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For Your Learning Friday: Understanding the South’s complex legacy

  • 1.  For Your Learning Friday: Understanding the South’s complex legacy

    Posted 12-02-2022 07:56:00 AM

    If you just returned from the AAMC annual meeting in Nashville, or if you are among the 1/3 of the population that lives in the southern part of our country, you know that “the South” is known for its charm, its hospitality, and its complex legacy of racism and resistance. 

    Author Imani Perry, JD, PhD, examines these issues in her book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. As a Black woman from Alabama, she suggests that the region’s reputation for being out-of-step with the rest of the country is undeserved and inaccurately absolves the rest of the country from its own racism. 

    Perry, who spoke at Learn Serve Lead, talked with Bridget Balch of AAMCNews about her book and why the South’s legacy is relevant to health care today: Read More.

    Perry provides a great summary of her book—in 6 minutes—in this PBS News Hour interview.

    We just wrapped up one of the other annual meeting books in our first virtual book club (The Power of Us) and are looking for suggestions for our next book discussion.  Have you read her book? Are you interested in attending a deeper discussion around the book? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit “reply” to this discussion and let the community know what you think.



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    Penny Schnarrs she/her
    Director of Community Relations and Strategy
    Association of American Medical Colleges
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  • 2.  RE: For Your Learning Friday: Understanding the South’s complex legacy

    Posted 12-16-2022 11:49:00 AM
    The #AAMC22 plenary session, “Facing the Truth that the South Defines America” with Dr. Imani Perry reminded me of this article from last year. When medical residents learned about the legacy of structural racism through a five-day trip to the American South, they connected our nation’s history to current health inequities. Here’s more from the Academic Medicine Journal about the importance of including cultural humility, critical pedagogy, and authentic dialogue in the medical curriculum.

    How are you integrating history into your medical curricula?



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    David Skorton
    President and CEO
    Association of American Medical Colleges
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