"A lot of people ask why there's still aren't enough black doctors in America. And the answer is not just well, more black students need to apply. I think it's deeper than that. Because more than a century ago, the black doctor pipeline took a major hit. In 1910, Abraham Flechner published a report on medical education in the U.S. and Canada. And here's something that a lot of people don't realize about Flechner. Flechner was not a doctor. He was an educator. But his report helped reshape medical education across the country. Now, to be fair, the report did push medicine to a higher standard. So I want to be fair about that. So better training and better labs and more science and more hospital-based education. But those standards require money for things like buildings and labs and hospital access and faculty and funding. And black medical schools were already trying to survive in a country with segregated education and segregated hospitals and limited access to money. So when the system raised the bar, it didn't give black institutions the same support to reach that bar. So race was absolutely part of this. And the report carried racist assumptions about what black doctors should even be trained to do. They weren't even imagined as full leaders in medicine. And they were being boxed into these limited roles. And so after the report, several black medical schools closed. And from that group of historically black medical schools, only Howard and Meharry survived. And when a medical school closes, you don't just lose the building. You lose the future doctors and the mentors and the researchers. You lose people who may have gone back home and cared for communities that other people ignored. Like one study estimated that if five of those closed black medical schools had survived and grown, they could have trained more than 35,000 additional graduates by 2019. So we aren't talking small numbers. We're talking generations. And we still feel that today because medical representation still affects trust. Like who's in the room and who's explaining a diagnosis and who understands why a family member might be hesitant and who really knows what it feels like when pain get dismissed. Now, black doctors are not the only doctors that can care for black patients. I'm not saying that. Of course not. But I still think the representation makes a difference. And if you cut down on the schools that were producing black doctors, you can't act surprised 100 years later when the numbers are still low. So yes, American medical education became more standardized but black medical education paid a heavy price. And the lesson is not just about the past. It's about what we're funding now and what we're protecting now. Because a pipeline doesn't just disappear overnight. It disappears when the institutions feeding it are cut off. And if we want more black doctors in the future, we have to stop acting like representation starts at the medical school application because it starts much earlier. It starts in schools with things like career day and mentorship and money and exposure to the medical professions and admissions and support from the overall community. And institutions that are actually given what they need to survive will be the ones that thrive and produce black doctors. Thank you for listening. Please like and share these videos. I really appreciate the support. Peace."