Across Asian American groups, medical students reported experiencing racism frequently and said their schools did little to stop it.Throughout his career in medicine, David Yang, 32, says he’s acutely felt the impacts of his race. A Chinese American emergency medicine fellow at the Yale School of Medicine, Yang said he’s had slurs hurled at him by patients, faced racist comments tying him to Covid, and has been confused with his Asian colleagues.
A Pakistani American medical student who was surveyed told Yang that an attending physician in charge of him once made an Islamophobic joke at his expense in front of patients, saying, “He’s gonna get his buddies from the Taliban to come after you.” For those surveyed, the discrimination has been overt. One Filipino American med student said a patient’s parent once complained, “I don’t want that [Asian] nurse taking care of my child because I don’t want my kid to get coronavirus.”
Compounding the pain inflicted is a lack of support structures for Asian medical students, Yang found. Many surveyed said they didn’t know where to turn for help or were shut down when they expressed concern to their school’s officials. “I don’t know what it means to have this part of my identity supported,” a participant said.