White Privilege in a White Coat: How Racism Shaped my Medical Education

The Article in Brief

White Privilege in a White Coat: How Racism Shaped my Medical Education

Max J. Romano

Background In this essay, the author reflects on some of the ways racial privilege has influenced his experience as a white physician in training.

What This Study Found "Our medical system is structured to individually and systemically favor white physicians and patients in ways that white people are trained to ignore," states family medicine resident Max Romano, MD, MPH. Reflecting on his medical training, Romano describes how he, a white physician, has benefited from the racial privileges he has been afforded. Among the privileges he identifies are the pervasive belief that people of his race can become doctors; the ease with which he found professors and academic role models of his race during college and medical school; and patients' assumptions that, when he enters an examination room with a person of color, he is the physician in charge, even if that is not the case. He calls on other white physicians to speak out against the racism from which they have benefited and to work towards racial justice for clinicians and patients in the medical system.