Dark Skin Doesn’t Mean Pain Tolerance

By Silvia Estevez

Some doctors were obsessed to prove that there were many physical and mental differences with African Americans and Americans. Using this as a reason to justify why Americans had African Americans as slaves. They used these physical differences between them by saying that they were more stronger and resistant. For that same reason they were denied access to medical attention and treatments. Even to this day there are still some doctors who believe that African Americans are more resistant to certain diseases or pain.

Linda Villarosa talks about John Brown in “Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today.” He was a black slave who successfully escaped from all the pain that the physician, Dr.Thomas Hamilton has caused him, due to the experiments he went through. Brown states that he suffered from blisters on his body for nine months. He was determined to prove that the bodies of black people functioned differently from those of white people in order to justify that black lives belong in the fields. Adding to what Hamilton believed, he said that black people lack intelligence and because he had tortured John Brown he found that they can also tolerate more heat and that they are immune to some diseases. When Brown had escaped he went to England, where he wrote and published an autobiography that explained what he went through. According to John Brown’s autobiography, in order to figure out any of this Hamilton put him in hole which he heated up first. “The Doctor bade me strip, and get in; which I did, only my head being above the ground” (Brown, Chap 5, pp. 46). Hamilton repeated this over and over again until he was trying yet another experiment in which he blistered his hands, feet, and legs to test how deep his skin was. He got weaker as time went by and since he never recovered his full strength he got put in a different job, away from the fields. 

 Over time, there were some insistent myths that black people were able to tolerate pain and that they had weak lungs. Doctors used a tool called spirometers; this was to test the lung capacity of black people. The comparison of lung capacity between white and black people led to the assumptions that black people have weaker lungs. Even though slavery had ended a little more than a century ago, this beliefs still come up in medical education. Villarosa also brings up other doctors like Benjamin Moseley, who according to her, he said that black men tolerated surgical procedures and barely felt pain. While comparing to white people, he said white people couldn’t tolerate the pain. There was also another physician, J. Marion Sims experimented on black women; using them to practice and perfect their surgical techniques. She also tells how women who went through those experiments suffered a lot. Which is proof that black people can feel the pain that any white will. All these theories that doctors had created about African Americans only brought pain to both black men and women. And yet there are still doctors who still believe in these myths, in a 2016 survey of only white medical students it was asked “to imagine how much pain white or black patients experienced in hypothetical situations, the medical students and residents insisted that black people felt less pain” (Villarosa). If about 200 medical students believe this then racism in medical treatment will be harder to end completely; denying black lives the right treatment that they deserved. 

Henry Winston explains in “My Sight Is Gone But My Vision Remains” that he helped in WWII and was discharged honorably, he still went to prison because of the Smith Act. While he was in prison he had developed a brain tumor. He wasn’t given the adequate treatment and because of this he ended blind. Even though he didn’t let his situation break him it is still unfair how they contributed a lot and yet are given no respect nor the treatment they deserve. Later in his text he also mentions the richness Africa has and how it has been taken away from them by imperialist states. “The kind of equality the Black people demand in the United States must embody in practice the actual exercise of that right which is characterized by opportunities fully realized, free of discrimination on the job, in housing, education, health, culture and unrestricted in their struggles in any area of democratic and social advancement” (Winston, pp. 482). African Americans lack many resources because of their skin color and other physical differences. Winston in the end all his asking for is to treat Africa the way they will treat any other; same rules. 

Dr. Molefi Kete Asante in “Afrocentricity,” he focuses on how differently it would be if people would have seen different perspectives of the events that had happened though African Americans. It would have made them feel included and being also a main character in our society. If since the beginning we centered more on African Americans, it will also make them feel as contributors. If only doctors learned from them scientifically as they did with white people then they wouldn’t feel like John Brown did when he was taken by Thomas Hamilton. Brown did what he was told because he had given up. “Afrocentricity becomes a revolutionary idea because it studies ideas, concepts, events, personalities, and political and economic processes from a standpoint of black people as subjects and not as objects” (Asante). If doctors could’ve seen African Americans as subjects, they wouldn’t use them to learn from them through terrible and painful experiments. Focusing on learning the way scientists did with white people will have given African Americans hope and to feel like the participants they are. 

Slideshow: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dEd_6DMWjVMlFWwaD_T8hKeoM00w5NyXjyRWg2dH3vU/edit?usp=sharing

Citations:

• Villarosa, Linda. “Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today.” The New York Times, 14 Aug, 2019.
• Winston, Henry. “My Sight Is Gone But My Vision Remains.” From  Marable, Manning and Mullings, Leith, editors. “Let Nobody Turn Us Around; An African American Anthology.” 2nd Edition. United States of America, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2009. 

• Brown, John. “Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Now in England.” Electronic Edition. fl. 1854. Chamerovzow, Louis Alexis, Secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, ed.

• Asante, Molefi K. “Afrocentricity” 13 April, 2009.

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