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A white doctor is catching heat on TikTok for singling out Black patients for being on the phone while at the doctor's office.
An emergency room doctor, identified as Dr. J Mack on TikTok, initially posted a video on the platform trying to figure out why a "significant amount of my African American patients" have someone on the phone while he is performing physicals or asking about their medical history.
"A large percentage of my African American patients have someone that's there in the room even though they're not there in the room," Dr. J Mack said in the video.
"Why is that when I myself, not speaking for an entire race or ethnicity have a doctor come in, I hang up my phone," he questioned.
Another TikTok doctor, identified as Dr. Kali, responded to the video, condemning her colleague for making a "sweeping generalization" about Black people and their behavior.
Dr. Kali urged Dr. J Mack to talk to directly to his Black patients and research how medical trauma and racism impacts them. In a follow-up video, Dr. Kali clarified that she wasn't trying to "cancel" the white doctor but was simply holding him accountable and inviting him to do anti-racism work.
Dr. J Mack later posted an apology for posing the question in his initial video.
TikTok users flooded the comment sections of the videos with their experiences from prior medical encounters.
"Maybe we on the phone because we don’t trust the situation and we need someone else to hear us and know what’s going on in case anything happens," one user wrote.
"Simply because we’re scared. The person on the phone with us is our advocate. Our pain is usually overlooked, so we keep someone we love on the phone so they can hear how the interaction goes," another chimed in.
"Isn't the answer to his question in every medical ethics class? Theyre not skipping hela or Tuskegee right!?" a third user said.
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