4 ms·
America’s First Black Physician (2021)
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
- tootallgavin 4y agoThe short answer is no. The long answer is the whole of history
- eynsham 4y agoIs there anything specific you have in mind that Smith had which ‘modern race activists’ don’t? Smith certainly seems extraordinary but that Douglass remark seems to be (at least in isolation) rather unclear—what sort of ‘understanding’ is meant here? And presumably Smith stood out amongst his contemporaries too, so neither ‘modern race activists’ nor nineteenth-century ‘race’ (or other) activists would in general be as talented as he was.
- bglazer 4y agoCan you explain what you mean with this rhetorical question?
- jrm4 4y agoProbably not, and taking your rhetorical question in its best possible light, the difficulty in learning the history of activism as it pertains to black folks is far harder than I think most take it to be. You're not just fighting "whatever is causing people to be less interested in history," you're additionally fighting the part of white supremacy that has consistently and actively pushed confusion and misinformation.
- jrm4 4y ago:) :) :) the path to the above being a "one point comment" has been interesting
- bergenty 4y agoYes.
- jakeinspace 4y agoI’m not sure that a deep understanding of slavery and freedom on that level is possible for those of us fortunate enough to be born in a time and place without widespread open slavery. I’m not sure why an activist today needs to be an expert on that subject in the same way, unless you’re talking about historians or other academics.
- malshe 4y agoTruly inspiring! The author Bryan Greene has done a great job of writing this article in a gripping narrative. I am curious whether there are any courses where I can learn this writing style. My writing is academic and quite dry, which I hate.
- amelius 4y agoJust use "my boring writing in the style of Greene" as a prompt to GPT-3.
- poorbutdebtfree 4y ago
- uncletaco 4y ago> Thomas Clarence At least they write his name in the right order.
- oldgradstudent 4y ago> The moment he stepped back on U.S. soil, he delivered a lecture titled “The Fallacy of Phrenology,” where he attacked the notion that head shape and size dictates the relative intelligence of different racial groups. But what if phrenology was based on machine learning? https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.04135v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.04135v1 > Also, we find some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle. /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- uncletaco 4y agoInteresting how most top level comments to this are using it as a jumping off point for various axes they have to grind ranging from the theoretical to the personal. But honestly it's to be expected in a positive article that didn't really leave room open to say anything negative about the subject. I find it incredibly sad that he died at such a young age after his life's work was literally burned to the ground in a riot and before news could reach him of emancipation. For all of his accomplishments its really tragic that he did not live to see more of his work bear some fruit.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- HillRat 4y agoAll I’ll add is that Smith was more “America’s first formally-credentialed Black physician,” since most physicians (in America, at least) didn’t attend medical school at the time; instead, medical schools were seen as an advanced education for tenured medical professionals, which made Smith’s accomplishments all the most striking, I think. Douglass’ publishing partner Martin Delany, for example, was practicing as a physician in Boston in or around 1830 (IIRC), after having apprenticed under physicians. He would later enroll as one of the first Black doctors at Harvard Medical School, but racism amongst students and professors meant all Black students were expelled before he could graduate, which led to his career as a firebrand abolitionist.