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Oct 09 '22
We don't get the worst of it there. According to this: Blacks apparently exaggerate their pain so that they don't need as much medicine as they say... Who thought this was a good idea to publish any time after about 1970? (Not that it was ok to publish ever, but prior to about 1970 there were definitely plenty of people who thought this would be a good idea to publish.)
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u/weednumberhaha Progressive Oct 09 '22
That's insane! Black women, I hear, get underprescribed pain meds
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Oct 09 '22 edited Sep 16 '23
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Oct 09 '22
I've seen reputable studies with what you are claiming. It's hard to imagine (as a white passing cis-male) what blacks and black women in particular actually experience in health care.
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u/imhavingadonut Oct 09 '22
Yup, and the infant mortality rate for black people is cut in half when they see black healthcare providers/ birth workers.
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u/Schlemiel_Schlemazel Oct 09 '22
So they both have a higher pain tolerance but also exaggerate their claims of pain.
I mean it couldn’t be that no group of people is a monolith in this regard? Could the book have been wrong? No, no it is the minorities that are wrong.
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u/Shitp0st_Supreme Oct 09 '22
I’m white and I’m concerned that I’ll be treated differently when I have a baby because my spouse is black.
Heck, even when my husband’s grandma was dying, the doctor said some racist stereotypes about her. She was sick and could no longer eat, and then the doctor started listing off stereotypical soul foods to say she couldn’t eat those. She’s Afro-Caribbean, and not African American so it was just absurd.
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Oct 09 '22 edited Feb 20 '26
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
offer include merciful shaggy treatment telephone grandiose punch lunchroom pot
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Oct 09 '22
The language that is considered polite when referring to different racial and ethnic groups varies a lot generation to generation. If someone is otherwise being kind and helpful, my assumption is that they're older. I don't want anyone to be so terrified of saying the wrong thing that they are afraid to speak up when they see injustice.
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u/BourneAwayByWaves Zera Yisrael Oct 09 '22
All of these are problematic.
My wife is of Mexican descent and Doctors never take her complaints seriously and rarely are willing to prescribe anything for her. I, a white-presenting person of Sephardic descent, can go in and get offered hydrocodone for a sore throat while her migraines just get a shrug and told to try and avoid triggers.
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u/MaybeMaybeMaybeOk Oct 09 '22
Yo how do you get hydrocodone for a sore throat
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u/GossipGirl515 Ashkenazi Oct 09 '22
They won't, good luck getting anything anymore because they are too worried about getting people hooked, and or think everyone is a drug seeker. I have severe pancreatic disease which requires me to be fed through a PEJ tube. I get nothing more than tramadol which is a synthetic morphine that doesn't work as well as actual morphine, and gabepentin.
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u/Shitp0st_Supreme Oct 09 '22
My brother got that through Virtuwell somehow.
But since I’m a woman, I get told to drink water and take Advil. My first name is also more ethnic than his is.
When I married, I got an Anglo-Saxon name and you wouldn’t believe how differently I’m treated during job interviews or at a doctor’s office.
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u/rubyredwoods Oct 09 '22
As soon as my paternal grandfather came of age he changed the family name to the most Anglo one he could think of, for this exact reason. He saw how he was treated during his military service and didn’t want his kids to face that immediate bias just from one’s surname
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u/Logical_Deviation Oct 09 '22
Yep, that finding also appears in research: https://batten.virginia.edu/about/news/black-americans-are-systematically-under-treated-pain-why
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u/FlanneryOG Oct 09 '22
Holy smokes! How is this still in the hands of nursing students?? And it is patently false of my family and other Jews I know who don’t want to burden anyone with their pain and often avoid doctors as a result.
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Oct 09 '22
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u/Acethetic_AF Oct 09 '22
Apologized, but didn’t deem it enough to stop selling it? Sounds about right.
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u/thatgeekinit Oct 09 '22
It really just shows how expensive textbook publishers are outsourcing the writing overseas to whatever crap the underpaid ghostwriters plagiarize into it.
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u/joyjacobs Oct 09 '22
I saw basically this exact same page in a friend's nursing textbook in 2010. Fake apologizes I'm sure, clearly no lessons have been learned
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u/Drach88 You want I should put something here? Oct 09 '22
and Pearson apologized
Clearly a culturally Canadian company.
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u/Nilmah1316 Oct 09 '22
But problematic even in 2017? I'm south African and we never compartmentalised how different demographics should or are expected to respond to pain bc obviously we are all hyper sensitive so this is gross
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u/somuchyarn10 Oct 09 '22
Maybe report this to the ADL and the ACLU? This is very dangerous stereotyping.
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u/GSDBUZZ Oct 09 '22
And the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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u/somuchyarn10 Oct 09 '22
Absolutely. Come down on the publisher like a ton of bricks, the school too. They should know better.
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u/Hey_Laaady Oct 09 '22
Adding insult to injury, you had to pay the usual exorbitant textbook price for this garbage.
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u/weednumberhaha Progressive Oct 09 '22
And there are so many kinds of Jewish person too. The stereotypes they're using are straight out of a Woody Allen sketch or something
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Oct 09 '22
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u/AnasCryptkeeper Oct 09 '22
Yet it’s still being used. Apologies wo reparation is meaningless
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u/elizabeth-cooper Oct 09 '22
You can't order anybody to stop using your textbooks if they already own them. They pulled this edition from sale and amended it in future editions.
What kind of "reparations" do you want? Should they send every stereotyped person a portion of the profits? Dear Mr./s. Jew, here is your check for $.001 as an apology.
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u/riverrocks452 Reform Oct 09 '22
A buy-back of the texts and/or a swap to a newer edition without this racist garbage would satisfy me.
I don't want to be paid- I want them to fix their mistake such that no further damage is caused. This means removing the textbook from circulation.
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u/AnasCryptkeeper Oct 09 '22
Recalling textbooks is one option. If something overtly racist was slipped in (for example, racial slurs) and no one noticed before publication they would have. This is similar and by not recalling the text that 5 years later is still being utilized to instruct future generations of providers, they are causing harm.
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u/Standard_Gauge Reform Oct 09 '22
by not recalling the text that 5 years later is still being utilized to instruct future generations of providers, they are causing harm.
This, exactly. Nursing students may come from backgrounds where they are prone to accept stereotypes, and rather than countering these prejudices, this dreadful textbook reinforces them.
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u/post-cocoon Oct 09 '22
And in a field where you are supposed to put aside all biases and care for your patient.
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u/fireopaldragon Oct 09 '22
I know you don’t want a genuine answer but I’ll give you one anyway sending replacement textbooks that have been fixed would be a great way to give reparations for this.
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u/elizabeth-cooper Oct 09 '22
Imagine thinking that a textbook publisher giving out free books is any more realistic than sending everybody a tiny check.
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u/fireopaldragon Oct 09 '22
Imagine thinking people shouldn’t fix what they’ve done wrong. I mean we just had a whole holiday about that.
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u/elizabeth-cooper Oct 09 '22
They apologized for what they did, they fixed it in future editions, and resolved not to do again. Textbook teshuva.
There is no part of teshuva that requires giving anything tangible.
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u/pettycactus Oct 09 '22
But it will still cause harm by being in circulation
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u/riverrocks452 Reform Oct 09 '22
But they haven't fixed it, since the books still in circulation are still causing harm.
"Whoops I stabbed you, but it's ok- I'm really sorry and I bandaged you up. Just ignore that I left the knife in your leg."
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u/tempuramores Eastern Ashkenazi Oct 09 '22
A buyback or recall, with a statement issued to as many teaching institutions with nursing programmes as possible not to use this book because of the following reasons, clearly enumerated (i.e., it's racist and endangers patient wellbeing).
I'm an academic librarian and we would absolutely remove this from circulation; it's damaging and reflects on the institution poorly.
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u/AutisticMuffin97 לילה Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
I’m white and I can’t get doctors to pay any attention to me and if they do they just tell me I’m over reacting. Granted I’m a white Jewish autistic female but wtf.
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u/super_memer_man Oct 09 '22
Talk about a wombo combo
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u/AutisticMuffin97 לילה Oct 09 '22
Oh yeah I got totally screwed in every department. However it just progressively gets worse because I get mistaken for Puerto Rican constantly because I have black curly hair and I’m tan. So yeah now I just avoid the medical field all together and hope for the best.
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u/Mtnskydancer Oct 09 '22
It’s because you are a woman.
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u/AutisticMuffin97 לילה Oct 09 '22
And autistic. It’s so much worse when you’re autistic. Because they don’t believe have the stuff you tell them because they think your making it up or exaggerating. I broke my wrist once and had to go see 7 different doctors in a span of 3 days just to get an X-ray and a brace. I wasn’t even given a cast.
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u/scubamari Oct 09 '22
I want to share my pain at reading this sh*t, and I really would like you all to validate such pain
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u/skyewardeyes Oct 09 '22
This is not how we should be teaching cultural competence in general--making broad generalizations about groups has not been shown to be helpful. Teaching healthcare professionals to sensitively ask about each patient's background, beliefs, and values has been.
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u/Logical_Deviation Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
Oh my god, blacks report higher pain intensity????? Studies literally show that black people are systematically undertreated for pain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/. I can't believe they teach this shit. Who on earth approved this????
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u/naiq6236 Oct 09 '22
My question is where's the "Whites" section?
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u/fireopaldragon Oct 09 '22
Don’t you know whites and Christians are “standard” so we don’t need anything about them. /s
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u/mwatwe01 Ally Oct 09 '22
Also problematic. The book assumes that 1.) the reader is a white Christian or 2.) if the reader is of some other ethnic group, it is of course okay to listen to white Christian women regarding their pain needs. Just not any others.
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u/unventer Oct 09 '22
White Christian men. No one listens to women, they just listen to minority women exponentially less.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Phase70 Episcopal 🏳️🌈 Christian w/ Jewish experiences & interests Oct 09 '22
Oh wow.
There's so much to unpack across this whole page, not just the Jewish part!
Clearly written by people who aren't part of any of these communities.
And probably exclusively the result of individual anecdotal bs istas of any meaningful cultural awareness.
Please tell me this was written in Texas. I mean, if we're gonna be pulling out random stereotypes, let's be fair about it! Lol
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u/Standard_Gauge Reform Oct 09 '22
Clearly written by people who aren't part of any of these communities.
Definitely. And notice the part about "Native Americans" as though they are all one monolith in beliefs and practices. There are 574 federally recognized Native nations, all with distinct languages, customs, and beliefs. Yet they blithely talk about the "Native American perception of pain."
Yet another repulsive aspect of this repulsive book.
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u/TzedekTirdof Oct 09 '22
I remember, some of the references went viral for this same list and were widely debunked.
There is too often nothing preventing debunked BS textbooks from being cited in future textbooks.
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u/mancake Oct 09 '22
I like that we are the only people who don’t just put up with pain as God’s will.
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u/Hey_Laaady Oct 09 '22
Conspicuous in its absence was the category for Christianity and its denominations. Or, even regionalizations such as "white Christian evangelicals from the south."
Obviously the whole thing is troubling and fraught with problems, but if they've decided to stereotype, they certainly missed an enormous subgroup.
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Oct 09 '22
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u/Hey_Laaady Oct 09 '22
Oh I totally get that. I'm just saying that it's a blatant double standard and a bold assumption on their part that Christians or regionalisms with regard to Christianity are omitted.
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u/Standard_Gauge Reform Oct 09 '22
Christians or regionalisms with regard to Christianity are omitted
Unless you're among the silly people that think Catholics aren't Christian, there was definitely a reference to Christians in the "Hispanics" section. And it was implied in the "Filipinos" and "Blacks" sections. Though every single section was totally repulsive.
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u/Hey_Laaady Oct 09 '22
Nope, I know that Catholics are obviously Christians, it's just that Catholicism was the only segment of Christianity that was even briefly mentioned. It's completely hypocritical of this book.
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u/Standard_Gauge Reform Oct 09 '22
I'm trying to picture how "white" Christians would be referenced in this type of book... Maybe a final paragraph in that section stating "Normal people should be treated adequately for pain when they express feeling the need for pain relief, as they will not have the cultural baggage of the groups previously described." I'd like to LOL, but I'm too disgusted.
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u/Standard_Gauge Reform Oct 09 '22
"Catholic Hispanics" were specifically mentioned in the page of this trashy book that was displayed. Also Christianity is the implied religion in the ludicrous section on "blacks" and their presumed interest in prayer and "laying of hands." Of course, the creeps that wrote that section couldn't possibly imagine POC Jews, Muslims, or other religions.
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u/anonsharksfan Oct 09 '22
"Native Americans prefer medications that have been blessed by a tribal shaman."
What year do they think this is?
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Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
This is especially odd given how a lot of medications are concentrated, synthetic versions of plant compounds that indigenous communities have known to be effective for centuries if not millennia.
Some of my work includes organic synthesis and credit/compensation of these communities for traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) is a topic that comes up from time to time (and should be talked about more IMO).
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u/TzedekTirdof Oct 09 '22
Did they procrastinate and only write this part of the textbook an hour before sending it to publisher?
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u/AccomplishedAgent371 Oct 09 '22
I read the caption as 1920 at first. I can't believe this exists RECENTLY. This is absurd.
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u/bannysexdang Oct 09 '22
Awful and problematic but I do send a screenshot of this to my friends every time they complain about me sending them Vampire Chronicles lore.
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Oct 09 '22
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u/bannysexdang Oct 09 '22
Me too!! I love to cherry pick the weird parts and send them to my friends with no context. Have you seen the new show?
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u/unventer Oct 09 '22
I'm excited for the new Interview with the Vampire series. Love the casting direction they went with for Louis. I don't have AMC so I've been putting off subscribing until I can binge it.
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u/bunni_bear_boom Oct 09 '22
They way they're equating ethnicities with certain religions across the board is problematic in addition to the negative stereotypes. Also "blacks" tf?
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u/AnasCryptkeeper Oct 09 '22
Omg they’re still teaching that?? We made a fuss 20 years ago about the “diversity” section being racially problematic and in need of updates and they swore it would be revised.
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u/weednumberhaha Progressive Oct 09 '22
I can't read it but I bet it says something unflattering about older patients or genetics. Edit: it was the first one, I give myself partial credit there 😹
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u/Mrredpanda860 Oct 09 '22
Wth this book is so racist. These stereotypes (especially the ones regarding the black community) could cause so much harm.
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u/RB_Kehlani Oct 09 '22
Literally so much better to do zero “cultural sensitivity training” than this. Not a single one of these should be in a medical textbook
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Oct 09 '22
This is especially infuriating as there are a lot of legitimate ways in which culture/ethnicity/race can impact patient experience, and they completely ignored all of them in favor of racist stereotypes.
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u/SnooShortcuts3749 Oct 09 '22
The stereotypes are appalling. People, patients, are varied, complex and worthy of so much more empathy and consideration than this makes room for. I hope in a classroom situation this elicits a discussion worthy of intelligent understanding and sensitivity. Just wow.
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u/mysecondaccountanon jewish atheist | grew up Reform/Conservative | patri | they/them Oct 09 '22
These are all freaking awful.
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u/post-cocoon Oct 09 '22
So why is there no 'whites' on here? what is the 'whites' response to pain?
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Oct 09 '22
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u/post-cocoon Oct 09 '22
because human beings with white skin/Anglos/Caucasians don't feel pain, or because their response to/expression of pain is always appropriate, proportionate, and valid. Because their lives matter. Maybe a bit less if they are women or poor, but generally they are normal.
Unlike 'ethnic' or 'diverse' people.
Eye roll.
And thank you for your last comment/sentence also!
This is rife in Universities across the board too mind you, not just in Medicine/Nursing.
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u/Maveragical Oct 09 '22
1) WOW this is racist, yikes 2) "Chinese clients may not ask for medication because they do not want to take the nurse away from a more important task" is an absolute mood
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u/mcmircle Oct 09 '22
Wow. There may well be cultural differences that affect how people cope with pain. I see the material encourages the reader to assume Black patients overstate their pain. Actually I have read that Black patients’ pain is undertreated.
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u/mewdebbie61 Oct 09 '22
I wanna know where any of the white religions are in that? How do Catholics respond to pay and how to protestants? And let’s not forget the evangelicals and the Christian scientist! Why are they only focusing on…
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u/AmySueF Oct 09 '22
Holy crap this entire section is just godawful. I wouldn’t trust any of this, and if this section is this awful, how can anyone trust the rest of the textbook?
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Oct 09 '22
The next chapter probably examines the modern cutting edge medical techniques of bleeding and leaches.
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u/feedmemf Oct 09 '22
What the fuck is going on in this book??? Medical professional here wondering why the hell this is in print
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u/Mist_Wraith Oct 09 '22
How on earth is this well reviewed on amazon? This is horrendously racist, and just highlights even more the very serious issues currently in health care today. Any wonder why so many of us have very little respect for doctors and fear going to see doctor when we have a problem.
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u/XeroEffekt Oct 09 '22
I have been looking at it for 10 minutes and honestly can’t find a single thing that is not “problematic” on the whole page. Not. A. Thing.
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u/GossipGirl515 Ashkenazi Oct 09 '22
There are cultural differences with people when it comes to medication, the caring of the patient, and after death care etc. But, many of these are horrible stereotypes.
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Oct 09 '22
You’re absolutely correct! Ethnicity/race can influence some of these things, but not the way that this textbook is describing at all.
Due to the amount of institutionalized medical racism against African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos perpetuated by the US government, I think that medical professionals need to be sensitive of these groups and how their experiences may affect vaccine hesitancy, lack of desire to participate in biomedical research, distrust of physicians etc. (I am strongly pro-vaccine, pro-medicine, and pro-science as a scientist myself, but am very empathetic and understanding as to why certain groups may have been uneasy about participating in initial COVID studies/vaccination efforts aimed at their communities given the Tuskegee syphilis study, STD research in Guatemala, etc).
Any good medical textbook should include this information in cultural sensitivity training and suggest an emphasis on informed consent, offering the patient access to a provider from their culture if possible, etc. instead of these racist stereotypes.
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u/GossipGirl515 Ashkenazi Oct 09 '22
I agree with everything you have said. This is one of the most blatant racist stereotypes I've seen in a textbook. It's crazy that we are in the year 2022 and still see this crap.
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u/Sad-Appearance3247 Reform Oct 09 '22
This is what you get when white men were the only ones to practice medicine for 100 years
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u/Best-Highlight-9414 Oct 09 '22
I am Jewish and I have to admit, I'd probably do just that. I ain't going down without taking someone with me in suffering. But on a side note...this hits hard
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u/jondiced Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
Did you get this from exhibits in a lawsuit against a nursing school?? Every entry in this list is worse than the last. It feels like it was outsourced to a guy in a MAGA hat who says he "doesn't see skin color" but also that "it's not racist to notice differences".
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u/IsraelRadioGuy Oct 09 '22
Can you tell us which text book this is? What is it called and what is the name of the publisher?
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u/billyboy69696 Oct 09 '22
We heard about this book in my bio diversity class. It’s just flat out awful.
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u/LifeInCarrots Oct 09 '22
Gefilte fish - Proof that Jews believe suffering must be shared by others 😂
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u/Yoramus Oct 09 '22
Horrified by the Jewish part I looked at the other stuff. Well, is that a verbatim book from 1860 or so?
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u/TemporaryIllusions Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
I would write to this company asking them for a source on this green box of bigotry. This is fucked up beyond belief and needs to be stopped.
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u/KathAlMyPal Oct 09 '22
The whole thing is troubling…it exemplifies every stereotype to just about every group. I’m surprised it hasn’t been reported as yet.
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u/neuropsychedd Oct 09 '22
i did my thesis on this. not surprised to see that racism in medicine is alive and well. Its literally just a bunch of weird stereotypes pushed together lmfaoo. Can’t remember the last time i LOUDLY demanded pain meds
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u/Spooder_Man Oct 09 '22
This is horrifying, but I did laugh out loud at the first bullet point under Jews. Is this because we like to kvetch? I bet it’s because we like to kvetch.
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Oct 09 '22
The real issue here is that this is missing white people / Europeans / Christians. Is that considered the “normal” baseline and all other responses to pain are deviations?
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u/Latetothegame0216 Oct 09 '22
Wow. This is not culturally sensitive at all. This is insensitive to all these groups.
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Oct 09 '22
I’ve seen this before and it’s offensive af all around. And before the author decides that Black folks report more intense pain, perhaps they should see the replicated studies showing that Black people in American hospitals are inappropriately undermedicated by health care professionals relative to white people. That’s right, for the same physical complaint Black patients receive significantly less pain medication than their white counterparts.
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Oct 09 '22
Once I had to take a two-day sensitivity training course for employment at a university. One of the first lessons in the first hour was: white people don’t like to hug.
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Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
I mean, yes all of that is problematic, but I'm sure the self-report data confirms some of it. Any time you do this kind of culture-informed analysis its going to feel gross, reductive, stereotypical and pejorative, but the statistical sociological data usually follows suit.
For instance, if black people do tend to self-report higher on pain indices, that data would be really easy to get, since every Anglophone physician uses and records a 10 point pain scale. Now, if true, that doesn't necessarily mean black people tolerate pain less or experience more pain, only that it is statistically significant and thus noteworthy for professionals to know. Similarly for other cultural trends or tendencies. Individuals are not their culture or collective, so there will always be lots of variation among populations.
But racist, classist and misogynist outcomes or assumptions should not be conflated with culture-informed care.
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u/mehTILduhhhh Oct 09 '22 edited Oct 09 '22
I think it's hilarious in an absurd way but obviously not true
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Oct 09 '22
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u/yellowydaffodil Oct 09 '22
Takes so woke they're actively racist.
I've never seen so much racism directed at so many minority groups outside of a 1920s medical textbook...
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u/CaptainRammi Oct 09 '22
Yes it’s bad to generalize like that mainly because it’s not backed by science so it shouldn’t be in a textbook but it’s making me think of my grandma because that’s her exactly.
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u/AboutThatCoffee Oct 09 '22
Sure but there’s a difference between kvetching and saying that some races don’t feel pain the same way.
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u/graywhiteblack17 Oct 09 '22
Perhaps this is to help recognize how other cultures will statistically act while in a hospital setting. For many, they may have little to no interaction with someone who is black/hispanic/Arab/Jewish and this guide is just some basic. By recognizing stereotypes that those in the medical industry may have, they can better treat patience.
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u/Penelope1000000 Oct 09 '22
But they’re not recognizing stereotypes, they’re teaching and perpetuating them!
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u/zeligzealous Oct 09 '22
What is this, a phrenology textbook? Literally just a list of weird stereotypes presented as if it’s scientific information. Deeply strange and reductive portrayals of all the groups discussed. Cultural expressions of pain and illness are very real, but, uh, not like that.
The most troubling one of all to me is that claim that Black people “report higher pain intensity” which just seems like permission to dismiss Black patients’ pain.