Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Family Medicine, Umeå University, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden; Umeå Centre for Gender Studies, Umeå University, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden.
Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, Family Medicine, Umeå University, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden.
Soc Sci Med. 2021 Feb;270:113678. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113678. Epub 2021 Jan 2.
The aim of this study was to explore and analyze how cultural/ethnic minority students at a Swedish medical school perceive and make sense of educational experiences they viewed as related to their minority position. We interviewed 18 medical students (10 women, and 8 men), who self-identified as coming from minority backgrounds. Data were collected and analyzed simultaneously, inspired by constructivist grounded theory methodology. The concepts 'everyday racism' and 'racial microaggressions' served as a theoretical framework for understanding how inequities were experienced and understood. Participants described regularly encountering subtle adverse treatment from supervisors, peers, staff, and patients. Lack of support from bystanders was a common dimension of their stories. These experiences marked interviewees' status as 'Other' and made them feel less worthy as medical students. Interviewees struggled to make sense of being downgraded, excluded, and discerned as different, but seldom used terms like being a victim of discrimination or racism. Instead, they found other explanations by individualizing, renaming, and relativizing their experiences. Our results indicate that racialized minority medical students encounter repeated practices that, either intentionally or inadvertently, convey disregard and sometimes contempt based on ideas about racial and/or cultural 'Otherness'. However, most hesitated to name the behaviors and comments experienced as "discriminatory" or "racist", likely because of prevailing ideas about Sweden and, in particular, medical school as exempt from racism, and beliefs that racial discrimination can only be intentional. To counteract this educational climate of exclusion medical school leadership should provide supervisors, students, and staff with theoretical concepts for understanding discrimination and racism, encourage them to engage in critical self-reflection on their roles in racist power relations, and offer training for bystanders to become allies to victims of racism.
本研究旨在探讨和分析瑞典医学院少数民族/少数族裔学生如何感知和理解他们认为与自身少数族裔身份相关的教育经历。我们采访了 18 名医学生（10 名女性，8 名男性），他们自认为来自少数族裔背景。数据的收集和分析是同时进行的，灵感来自建构主义扎根理论方法。“日常种族主义”和“种族微侵犯”这两个概念作为理解不平等经历和理解的理论框架。参与者描述了经常从导师、同学、工作人员和患者那里遇到微妙的负面对待。旁观者缺乏支持是他们故事的一个共同维度。这些经历标志着受访者作为“他者”的地位，并使他们作为医学生的价值感降低。受访者努力理解自己被降级、被排斥和被视为不同的原因，但很少使用歧视或种族主义受害者等术语。相反，他们通过将自己的经历个体化、重新命名和相对化来寻找其他解释。我们的研究结果表明，少数族裔医学生经常遇到一些有意或无意的行为，这些行为传达了对种族和/或文化“他者”的轻视，甚至有时是轻蔑，尽管这些行为可能被认为是歧视或种族主义的。然而，大多数人都不愿意将他们所经历的行为和言论称为“歧视性”或“种族主义”，这可能是因为他们普遍认为瑞典，尤其是医学院，免受种族主义的影响，并且认为种族歧视只能是有意为之。为了改变这种排斥性的教育氛围，医学院领导应该为导师、学生和工作人员提供理解歧视和种族主义的理论概念，鼓励他们对自己在种族权力关系中的角色进行批判性反思，并为旁观者提供培训，使他们成为种族主义受害者的盟友。
