Dreams Of A Beloved Public Health: Confronting White Supremacy In Our Field

Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote me a letter before I was born, postmarked from Birmingham. What I felt, decades later when I first read it, was urgency—an urgency keenly aware of the value and necessity of allies, yet critically aware of the tools and instrumentalities of distraction and obfuscation. For King, this distraction was in the form of “white moderates” bent on setting the pace of change with paternalistic, subversive calls to “go slow” and to wait for “a more convenient season.” Of course, King was under no illusion that everybody was truly down to ride for the cause, and his vision of and for racial, economic, and social justice did not require such. Nonetheless, it was important to discern the real from the fake and to call the latter to task. And here, I can’t help but notice parallels within discourse about health equity.

Author: Ryan J. Petteway
Resource Type: Health Affairs