The American Medical Association On The Case for Teaching Racism

New Book: The American Medical Association On the Case for Teaching Racism: Afrocentric Literary Pedagogy in Nursing Education and Clinical Practice.

Author: Francis Kwarteng
Where to Get Book: Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Book Synopsis
Among the many important questions the author raises in this book, one that he poses against the backdrop of the George Floyd killing and the ensuing national conversation this needless death generated, the author is calling for a serious dialogue between African Studies/African American Studies and the health/medical sciences, e.g. nursing and medicine, in hopes that cross-pollination of ideas will eventually lead to expanded possibilities for understanding the historical roots of health inequities and medical racism that disproportionately weigh against Black (and Brown) communities and the implications of this proposed dialogue for improving the health outcomes of these communities.

The public lynching of George Floyd re-exposed the rotten underbelly of America and this, together with the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black and Brown communities, the global Black Lives Matter protests, and the racist, xenophobic demagoguery of Donald Trump, resurrected the old debates about medical racism, race relations, implicit bias, vaccine nationalism/vaccine imperialism, structural inequality, police brutality, vaccine hesitancy, unethical human experimentation, vaccine diplomacy, qualified immunity, conspiracy theories, and social justice. Then in 2020 the American Medical Association formally declared racism a public health crisis, defined racism as a social determinant of health, and embraced the idea of medical schools teaching medical students about racism.

Alas, the nursing curriculum is somewhat silent on these questions. Decolonizing the nursing curriculum, long overdue, is therefore imperative. This book explores the question of decolonizing the nursing curriculum from the angles of postcolonial theory, critiquing the Western literary canon, American history, literary criticism, African literature, cultural criticism, Afrocentric theory, democracy, African-American literature, and critical race theory.