Eugenic Consequences: Evaluating Black Hardiness' Influence on the Black Patient

Abstract: The ideology that black patients can endure a higher pain tolerance, possess tougher skin, or exaggerate illness symptoms still exists in medicine and healthcare practices. Such rhetoric has led to consistent health inequities and poor outcomes in communities of color. These ideas have spurred from the eugenic perceptions of the black body that produced misappropriations and falsified theories of the anatomy and biology of black patients. The ideologies of the black patient being “lesser than” or “inferior” transferred into the fields of anthropology, anatomy, and biology, creating myths of innate human differences. The understanding that black bodies were innately different produced the term black hardiness, which affirms black patients have the innate capacity to endure or tolerate extreme symptoms, conditions, or illnesses better than their white counterparts. Such ideologies asserted black patients’ skulls were thicker than normal, and had longer limbs and shorter trunks. Black hardiness led to an infatuation with the black patient that created unconscionable harm in the clinical practice. Consequently, the concept of black hardiness created misdiagnoses and medical maleficence toward black patients for centuries. This presentation will examine the origins of black hardiness, review current black hardiness discourse, and provide recommendations on demystifying black bodies through an abolitionist medicine approach.