Throughout my early medical education in the Deep South, race was ever-present, shaping the way we were taught to diagnose, treat, and even perceive human beings. It wasn't just a footnote; it was the lead. At medical schools across the country, we were trained to introduce patients starting with their race: "An 82-year-old Black female presents with…" as if the race descriptor was a biological diagnostic tool in itself.

Our lecture slides often oversimplified the complexity of human life into neat, racialized boxes. Clinical "risk factors" were organized by skin color, and certain diseases were described as if they only belonged to specific groups. The reality was that the actual forces shaping risk, often a person's zip code, the air they breathed, or the structural barriers to resources, were often left out of the conversation. At the time, I didn't have the real understanding and confidence to push back. Race was presented to us as an objective, biological truth rather than the sociopolitical construct it is and has always been.