Anti-Asian racism in the medical field is a common reality, Yale-led survey finds
Anti-Asian racism in the medical field is a common reality, a Yale-led survey found.
Throughout his career in medicine, David Yang, 32, says he’s acutely felt the impacts of his race. A Chinese American emergency medicine fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, Yang said he’s had slurs hurled at him by patients, faced racist comments tying him to Covid, and has been confused with his Asian colleagues.
He knew there were others who shared his experience, but he said meaningful research on the subject of anti-Asian racism in the medical field just didn’t exist. So he put forth his own study, and surveyed two dozen medical students.
What he found confirmed his suspicions, he said. Across Asian American groups, medical students reported experiencing racism frequently — and they said their schools didn’t do much to stop it.
“The conversations, the microaggressions, the discrimination that I had experienced were very much echoed,” Yang told NBC News. “All the participants I spoke to generally felt unsupported by the medical school, and felt that bringing it up would be costly for their medical training.”
A Pakistani American medical student who was surveyed told Yang that an attending physician in charge of him once made an Islamophobic joke at his expense in front of patients, saying, “He’s gonna get his buddies from the Taliban to come after you.”
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