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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Population and Migration - 7. Population - 5. Controlling the Death Rate
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172 An American Dilemma
way of prevention and cure of disease that the whites can. There is dis-
crimination against the Negro in the availability to him of medical facilities.
It is hard to separate the effects of discrimination from those of con-
centration of Negroes in areas where medical facilities are not easily avail-
able and in those income brackets which do not permit the purchase of
medical facilities in the competitive market. Discrimination increases Negro
sickness and death both directly and indirectly and manifests itself both
consciously and unconsciously. Discrimination is involved when hospitals
will not take in Negro patients; or when—if they do permit Negro patients
—they restrict their numbers, give them the poorest quarters, and refuse
to hire Negro doctors and nurses to attend them.® The number of hospital
beds recently available to Negroes in the South is not known except in
Mississippi (1938)®® where there were 0.7 beds per 1,000 Negroes as com-
pared to 2.4 per 1,000 whites, and in the Carolinas (1938)^® where there
were 1.2 beds per i,0(X) Negroes as compared to 2.1 per 1,000 whites. In
1928 there was available in the United States one hospital bed for each 139
of the white population, but only one hospital bed for each 1,941 of the
colored population. This means that at that time each white inhabitant of
the United States had 14 times as good a chance for proper hospital care
as had the colored citizen.^® The facilities for Negroes are generally of a
much poorer quality than for whites. In 1937 only about 35 per cent of
Southern Negro babies were delivered by a physician, as compared to 90
per cent of Southern white babies and 98 per cent of Northern white and
Negro babies.*** In the whole United States in 1930 there were only about
3,805 Negro doctors, 5,728 Negro nurses, and 1,773 Negro dentists, and a
disproportionate number of these were employed in the North.^“ It is
true, of course, that Negroes cannot afford doctors and hospitals to the
same extent as whites, but that does not eliminate the fact of discrimination.
Discrimination manifesting itself against the Negro’s health is indirect
as well as direct, and fits into the pattern of the vicious circle. Inadequate
education for Negroes, partly due to economic inability to keep young
people in schools and partly due to inferior schools for Negroes in the
South, not only prevents the training of Negro medical experts, but also
keeps knowledge about sanitation and health in the general population at
an extremely low level. Magical and superstitious practices continue in an
unenlightened Negro population,^^ and customary patterns of behavior
dangerous to health are brought from the South to the North. Ill health
reduces the chances of economic advancement, which in turn operates to
* For a summary of the facts on health facilities and medical care for Negroes, see
Harold F. Dorn, “The Health of the Negro,” unpublished manuscript prepared for this
study (1940), pp. 94a- 11 4b and 131-208. Efforts by the government and private organiza-
tions to improve health conditions among Negroes will be taken up in Chapter 15, Section 4.
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