Dreams of a Beloved Public Health
Confronting White Supremacy in Our Field
Health Affairs Forefront (2021)
Excerpt
“To proceed under the belief that more evidence or better science or bigger data is what’s needed to protect our futures is to fundamentally misunderstand what equity is and requires, and ultimately, to cede power to the systems that preclude it. White supremacist, settler-colonial, positivist logics dominate our field, yet here we are trying to free ourselves from the burdens of said logics by quite literally using the master’s tools. Mostly, we look ridiculous with our “more research is needed” taglines -- especially when there is no documented correlation, for example, between the volume of studies published and reductions in racial health inequities. This is distraction and obfuscation at its finest, the public health equivalent of “a more convenient season.””
“It’s no longer a matter of insufficient evidence, but a matter of being insufficiently political. And here, it only needs to be said once: public health academia is a whole White moderate. Any honest pursuit of a beloved community within our field must begin by changing that.”