SOCIAL
Do #BlackLivesMatter to Dentistry? Reflections of a mixed-race European student Owens Iguodala, UK
W
e can all admit the last few months have been unexpected. Certainly, graduating from dental school in the midst of a lockdown is not something I envisaged for myself four years ago. The sudden halt this placed on my life gave me a lot of time for self-reflection. As a man of mixed White Italian and Black African heritage it was inevitable, watching the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police and the subsequent rise of media interest in the BlackLivesMatter movement, that many questions and emotions would resurface. What did this most outward symbol of racial discrimination mean to me? Furthermore, as a former dental student and recent graduate, what has been my experience of racial discrimination in
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dental school and what can I expect of the future? I think whichever terms we choose to describe it with, this incident is just the tip of the iceberg of what racism can do. A recent statement made by the British Medical Association called We stand in solidarity, depicts racism and discrimination in healthcare as the breeding ground of “health inequalities impacting on our patients” and continues by saying “it adversely affects our colleagues and at its worst it kills”. Although more evident in certain branches of medicine, racial discrimination is also present in dentistry. The 2018 King’s College London clinical trial by Patel et al, which highlights the presence of unconscious bias when treatment planning for teeth
of questionable prognosis based on skin colour, disturbs me. What other subconscious clinical decisions are based solely on the perceptions we have of certain people? As someone with an eye on the perpetual problem of oral health inequality and, having recently sworn the Hippocratic Oath, I feel obliged to challenge these preconceptions. Only then, I feel I can engage with all sectors of society and provide the best care for my patients irrespective of race and any other protected characteristics. And what about for me, and other students and colleagues “of colour”? It has been my experience that where everyone is mostly Caucasian, I am referred to as “the black one”. Conversely,
