A-Infos (en) France, UCL AL #373 - Anti-racism - Violence in Healthcare: The Racist Face of the Medical Profession (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

A report on racist medical violence has recently been published. Racist 
violence in the medical field is a taboo that is difficult to challenge, 
yet it is neither a new phenomenon nor without underlying causes. ---- 
The feminist collective Tant que je serai noire (As Long As I Am Black) 
has produced a 130-page report, the first report dedicated to racist 
medical violence in France[1]. Sociologist Marie Rivière contributed to 
this report, which was based on more than 100 testimonies (see box). 
This report follows several years of mobilization, publications, 
testimonies, and expressions on social media, particularly in the wake 
of the Naomi Musenga case. Musenga, 22 years old, died on December 29, 
2017, in Strasbourg when she called emergency services (SAMU) 
complaining of abdominal pain. Mocked, the young woman was ignored, as 
the phone recording revealed. The case was portrayed as an isolated 
incident in the media. But since then, numerous Black feminist and, more 
broadly, anti-racist activists have demonstrated that this is not an 
exception, but rather a systemic phenomenon. The report recommends 
institutional recognition, mandatory intersectional training for 
healthcare professionals, and the establishment of independent and 
accessible reporting mechanisms. These recommendations can serve as a 
starting point for demands and initial support for mobilization.

Medical racism has a history
Racism has a material basis generated by capitalism itself. To justify 
the system of slavery against Black people in the 17th century, 
Europeans had to develop a racist theory based on science. For example, 
by measuring skulls to declare the inferiority of Black people and the 
superiority of White people. Medicine, far from being a neutral science, 
placed its scientific authority at the service of slavery and racist order.

Frantz Fanon described doctors diagnosing their North African patients 
with "pathology without lesion." This phenomenon could not be explained 
by the oppressive conditions they experienced (their exploitative and 
living conditions, racist contempt and humiliation, etc.). Culturalist 
explanations were then offered: "In their culture, they feign illness, 
they are indolent, they complain a lot." The roots of current violence 
are partly to be found in this context, such as the "Mediterranean 
syndrome" (the myth that people from the Mediterranean region are less 
resistant to pain). Fanon explains that it is a lifetime of oppression 
that gives rise to these "pathologies without lesion," which we 
understand better today (such as stress-related back pain). We must also 
understand the issue of racist medical violence from its roots: it is 
primarily the racist division of labor, discrimination, and climate of 
hatred that create illnesses.

The medical establishment can also invent illnesses to control people of 
color. In 1851, physician Samuel Cartwright claimed that runaway slaves 
suffered from a mental illness: drapetomania. He introduced another to 
explain why some slaves worked less efficiently than others: dysaethesia 
aethiopica. This pathologizing continues today: for example, until the 
1950s in the United States, white women were the most frequently 
institutionalized and psychiatrically treated for schizophrenia, but 
since the victory of the Black Civil Rights Movement, Black men are the 
most frequently institutionalized and psychiatrically treated for this 
condition. The psychiatric institution is therefore a source of 
oppression for racialized people, and psychiatric hospitals complement 
the role of prisons.

"In France, racial discrimination in healthcare remains largely 
undocumented and denied. Unlike other countries, there is no official 
inventory of the situation. This statistical silence is not neutral: it 
renders real, daily, systemic violence invisible."
As Long As I Am Black
Creating Disability to Better Rule
Racialized people are more disabled than white people. Indeed, they are 
overrepresented in high-risk occupations that create disability 
(construction, manual labor, etc.).

We also observe higher rates of disability in our former colonies, where 
the healthcare system is deliberately kept in a catastrophic state, thus 
contributing to colonial domination. Furthermore, the medical 
institution serves as a means of population control: Native American 
women in the United States were forcibly sterilized by the state in the 
1960s and 1970s. More recently, the regional health authority of Mayotte 
has been encouraging women to sterilize themselves.

The racism within the medical system stems from colonialist and 
culturalist prejudices, as well as minimization, which leads to 
tragedies like the one experienced by Naomi Musenga. These tragedies 
must prompt us to examine not only working conditions, the destruction 
and monetization of the healthcare system, but also the racial 
hierarchies that permeate the institution. Racial discrimination and 
violence are also experienced by medical staff: one can consider the 
case of Majdouline[2], a nurse dismissed last November for refusing to 
remove her cap at work, or the Bureau for the Development of Migrations 
Concerning Overseas Departments (BUMIDOM), which brought in many nurses 
from the overseas territories and has historically created a sexist, 
racist, and anti-Black division of labor within the hospital setting. 
This social, racial, and sexist division, affecting both staff and 
patients, became glaringly obvious to everyone during the COVID-19 
pandemic, but it was quickly forgotten. It is therefore through a 
materialist and intersectional analysis that we can guide our struggle. 
This report is a tool that unions must quickly take into account in 
order to enable a structural challenge to these racist forms of violence.

Nicolas Pasadena and Zhong Hua (UCL Anti-Racism Commission)

SOME FIGURES
The report "As Long as I Am Black" reveals that 40% of Black women and 
gender minorities have already changed doctors after experiencing 
violence, 88% of the violence experienced is accompanied by a refusal to 
listen or a minimization of pain, 60% of respondents were infantilized 
by their healthcare providers (decisions made for them), 37% faced a 
refusal of care or a delay in accessing treatment, 30% admit to 
subsequently distancing themselves from the healthcare system, and 74% 
do not dare to react to racist remarks from healthcare providers.

Regarding disability disparities, a 2021 report by the DREES 
(Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics) indicates 
that 11.3% of CAF (Family Allowance Fund) beneficiaries receive the 
Adult Disability Allowance (AAH) in disadvantaged neighborhoods, 
compared to 8.6% nationwide. Furthermore, 8% of young people aged 15 to 
24 and 12% of people aged 25 to 64 living in our overseas territories 
are disabled, compared to 5% and 10% respectively in mainland France.

Submit

[1]As long as I am Black, "Health for All," April 2026.

[2]"Hair coverings hunt: AP-HP persists in its Islamophobia," UCL press 
release, February 6, 2026.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Violences-dans-la-sante-La-face-raciste-du-milieu-medical
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