Rooted in Enslavement: History of American Medicine & the Exploitation of the Black Body

SPEAKER EVENT: Rooted in Enslavement: How American Medicine Was Built on the Oppression, Experimentation and Commodification of the Black Body

Date And Time: Thursday, February 13, 2020 @ 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM

Location: UCSF Mission Hall Room 1407, 550 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94158

Cost: FREE

SPEAKER: Dante King
Executive Leader of Diversity, Culture, Equity and Employee Experience for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) (https://www.danteking.com/)

The Black body has been exploited as a tool by others since the first enslaved Africans were brought to the shores of Virginia in 1619. Many industries such as cotton, sugar cane and tobacco were built on the backs of Black people to create the wealth inequality that we see today.

What is seldom discussed is the many ways in which the fields of healthcare and medicine were also developed and continue to flourish under the same systems of enslavement and Jim Crow.

Dante King, a Bay Area expert in the advancement of equity, inclusion, and equality, will discuss the history and experiences of the enslaved and their descendants, and how the Medical Industrial Complex owes its development, foundation, and success to the experimentation and commodification of Black bodies.