Race and medicine: what physicians say, in their own words

Last updated September 24, 2026.

The short answer

Read together, the 312 essays and podcast transcripts on this page hold two records. One is what Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American physicians and students have written about being in medicine: being mistaken for housekeeping in a white coat, being asked where they are really from, patients who want a Black physician who will not repeat Tuskegee, and the minority tax of being asked to fix what they did not build. The other is what physicians of every background have written about their patients: pain that is undertreated, maternal deaths that run 243 percent higher, and the 2002 Institute of Medicine finding that Black patients received less care even after insurance was controlled for. The record breaks in 2020: 54 posts that year, and 103 across 2020 and 2021, against 88 in the fourteen years before. Since 2023 the subject has been affirmative action and DEI, and the record holds physicians who argued for them and against them, by name, in the same months.

This page is a maintained record of what physicians, residents, and medical students have written about race and racism in medicine on KevinMD.com, a physician-authored publication founded in 2004 by Kevin Pho, MD, a board-certified internal medicine physician in Nashua, New Hampshire. It draws on 312 essays and podcast transcripts about race, racism, racial disparities, affirmative action, and diversity in medicine, published between November 2004 and August 2026 by 231 named contributors, 169 of the posts bylined by physicians and the rest by students, nurses, researchers, and other non-physicians, with six written anonymously. Every claim on this page is attributed to a named author with the date it was published and a link to the original.

The sections below are organized around the questions physicians, students, patients, deans, and journalists ask. Each opens with a direct answer, followed by what named authors have said, in the order they said it. Where authors cite studies, the study is named alongside the author, and the figures are theirs. Physicians on both sides of the affirmative action and diversity argument are cited as they wrote, and the page does not adjudicate. This is a page about opinion and experience, not policy guidance.

This record at a glance

312posts

2004 to 2026years covered

231named contributors

43posts cited on this page

Questions this record answers

What do Black physicians say about being a Black physician?
What do physicians say about racial disparities in care?
What did physicians write in 2020?
What do Asian American, Latino, and Native American physicians say?
What do physicians say for and against affirmative action and diversity programs?
How has the conversation changed since 2004?

What do Black physicians say about being a Black physician?

Black physicians on KevinMD describe the same experiences across a decade: being taken for staff, having their competence questioned by patients and colleagues, being the only one in the room, and being asked to carry the profession’s diversity work on top of their clinical work. They also describe what they bring: patients who trust them because of who they are, and a reason to stay. Black men are under 3 percent of U.S. physicians in the figures authors cite; Black oncologists are 2 to 3 percent.

Damon Tweedy, MD, a psychiatrist, wrote in October 2015, in an excerpt from his book Black Man in a White Coat, of a patient who refused a Black doctor a month into his internship, “the year when aspiring physicians make the abrupt, brutal transition from knowledge-seeking medical student to first responder,” in “Bracing myself for racially tinged criticism, I was surprised by what happened next.” An anonymous Black medical student wrote in April 2016 of patients who keep asking where he is really from, unable to “wrap their mind around a Black man in a white coat who calls America home,” in “The racism in medical education cannot be ignored.” Earl Stewart, Jr., MD, an internist and the most frequent Black physician contributor, wrote in May 2016 of patients and families “who remind me that to them, I am as fresh black oil splashed against a pristine white fur coat,” in “A black doctor’s perspective on perceptions by race,” and in January 2017 told future Black doctors “We need you, not only for the sake of formulating a more ethnically diverse physician workforce,” in “A young black physician’s letter to future black doctors.”

Naomi Tweyo Nkinsi, then a medical student, wrote in June 2020 that she “blinked and looked around at the only other four black students in my class” during a lecture on race and kidney function, in “The black physician’s burden.” Carl Earl Lambert, Jr., MD, a family physician, wrote in January 2021 of a strained schedule for patients who want a Black physician who will not, in his word, Tuskegee them, and that it is “often put on the backs of Black and Latinx communities to shoulder or spearhead diversity, equality, and inclusion” work, in “Black physicians are tired of paying the minority tax.” Frieda Millhouse-Jones, MD, wrote in May 2021 that her father told her “if you’re Black in this country, you have to be twice as good,” to be seen equally to a white person, in “A Black physician’s perfectionism.” Tomi Mitchell, MD, wrote in November 2021 that “Black female doctors represent only 2 percent of all U.S.-based physicians,” and “we experience a disproportionate amount of discrimination,” in “The unique agony of being a Black female doctor.” Trisza Leann Ray, DO, wrote in May 2025 that “Patients regularly mistook me for housekeeping, even with my crisp white coat and clearly displayed credentials,” in “The invisible weight carried by Black female physicians.” Aba Black, MD, MHS, wrote in January 2026 that her research team found “issues of racial mistaken identity were a common theme” in interviews with underrepresented residents, and that South Asian and East Asian residents are “routinely mistaken for coresidents perceived to be of a similar race,” in “Racial mistaken identity in medicine: a pervasive issue in health care.” Tharini Nagarkar and Maranda C. Ward, EdD, MPH, defined the minority tax in January 2026 as “the emotional and professional responsibility placed upon underrepresented individuals in professional settings” to lead diversity work, in “What is the minority tax in medicine?”

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What do physicians say about racial disparities in care?

Physicians on KevinMD have written about disparities in their patients’ care since 2006, and the figures they cite have not moved much: Black patients less likely to receive bypass surgery, dialysis, and cancer screening after adjustment for insurance; Black patients’ pain undertreated because trainees believe false stereotypes about pain tolerance; and Black women dying in childbirth at more than twice the rate of white women. The authors are physicians of every background. Posts discussing pain run at about a quarter of the record; maternal mortality rose to 10 percent since 2023, its highest.

Ashish Jha, MD, MPH, wrote in July 2013 that “Yes, there have been efforts to reduce racial disparities, but they have clearly not been enough,” in “Addressing racial disparities in health care.” Pamela Wible, MD, wrote in January 2014 of a patient whose hypertension had a cause no textbook listed, and that “urban blacks have twice the prevalence of hypertension as whites,” in “The unidentified cause of one man’s hypertension: Racism.” Rhea Boyd, MD, a pediatrician, wrote in April 2015 that “more black men die in America from heart disease than from police brutality,” and that the two are never mentioned in the same breath, in “The arc of injustice: How racism kills.” Michael Kirsch, MD, wrote in June 2015 that the 2002 Institute of Medicine report found minorities received fewer bypass operations, “kidney dialysis treatments, proper cardiac medications and cancer detection tests than did whites, even after controlling for insurance status,” in “Racism in physicians: It’s not a black or white issue.”

Katie Bayne wrote in May 2016 that “black patients were 2.7 times more likely than non-Hispanic whites to receive a diagnosis of schizophrenia,” although studies have dispelled the belief that the condition is more common in one race than another, in “Systemic racism and racial bias in mental health care.” Leigh-Ann J. Webb, MD, wrote in June 2016 that research by Monika Goyal and colleagues suggests “there is a different threshold to treat pain in black versus white patients,” in “Addressing racial bias in the treatment of pain.” Vincent DeGennaro, Jr., MD, MPH, a physician who works in Haiti and in the Navajo Nation, wrote in May 2019 that about 15,000 homes on the reservation had no electricity and that “the systemic poverty that pervades in Navajo Nation is nothing short of a national travesty,” in “The systemic poverty in Navajo Nation is a national travesty.” Niran S. Al-Agba, MD, wrote in November 2019 that “A black woman is 243 percent more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes than a white woman,” and 71 percent more likely to die from cervical cancer, in “The health effects of structural racism.” Isabelle Akinyemiju wrote in June 2024 that the Black maternal mortality disparity “has been well-established as having a substantial impact on Black women in the United States,” in “Why the U.S. must urgently address maternal health disparities for Black women.” Pamela Buchanan, MD, wrote in February 2025 that a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found “medical trainees were more likely to believe false stereotypes that Black patients have higher pain tolerance,” leading to undertreatment of pain, in “Why diversity in medicine saves lives.” Kaitlin E. Kelly, a medical student, wrote in April 2025 after driving through the Pine Ridge Reservation that “The average life expectancy in Pine Ridge is 66.81 years,” in “Native communities deserve better: the truth about Pine Ridge health care.” Timothy Lesaca, MD, wrote in June 2026 that a 2018 meta-analysis in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found “Black individuals are diagnosed with schizophrenia at 2.4 times the rate of White individuals,” and that the DSM-5-TR attributes the misdiagnosis to clinician bias, in “Racial bias in schizophrenia diagnosis must end.”

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What did physicians write in 2020?

KevinMD published 54 posts on race and medicine in 2020, and 103 across 2020 and 2021 against 88 in the fourteen years before, most of them in June after the murder of George Floyd and during a pandemic that was killing Black patients at higher rates. A quarter of the year’s posts name Floyd; 65 percent mention COVID; the phrase structural or systemic racism appears in 37 percent, up from 5 percent before 2016. The authors were Black physicians and students writing about a burden, white physicians writing about what they had not seen, and Asian and South Asian physicians writing about their place in it.

Jay Wong wrote on May 29, 2020, that allowing the loss of Black lives to continue is “nothing short of a public health crisis” and, he adds, a public health emergency, in “George Floyd: Framing police brutality through the lens of an emergent public health crisis.” Divya Seth, MD, MPH, wrote on June 3 that “Six years ago, Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson, MO, igniting the White Coats For Black Lives movement,” in “Medicine vs. racism: white coats for black lives.” Jacob Uskavitch, a medical student, wrote on June 4 that “medical students have a role in advocating for patient populations of all races, color, gender, or socioeconomic status,” in “A medical student perspective on George Floyd’s murder.” Farhan S. Imran, MD, wrote on June 7 that for a Black patient “the chances of finding a black donor are only 2 out of 10” against 8 out of 10 for a white patient, in “We need more black cops. We need more black physicians.”

Jennifer Shaer, MD, wrote on June 15 that she was “one of those people who felt” that of course black lives matter, all lives matter, in “A physician awakens to racism in America.” Inna Husain, MD, and Meeta Shah, MD, wrote the same month that “South Asian physicians, in particular, must be part of solutions to tackle health inequities for our black patients,” in “South Asian physicians must be part of the solution against racism.” Jacques Ambrose, MD, MPH, wrote in February 2021 that “anger makes it easier for us to see things in black and white,” and wondered whether it “has created an impossible impasse when it comes to race,” in “How do we talk about race, racism, and white supremacy without screaming at each other?”

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What do Asian American, Latino, and Native American physicians say?

The record is not only Black and white. Asian American physicians and students on KevinMD write about the model minority stereotype, about being asked where they are really from, about the hate of 2021, and about whether affirmative action in medical school admissions works against them. Latino physicians write about attrition and the founding of a national day. Native American authors write about a career that is inaccessible from the start. Latino or Hispanic authors and subjects appear in 18 to 35 percent of posts by period, Asian American in 7 to 23 percent, and Indigenous in 4 to 19 percent.

Sharlay Butler wrote in July 2014 that “The percentage of Native Americans in colleges is low, as is the number of mentors,” who reach out to Native students early enough, in “Medicine is an inaccessible career choice for Native Americans.” Vamsi Aribindi, MD, wrote in July 2015 that if medical school admissions discriminated against Asian Americans “they’re doing a pretty bad job of it,” since “almost 20 percent of medical students are of Asian origin, relative to an American population of 5.6 percent,” in “Asian-American discrimination: Is medical school next?” Oscar Chen, Dong Gue Oh, Zhang Huang, and Sarah Y. Song, MD, MPH, wrote in June 2020 that Asians “account for 18 percent of physicians, 9 percent of registered nurses, and 7 percent of physician assistants,” in the United States, in “Mental health among Asian American health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Leonard Wang, then a student, wrote in February 2021 that the model minority stereotype “has been used as a racial wedge to elevate Asian Americans above other minorities,” in “On being Asian American: ‘Where are you really from?’” Serena Zhou-Talbert, MD, MPH, wrote in April 2021 that “For many of my patients, I am the first Asian and first Chinese person they have personally interacted with,” in “Asian and Asian-American hate is not new. It has reached a breaking point, and we have had enough.” Cesar Padilla, MD, and Michael G. Galvez, MD, wrote in August 2023 that Latino students face “a historically higher rate of attrition compared to white medical students,” and that mentorship and sponsorship move them forward, in “National Latino Physician Day: a crisis sparked the origin of a national day.”

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What do physicians say for and against affirmative action and diversity programs?

This is the subject on which physicians on KevinMD disagree most directly and most recently. Supporters write that Black enrollment in medical school was 7.5 percent in 1974 and 7 percent in 2016, that bans on affirmative action cut underrepresented enrollment by about 17 percent, and that Black patients have better outcomes with Black physicians. Opponents write that admissions data show underrepresented applicants accepted at higher rates than white applicants with similar scores, and that this trade-off has measurable consequences. Both are cited here by name. Affirmative action or admissions appears in 15 percent of posts since 2023, and DEI in 24 percent, up from 4 percent in 2020.

Noreen Kerrigan, MPA, a medical school admissions dean, wrote in October 2017 that “In 1974, African American enrollment for first-year medical students was 7.5 percent,” and by 2016 it had fallen to 7 percent, in “A dean of admissions on affirmative action in medical school.” Katrina Gipson, MD, MPH, wrote in May 2023 that at Harvard “43 percent of white students are legacies, athletes or related to donors or employees,” in “Why affirmative action is crucial for health equity and social justice in medicine.” Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA, wrote in August 2023 that enrollment of underrepresented students of color “fell roughly 17 percent after the bans were instituted” in states that banned affirmative action, in “The medical establishment’s fight for and against diversity.”

Landon Kunzelman, MD, wrote in June 2024 that a 2017 analysis of admissions statistics “showed that white applicants were much less likely to be accepted than black and Hispanic applicants,” with similar GPAs and MCAT scores, in “The diversity-performance trade-off in academic medicine.” Ravinder S. Chale wrote in June 2024 that “Lower mean MCAT scores are sometimes a result of socioeconomic disadvantages for certain groups,” and argued for socioeconomic rather than racial criteria, in “Medical school admissions: an issue of socioeconomic diversity.” Jacquelyne Gaddy, MD, wrote in November 2025 that “only 2-3 percent of medical oncologists identify as Black despite Black individuals comprising 13 percent of the U.S. population,” in “The danger of dismantling DEI in medicine.” Babajide Ogunseinde, MD, wrote in August 2026 that the limit on evaluating racial parity in physician discipline “is not the absence of concern, but the absence of standardized upstream data,” in “Is racial bias in physician discipline being measured?”

On The Podcast by KevinMD: “Overcoming obstacles: Increasing diversity in residency programs,” Heidi Chumley, April 2023.

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How has the conversation changed since 2004?

The record has three periods. From 2004 to 2019 it was mostly about patients: disparities in end-of-life care, cardiac care, and screening, the Institute of Medicine report, and a few early first-person essays, Tweedy in 2015 and the anonymous student in 2016. 2020 and 2021 were the peak, 103 posts in two years, about George Floyd, COVID, and the experience of being Black in medicine, written largely by Black physicians and students. Since 2022 the subject has been affirmative action, DEI, and their dismantling, argued from both sides, while trust and maternal mortality rose to their highest levels in the record.

Term	2004 to 2015 (43 posts)	2016 to 2019 (45 posts)	2020 (54 posts)	2021 to 2022 (77 posts)	2023 to 2026 (93 posts)
Structural or systemic racism	5 percent	16 percent	37 percent	29 percent	19 percent
George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, or Ahmaud Arbery	0 percent	0 percent	26 percent	10 percent	3 percent
COVID	5 percent	0 percent	65 percent	48 percent	14 percent
Implicit bias	2 percent	20 percent	17 percent	4 percent	15 percent
Pain undertreatment	14 percent	24 percent	17 percent	12 percent	24 percent
Maternal mortality	0 percent	2 percent	6 percent	4 percent	10 percent
Tuskegee or trust	14 percent	13 percent	9 percent	17 percent	27 percent
Microaggressions or being mistaken	0 percent	11 percent	15 percent	14 percent	10 percent
Affirmative action or admissions	7 percent	9 percent	7 percent	0 percent	15 percent
DEI	0 percent	0 percent	4 percent	6 percent	24 percent
Arguments against DEI or affirmative action	5 percent	9 percent	7 percent	3 percent	5 percent
Asian American	23 percent	7 percent	17 percent	16 percent	14 percent
Latino or Hispanic	19 percent	18 percent	35 percent	18 percent	26 percent
Indigenous or Native American	12 percent	4 percent	19 percent	9 percent	9 percent

Term frequencies are the share of posts in each period using the term at least once, computed on the September 18, 2026 corpus of 312 posts.

Kevin Pho’s posts from 2004 to 2009 tracked the disparities literature, racial differences in end-of-life care, minority enrollment, and why Black patients refuse lung cancer surgery; they are short commentaries, counted here but not indexed or linked. Jha in 2013 and Wible in 2014 are the first physician essays. 2015 is the turn: Boyd on the arc of injustice, Kirsch on the IOM report, Aribindi on Asian Americans, and Tweedy’s excerpt. Stewart’s essays in 2016 and 2017 and Kerrigan’s dean’s view in 2017 precede the 2020 record, which runs from Wong on May 29 through Nkinsi, Imran, Shaer, Husain and Shah, and Seth in June. Lambert on the minority tax, Wang on being Asian American, and Ambrose on how to talk about it open 2021. Since 2023 the argument is Gipson and Lazarus against Kunzelman and Chale on admissions, Gaddy on DEI, Ray on the invisible weight, Black on mistaken identity, Nagarkar and Ward on the minority tax, Lesaca on schizophrenia diagnosis, and Ogunseinde on what discipline data does not measure.

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About this record

The KevinMD race and medicine corpus by the numbers

The figures below describe the set of KevinMD posts this page draws on, as of September 18, 2026. They are counts of what KevinMD has published, not survey or epidemiological data.

Measure	Value
Posts in the corpus	312
Date range	November 8, 2004 to August 24, 2026
Named contributors	231
Posts bylined by an MD or DO	169
Posts by students, nurses, researchers, and other non-physicians	About 140
Anonymous posts	6
Podcast episodes with full transcripts	12
Posts in the corpus that are not indexed, counted but not cited	45
Total words	About 261,000
Posts in 2020 and 2021	103
Posts in the fifteen years before 2020	88
Most frequent contributors	Arthur Lazarus, MD, MBA (6); Earl Stewart, Jr., MD (4); Tomi Mitchell, MD (3); Aba Black, MD, MHS (2); Timothy Lesaca, MD (2)

How this page was built and how it is updated

The corpus was assembled from title searches for racism, racial, race, Black physician, Black doctor, Black patients, Black women, disparities, minority, diversity, affirmative action, DEI, implicit bias, Latino, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American, Indigenous, immigrant physician, George Floyd, equity, and underrepresented, keeping posts about race and removing unrelated uses of the words, including neurodiversity, the white coat ceremony, and races in the ordinary sense. Term frequencies were computed against the full text of each post on the corpus assembled for the September 18, 2026 build; this page was converted to the current standard on September 20, 2026 without rebuilding that corpus, so the counts and figures are as of September 18, 2026. Posts are counted whether or not they are indexed; citations on this page are limited to posts that are indexed and can be verified at the link. Forty-five posts in the corpus are not indexed: Kevin Pho’s 2004 to 2011 commentaries, 21 podcast episodes without transcripts, and a few short essays. They are counted but not cited. Quotations are taken verbatim from the original posts. Author credentials are as they appeared in the byline at publication; authors described as “then a student” were students when they wrote. Physicians on both sides of the affirmative action and diversity argument are cited at the same weight. Kevin Pho’s posts from 2004 to 2009 were short commentaries on the disparities literature. On September 24, 2026, two posts on Native American health were added to answer questions readers bring to this subject; they were read in full and checked against the same rules, and the counts above were not recomputed. Every source is linked in the sentence that cites it, and the full list appears at the end of the page. Related records: Women in medicine: what women physicians say, in their own words, Medical school: what students and physicians say, in their own words, COVID-19: what physicians wrote as it happened, and Opioids: what physicians and pain patients say, in their own words.

This page is updated as new essays on race and medicine are published on KevinMD. When it is updated, the date at the top changes, the counts in the tables are recomputed, and new named claims are added to the relevant section. Nothing is removed unless the original post is removed. An author who believes a quotation on this page misrepresents them can write to Kevin Pho and the page will be corrected.

To cite this page: Pho K. Race and medicine: what physicians say, in their own words. KevinMD.com. Updated September 24, 2026. https://kevinmd.com/race-and-medicine