Why Does Race Feel So Real In Nursing?

why does race feel so real in nursing

Nurses are often the ones filling out the forms and checking the boxes in the healthcare arena. We ask the questions:

Male or female?

Smoker or non-smoker?

White or African American?

The check boxes in healthcare are numerous and reinforce the idea of race day after day. These check boxes continue to push the idea that race is real and that race is skin color and facial features, culture and hair texture.

Defining Real

What if real were only real in residual ways? What if it could only be seen in the consequences because it’s not really real?

According to the Thomas Theorem, “If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”

For example, when a referee makes a call on the football field that you disagree with, you can argue the call all you want. But we have all agreed to give the referee full authority to make the call and that is what will be recorded in the history books as fact regardless of what you say is real.

Race is the same. It becomes real because we define it every day for our patients and see it every day on healthcare forms. We experience it as real and react to each other based on the feeling that it’s real.

We know that race is not rooted in biological fact, but it feels real regardless. What the idea of race lacks in biological nature it makes up for in society and in our minds. Because of how we understand it and how we interact with it day upon day, race has become a real social consequence.

It is a construct that lives among us as a social category that we cannot ignore. Race remains socially real because of the socially real consequences tied to society’s use of the idea.

Real: In the U.S., Black women are 2 to 6 times more likely to die during childbirth than white women.

Real: In the U.S., Black people are dying from COVID-19 at 2.4 times the rate of white people.

These are not facts produced by biology but rather by health inequalities and institutional practices and policies that treat Black women and men differently from white women and men.

The more we keep checking the boxes and acknowledging that race is a legitimate label for society to use, we reinforce that race is meaningful as an indicator for biological differences. But race isn’t biological in nature. Race is only real in the social categories in our minds and in the unequal consequences it produces as a result.

why does race feel so real in nursing

Join Now: Dismantling Race In Nursing

According to nursing scholar Peggy Chinn of Nursology, “Racism in nursing has persisted far too long.”

Chinn and colleagues plan to dismantle racism in nursing and will start this month with a series of web discussions “Overdue Reckoning on Racism in Nursing.” Beginning on September 12 through October 10, there will be weekly discussions as part of the NurseManifest endeavor to stop racism in nursing.

Check A Different Box

Nurses have choices. We are the most trusted healthcare professionals and we make up the largest group of healthcare providers. We can lead the way in disarming race in healthcare.

Every interaction with every patient is an opportunity to reinforce society’s current script of ‘race as a societal norm’ . . . if we continue to allow it.

Or we can create a new reality where race no longer exists as real because we have collectively decided to stop reinforcing the idea of race and refusing to give race the final authority to call the shots when it comes to building our society and understanding ourselves as human.

Let’s take our first steps in dismantling race for good: refuse to act toward others in ways that are defined by race.

Refuse to act toward others in ways that are defined by race.

Cheers!!

Julie don't forget your power

Learn more about halting the myth of race.

The Nurse’s Role in Color Disparity

Removing Race From Nursing

why does race feel real in nursing

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