Structural Competency Meets Structural Racism: Race, Politics, and the Structure of Medical Knowledge

Abstract

Physicians in the United States have long been trained to assess race and ethnicity in the context of clinical interactions. Medical students learn to identify how their patients' "demographic and cultural factors" influence their health behaviors Interns and residents receive "cultural competency" training to help them communicate with persons of differing "ethnic" backgrounds And clinicians are taught to observe the races of their patients and to dictate these observations into medical records-"Mr. Smith is a 45-year-old African American man"-as a matter of course