his beliefs despite when one of those beliefs is proven to be wrong? I learned in during the podcast that around 15% of negative info causes people to fear that they are wrong about their candidate, and begins to have people hold onto their opinions like it is their own flesh and blood. This quote from the article gives an explanation as to why people will cling to their beliefs, and I found myself relating to it. I began to reflect upon how I will hold onto some of my beliefs because I am afraid that I was wrong, and nobody wants to be wrong. 

I can see this problem relating to the “white-savior industrial complex” we talked about during our many discussions on medical voluntourism. We talked about how groups will go into these third world communities with the mindset that they are going to fix all of their problems. In my opinion, one can very easily figure out that they most certainly will not be able to magically solve these problems. However,  people who go in to these countries to provide assistance can experience the backfire effect after realizing that they are not able to save these people. But, they will cling to that belief and try even harder to accomplish their unreachable goals driven by the fear of failure and being wrong.

Dr. McCoy offered an extra credit opportunity to the class about a month ago. This entitled us to meet Steve Prince, an artist from New Orleans who creates charcoal art depicting a blend of his African American experiences with historical attributes of discrimination. When I went to meet Steve Prince during his presentation of all of his famous works and his explanations, I remembered one specific piece–“Second Line.”

As I was flipping through Fortunes Bones by Marilyn Nelson I found an image that looked pretty similar to “Second Line”, it had the same name “Second line” (28). It was a photograph taken by Leo Touchet. On the next page (29), the poem Sanctus there. It represents “Second-line” in the fact that it has to do with a funeral but yet the people in the image are dancing and singing “Call us home, Lord, call us home. Call us home, Lord, set us free.”

(In a way, this connects to my previous Blog Post “7000 bodies deep“because the people who seem like they are celebrating are actually in pain because of their loss of a close friend or relative. )

In Steve Prince’s portrait, “Single-line” the people also have umbrellas in their hands, instead of dancing, they’re playing the trumpet. According Prince it had to do with their faith in Christianity and trumpets happen to be biblical in the book of Revelations. I remember Steve saying that no matter how sad black people are, they will find a way to celebrate and reveal their happiness, rather than pain because the person is now assumed to be in Heaven.

This similarity is important and relates to the class because of the name of the course “Race & Medicine.” Although we mean medicine in a literal sense, now that we’ve completed the semester I view this class as medication for those who don’t know enough about Race. There is one race and that is the human race, but during this generation for some, race is still a black and white thing. We as humans are still segregated in our own ways whether it be politically, economically, status wise or racially.

The opportunity to meet Steve Prince was like a test to see how much the medication helped me as a student in Dr. McCoy’s “Race and Medicine” class. It was a chance to understand race from a deeper and literal perspective, rather than imagining what happened to African Americans through books that we read in class.

Second-line, Second-line and Sanctus all helped me understand the idea that what we define race as, is actually a cultural aspect to humanity.

We all suffer. We all bleed. We are all human.

Throughout this semester, we have read a number of books that contained material that was very powerful to read. Some of the material was difficult to handle, but doing so started with thinking critically, one of Geneseo’s Learning Outcomes. In Toni Morrison’s Home, Frank struggled in his search for himself through dealing with his experiences war and how they affected him after returning home. Much like Frank, I can relate to finding my way in this course after reading several texts throughout the semester.

After completing the final collaborative statement today in class, I began thinking about how much we did as a class to prepare for this assignment. Reading about accounts of medical mistreatment in Medical Apartheid, as well as articles on medical voluntourism just to give a few examples, contributed to us finding our voice in this class and being able to contribute that voice in group discussion. Diving into different books throughout the semester encouraged us to investigate outside of class, and follow up what we had learned by posting here on the blog. In order to complete our final collective statement, everyone needed to draw valid conclusions from evidence found within texts such as Medical Apartheid. Much like how Frank needed to find his identity in his own hometown, we needed to take a look at several different works of literature to come up with a statement that talks about our journey in this course through thoughtful information and solutions.

This is already my final blog post, and it’s weird to see how fast this semester has gone. I first want to thank Professor McCoy and all of you who are reading this for inspiring me by expressing your thoughts, connections, and interpretations of all the literature we have read and the topics we have discussed this semester. As a biology major, there isn’t very much opportunity or need for me to stray from taking heavily-science based classes or other curriculums that are required to help prepare me for MCATs. Although I did take this class initially due to its incorporation of the topic of medicine, I feel that I found value in learning about literature and how to interpret and talk about such works through this class.

Along with this class, I also took Humn I this semester, so I was definitely reading a lot more creative literature than I’m used to. I’m writing a final essay for that class at the moment, and it has given me a chance to talk about how Humn I could be relevant to our lives. My thesis involves the fact that the class gives us the opportunity to speak about our existence and human morals that are reflected through the classical literature we have covered, and I feel that this class has done the same. I feel that both classes involve the idea of being aware about anything besides yourself, even if it’s a little bit. Continue reading “Reflection”

In Zone One, Mark Spitz deals with a feeling of mediocrity throughout his childhood and adult life. He describes himself as a B-student, always meeting just the minimum to scoot by without worry of failure or high expectations for above-average achievement, “He was not made team captain, nor was he the last one picked. He sidestepped detention and honor rolls with equal aplomb.” (Whitehead, 11) Although Mark Spitz describes himself as mediocre, we can see through his talent at demolishing the plagued zombies of this new world that he isn’t as mediocre as he likes to believe. The other day I came across a piece of information discussing what is called the “imposter syndrome” and I immediately thought of Mark Spitz. Continue reading “How Hard Is Perfect?”

When I was writing my final self-evaluation for this class, I was trying to write what I thought about my attention to blog posts. After writing about how my quality of work has changed and grown since the beginning of the semester for a sentence or two, I then went on to talk about my pacing and said, “I tried stay on top of my blog posts at the beginning of the semester, but life got in the way,” and for some reason this really stuck out to me after I wrote it down. Continue reading ““life got in the way””

Earlier in the semester, we listened to a podcast that shed light on the “backfire effect” which is the idea that people who hold deeply rooted opinions are not going to change even when presented facts. Rather, these facts actually make the person feel more confident in themselves because they doubt the source of information. Myth-based beliefs and biases can be stronger than proven ones. Eventually however, when presented with enough mounting evidence, people eventually come around and accept the new fact as true. This last caveat is important as it ultimately means that ignorance can be overshadowed by truth, as it just takes a patient, concerted effort.

Blacks and whites have experienced systematically different treatment by the medical community, as outlined in class and class readings. However, more seemingly benign disparities that were never mentioned in class add up. For example, black Americans have been proven to be under treated for pain relative to whites. While this is not the workings of a certain entity trying to systematically oppress blacks for no reason, it has been systemic nonetheless. This manifests itself in part because physicians might assume that black patients are more likely to abuse the medication, or because they fail to realize that pain medication is necessary.

A study derived from https://news.virginia.edu/content/study-links-disparities-pain-management-racial-bias was conducted at the University of Virginia, and found that the differences in pain medication prescriptions result, in part, from white medical students holding false beliefs about African Americans. In the University study, white medical students were surveyed on whether they believe various beliefs (false) about race and then asked them the pain levels they would associate with different, mock medical scenarios. These false beliefs include that African Americans skin is thicker than whites and that their blood coagulates more quickly. Other false beliefs include that black people’s nerve endings are less sensitive than whites and that blacks age slower than whites (reference to idiom “black don’t crack”). These false beliefs are not predicated on facts, and they can therefore be overrode. In the University study, at least half the sample of white medical students believed in one of the false beliefs stated above. The study ultimately found that those who did not hold any false beliefs did not show any evidence of discrimination in treatment. This suggests that systemic racism, no matter what domain it is found in, can be eliminated, but only after confronting and proving wrong the false belief that predicates it.