MSNBC Guest Says Individuals Only ‘About 20%’ Responsible For Their Own Health, ‘Structural Racism’ The ‘Most Significant’ Factor

Mediaite ^ | 12 30 2023 | Caleb Howe

[yesthatjallen]

A person is only about 20% responsible for their own relative healthiness, MSNBC guest Dr. Uché Blackstock told host Charles Coleman Jr. on Saturday’s Velshi. The rest of what affects an individual’s health is decided by systemic factors such as the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.

Dr. Blackstock joined Dr. L. Ebony Boulware on for a discussion Saturday on Boulware’s recently published study on the “strong link between racism and chronic poor health conditions for Black and Brown communities in America.”

“This study, it defines structural racism as the means by which societies perpetuate discrimination through interconnected systems,” said Coleman, who was filling in for show host Ali Velshi. He asked Blackstock, author of the book “Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine”, to explain how structural racism affects health outcomes.

“I think so often we think about health as individual choices that patients that patients make excuse me, that patients make. And instead, we really need to understand how practices and policies, you know, the legacy of slavery, the legacy of Jim Crow, current-day systemic racism impacts the health of our communities,” said Blackstock.

“Individuals are only responsible for about 20% of what makes them healthy,” she said. “The other 80% are these systemic factors that Dr. Boulware and her colleagues studied in this very, very important research.”

SNIP

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Feel free.

I know a family where they have a genetic tendency to have a weak heart. Some just resign themselves to dying in their fifties and some are plugging along in their sixties because they keep themselves in shape and do not regard gravy as a beverage.

[jmacusa]

We had this garbage at the hospital I work in a few years back.

After two hours of this tedium of being told we're all equal and diversity is our strength I asked the black woman giving the lecture(they're always black and female) “''If we're all equal then how is diversity our strength?'' Stupid cow just looked at me for a few seconds and then just kept yapping away.