This isn't really an argument I want to wade into. But I just wanted to point out that there is a well-established racial divide in post-surgical mortality risk in the US, based on peer-reviewed studies [1] [2]. Hoping that may change your mind about the "casual racism" of the quoted comment, which looks perfectly reasonable to me.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1448914/ ("Black patients have higher operative mortality risks across a wide range of surgical procedures, in large part because of higher mortality rates at the hospitals they attend.")

[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/401... ("Race and insurance status each independently predicts outcome disparities after trauma. African American, Hispanic, and uninsured patients have worse outcomes.")

I have yet to find a study that accounts for confounding variables like hospital mortality rate, key biomarkers (blacks have a greater incidence of diabetes, for example), insurance status, financial standing, doctor ranking, educational level, patient compliance, etc., to arrive at a statistically significant conclusion there is a racial element in healthcare delivery outcomes. The examples you gave would feed into such a study, but are still not teasing out the complex socioeconomic factors that already plague blacks (which are another ball of wax to unwind for causes). Don’t have a dog in this fight either way; want to see more big data-driven analysis of policy questions now that it is more practical to do so.

Really disappointed to see this comment. If you think you're a victim of racism and you say so, that's "casual racism"? Think again.

If the hospital staff are white and I conjecture that they rendered substandard service to a non-white patient because they're racist, I'm calling them racist due to their race. If you think that isn't racism, think again.

That's not what happened here.

They are calling them racist due to what they perceive as racist behaviour, not because they are white.

Racism involves believing that your race is superior to another race, which you believe to be inferior.

Expressing the belief that a person of another race would be treated better than you does not involve a belief in the inferiority of the other race or the superiority of your own, so is not racist.

It may not be racism, but it's still a largely-unsubstantiated accusation of racism designed to elicit support for their cause.

This story hits very close to home for me. I had my tonsils and adenoids removed 37 years ago at the same hospital in Oakland. Waking up from the surgery is still one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I was strapped to my bed in the recovery room because they feared 3-year-old me would remove his IV. I tried to make a noise, but my throat was so swollen and in such pain that I couldn't vocalize. I lay there in agony for over 2 hours before a nurse realized I was awake. They sent me home a day later despite the fact that I couldn't swallow food beyond a couple of spoonfuls of ice cream. My mom had to take me back to the emergency room a week later to get an IV because I was basically starving.

All-in-all, I also feel I got substandard care there. And while 3-year-old me and the girl in the article likely shared some things in common--I'm guessing we both came from somewhat poor families with insufficient health coverage--race isn't one of those things.

So as a white person who went through a not-nearly-as-terrible-but-still-pretty-terrible version of what they went through, I think it's important that we acknowledge that the hospital may have had completely different reasons for supplying substandard care and that jumping straight to race as a root cause isn't constructive.

Usually either dumb reasons like "we thought so" - someone's incompetence that would be highly inconvenient to uncover, not to mention expensive in terms of lawsuits - or purely cost driven reasons.

It could be racist, for example if you believe you will get worse care because you believe the (some race) medical staff are inherently racist to your race.

If they expressed a belief that people of other races were inherently racist, then that would be a negative stereotype of that race and would be racist.

But no such belief was expressed in the article. They only said "No one was listening to us, and I can’t prove it, but I really feel in my heart: if Jahi was a little white girl, I feel we would have gotten a little more help and attention."

There's nothing in that statement expressing a view that the hospital staff was inherently racist because of the hospital staff's race.

What did they mean here then: "if Jahi was a little white girl, I feel we would have gotten a little more help and attention."

"White girl" seems to be a differentiating factor in their opinion, does whiteness not have anything to do with racism?

But she probably doesn't feel this way because of a history of patient care related discrimination. She feels like this because of pervasive racism at all levels of society, e.g. news coverage of kidnapped little white children vs minority children. Although in this case she may be wrong, I don't think we should sweep the far-reaching effects of endemic racism under the rug.

The McMath family are (as far as I can see) not biostatisticians. The author's belief may or may not be accurate, but it is based on their experience in life. By your comment's reasoning, You are as "casually racist" as they are if you do not gather the statistics that you instruct the author to gather.

"Casual racism" is what the author perceives based on living their life and observing their surroundings; it is not their giving voice to their interpretation.

A couple jobs ago, my black coworker shared with me something along the lines of:

>Racism will make you crazy, man. (boss name) will walk into the room and shake everyone's hand, but not yours, and he's already walking out and so you're thinking "did he skip me on purpose cause he's racist? Maybe he just didn't see me cause I'm tucked back in here in the corner? Why am I tucked back here in the corner, anyway?" You're at starbucks and the barista shoots you a weird look - is it cause she hates black people? Maybe she just had some shit in her eye or maybe you're just imagining it.

He told me that while everyone knows racism is still alive, as a black man he's caught between detecting real racism and being an alarmist playing "the race card." It's an impossible fight, it "made him crazy."

I believe some women have similar feelings, but I have no way of knowing how true this is. It seems reasonable and semi-justified all things considered.

First of all, it isn't racism to believe that someone of another race would be treated better. Secondly, that family has no doubt dealt with a ton of racism in their lives, it certainly wouldn't be without precedent.

Very weird to call that statement casual racism, even from a purely grammatical standpoint.

I don’t know that “racism” is the right word to describe that, and in fairness you’re not going to capture its incidence in hospitals by gathering the mortality statistics for this particular surgery.

On the other hand, I do think that much of the racial tension described in this article can be more charitably attributed to, for lack of a better word, a bad hospital. The quality of care this family experienced is one of the reasons I (speaking as a white guy) won’t go to certain hospitals in my area unless it’s an emergency. In fact, most recently a relative of mine broke her femur and I was asking the EMTs if we could choose the hospital (we couldn’t, which is probably better for society, but unfortunate for my family).

On a broader note I dislike the New Yorker setting this article up to be about the medical concept of death in the headline, then making it a story of racial tension in medical treatment. The story explicitly mentions the races and professions of various people involved, even going so far as to refer to a sympathetic staff member as African American.

I was interested in reading a new perspective about brain death, but this just seems to be trying to develop a story.