The Bodies Keep Coming: Dr. Williams' Insight on Gun Violence and Health Inequity

Kelly and JJ tackle the  harsh realities of gun violence, health inequity, and trauma surgery with our extraordinary guest, Dr. Brian Williams. Dr. Williams offers a unique perspective on these gripping matters, drawn from his personal experiences as a trauma surgeon in safety net hospitals. Together we discuss what led to Dr. William's writing his book " The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal" following experiencing the aftermath of a mass shooting, the profound role of racism and public health in the fight against gun violence, and how storytelling breathes life into these multifaceted issues.

Further reading:
After A Mass Shooting Shook Dallas, Dr. Brian Williams Took a Stand (D Magazine)
Trauma Surgeon Who Treated Dallas Cops: 'This Killing, It Has to Stop' (NBC)
Gun Violence is a Racial Justice Issue (Brady)
 Healing a toxic brew of hate, racism, and gun violence in America (AAMC)

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

This is the legal disclaimer, where I tell you that the views, thoughts and opinion shared on this podcast belong solely to our guests and hosts and not necessarily Brady or Brady's affiliates. Please note this podcast contains discussions of violence that some people may find disturbing. It's okay, we find it disturbing too. Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Red Bull and Brady. I'm one of your hosts, jj.

Speaker 1: 0:46

And I'm Kelly, your other host and, as always, this podcast just keeps introducing me to people who are so good at about 8,000 problems. For example, our guest today, dr Brian Williams, who, in addition to being a husband and a father and a renowned trauma surgeon and advocate, is also now a really good writer.

Speaker 2: 1:05

Yeah, I still you, jj. It's a little unfair. I'm like come on, it's enough to be a renowned trauma surgeon, but then you also have to write a book that is literally a page turner, so well written, about what it's like to be the person, oftentimes, who is tasked with trying to save someone. It's incredible.

Speaker 1: 1:26

And I know personally Kelly had to experience this firsthand. I just kept sending text messages to everyone of look at the sentence. Look at the sentence, because I think that Dr Williams just lays out so beautifully which you now all get to experience on this podcast, as we did. I think it's really easy sometimes to think of gun violence prevention work and not think of the people behind it, particularly doctors, people in white coats. They maybe seem very unapproachable, just so folks not in medicine and I think Dr Williams just really strips all that away and points out the humanness and the complicatedness of what we're doing. We're also offering solutions, which is just really soothing to me. I don't know about you, kelly, but I like answers.

Speaker 2: 2:10

Yes, yes, and for me too, I mean, like you said, this book helped me see the human being, and also for me as someone who thinks a lot about, like race and gun violence, it's such a good job is showing how, if we are going to think of this as a public health issue, which it is, we also think about the ways that public health is intertwined with racism and make sure that we acknowledge that and then also bring that into the solutions. And so I learned a ton reading this, and I would recommend, after you listen to this episode, get the book and read the book, because if you're anything like JJ and me, you will just fly through it and come away learning a lot.

Speaker 3: 2:53

Dr Brian Williams. I am an Air Force Academy graduate trauma surgeon and gun violence prevention advocate.

Speaker 1: 3:00

And so we're discussing a lot, I think, kind of your whole career in life really that you've shared within this book entitled the bodies keep coming. And before we kind of dig into the book itself, which was an amazing read I highly recommend it to all of our listeners I wonder if you can share with us what made you even go okay. Well, now I'm going to write a book. Being a trauma surgeon is not enough of a time sink for me. I need to be a novelist as well.

Speaker 3: 3:24

Yeah, absolutely. I didn't have any initial plans to become an author, but over the course of my career on the front lines of gun violence as a trauma surgeon, but also more front lines of health inequity as someone who chose to work in safety net hospitals, I had seen a lot of injustice and I was pushed to write this book following a tragedy in Dallas the mass shooting of police officers and after that I began to think about my role in the healthcare system but I'm also my role in society and how I can be part of healing of society, and that event was traumatic for me and during my post-traumatic growth. This book was spawned as a result of that.

Speaker 2: 4:05

Definitely want to dig and saddle a bit more, but before we do, could you just define for listeners what a safety net hospital is?

Speaker 3: 4:11

Absolutely so. A safety net hospital these are hospitals that are essentially exists to catch those who fall through the cracks of our healthcare systems. I'm saying systems because they have multiple healthcare systems within this country and generally people think of these hospitals as ones that provide care to those who are uninsured or underinsured, do not have the financial resources to get healthcare. So you predominantly find low income people, racial and ethnic minorities. But let's expand the definition because this also includes hospitals that are in rural areas, where there may not be a lot of healthcare facilities, but they're being the only hospital in the area. That makes them also a safety net. So I just wanted to work at a hospital because I felt nobody were income or you're a station alive. People deserve the best sort of healthcare, so I gravitated toward those types of health systems.

Speaker 1: 5:10

And it seems like you explain it so well in the book this concept of whittling that kind of patients may go through where they're coming in for services. You start with a patient who's in diabetic needs, so he needs some care for his feet. That eventually can lead to an amputation, and then they just sort of disappear off the roster but that if they only had that care in between the times that they show up in the ER they would probably have very different health outcomes. But even if they had other social safety net items like better housing, better food, they probably better transportation, better income, like all of these things would catch. And so is that sort of the situation then that happens at like a social safety net hospital. You're seeing that sort of situation a lot.

Speaker 3: 5:45

Exactly and my feeling was that by the time they get to me it's too late. There is so many areas upstream where we can intervene, not just as healthcare providers, but society can intervene to ensure people can remain healthy and thrive within their communities. So I described this gentleman in the book that came in with the diabetic toe infection. I could take care of that as a surgeon, but still does he have access to insulin and preventative care. So the disease progresses to the point where he has a foot amputation, then a below knee amputation and to the point where eventually I don't know, like I said, he's lost a follow-up but he may have died due to progressive disease. But the real point there is that we need to see how we can work to, how we as a country can intervene far upstream from the healthcare system so that we all can remain healthy and thrive within our homes and our families and our communities, because by the time they get to the hospital, I mean, it's really too late in many ways, especially with gun violence.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Well, and that's. It seemed almost that there's that correlation there with you see, folks who it's a whittling issue too, with folks coming in for gun violence issues, that you know it's particularly, maybe, folks who've been shot multiple times, but also that folks have seen other people get shot first, or folks know if people have gotten shot in their neighborhoods. So there's already been all of these traumatic points before they end up in your operating theater. Is this a theater?

Speaker 3: 7:06

Didn't go to medical school, it's a operating room, operating room in the US theater in the UK, a RE theater.

Speaker 1: 7:14

We've been consuming a lot of Call the Midwife lately.

Speaker 3: 7:16

It's our comfort show. I don't know what that says.

Speaker 1: 7:19

I don't know. I don't know what that says.

Speaker 2: 7:22

Yeah, and one thing you know when you're writing, you have choices to make as to how you want to enter in, and you could have done this at like a 3000, or 30,000 foot view very clinical, very removed but you chose to be personal and talk about your own feelings. You touched on it already Stories from your family, what was behind your choice to be a little bit more personal and telling this story versus being more like IMA surgeon? I am objective and I am coming at this from on high.

Speaker 3: 7:52

I had grand ambitions for the book itself, which was to really change the way people thought about injustice in this country and what we can do to create justice today, and I do it through the lens of my experience with gun violence. Now, the book began as a memoir. You know deeply personal stories and I felt that storytelling is it breeds connection. Now would be a way to draw you into this world. It's just kind of if I could hook that part of you that is our shared humanity and bring you in, then I can bring you on this journey and then, okay, now that you're here, we're going to address some of the bigger social issues Gun violence prevention, healthcare crisis, racial justice, police brutality all these things I packed in there.

Speaker 3: 8:46

So I want it to be a memoir plus something that when you were done, you saw the world differently and, hopefully, were inspired to do something differently, and that kind of happened in stages. Right, Memoir. Now what? How can I turn this into something that you would use as it's meant to be, hopeful in the end, Like there's hope and healing? How could you use this as a blueprint to do something different with your life?

Speaker 1: 9:11

I appreciated that so much because I felt like, as a reader, I understood how you were, outside of just being like doctor with a capital D, which is very helpful. But then I also think the choices that you made to include people's actual names. So I think of the patient Malik that you referenced several times, both at the beginning and the ending of the book. I think it makes it, even though you do cite you know quite a lot of statistics and realities about gun violence. It's not just numbers, right, there's all. It's always coming back to the people, it's coming back to their mothers, it's coming back to their families and it's coming back to them themselves as they lived before, you know they passed. I think that's really important and vital.

Speaker 3: 9:45

That was really intentional Cause. I didn't want to come across this as if I was. I was lecturing you. I wanted to respect your intelligence as a reader and your ability to connect with strangers whom you may not. You may never see right, so I do have a lot of information in my head.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Cause I'm an academic surgeon, right.

Speaker 3: 10:02

I've been a professor. I've been teaching this for a long time, so I wanted the book to have credibility amongst those in healthcare who would read this book, but also to be accessible for those who did not. So that's what the story telling. I can't. I think it was very important. Could you identify with someone in this book, whether it be me as a narrator, one of the patients or survivors I talked about, or a family member? What could draw you in and then, in that story, interweave these other aspects gun violence and healthcare, injustice and racial justice with statistics and facts, and not be professorial about it. But you learn anyway, despite the fact that it's mainly a base in memoir.

Speaker 1: 10:43

And I think you need those moments of like me deciding that your wife is the coolest person in the world. Kathy Ann, if you're listening, I would love you to step in as therapist cause.

Speaker 1: 10:52

You gave a lot of good advice within this, but so I think that that's really helpful and it keeps. Sometimes it's really hard. I mean, how many episodes have we done now on gun violence to make sure that folks are still interacting with this as the horror reality that it is, but also acknowledging that life is happening simultaneously too and that you can hold kind of multiple things all at once, and so it's really helpful to know, like, what are people doing when they go home at night?

Speaker 3: 11:14

Exactly, and there's really, there's really no book without my wife, but also, for me, no growth without her. You know she's nudging and pushing and at times, you know gentle shoving throughout the book, but you know she's clear, the voice of reason. When I'm having, I put my thoughts on the page and you can decide as a reader is this man rational or not right? I don't try to make a judgment about that, I don't want to manipulate that. I'm like here is what happened and here is how I felt. And she is the voice of reason at various parts of the book and I just want to show that relationship, that we are not all alone and no matter what you may think of me, just based on my credentials and my job title I don't want to come across as infallible or perfect that I have a partner. That was very important for me in the aftermath of this tragedy.

Speaker 2: 12:04

I also think that's just important too, because there's a perception sometimes that gun violence sort of only impacts the person who has been hit and I think to the extent we extend empathy, we may extend it to a family member, but also maybe not the people we're treating. So I think it's important to show that. And one of the other things that you did is you talked about the actual impact of what bullets do to the body and I'm wondering if you could talk about how you decided to do that and sort of why you decided to do that.

Speaker 3: 12:34

Again very intentional.

Speaker 3: 12:36

I wanted to be graphic about what bullets do to the human body, without being gratuitous.

Speaker 3: 12:44

I didn't want and I wanted to respect the in honor of those who suffered gun violence survivors, victims but to let the public know that this is not some abstraction.

Speaker 3: 12:58

These are not just numbers that we tick off every year. People are being impacted and those of us that work in trauma are seeing this all the time. And if you could just have a window into the reality of the human carnage that we're dealing with from gun violence, maybe that would spark some people to action, to do what we can to reduce firearm related deaths and injury, because it's not just the person that was shot or their family members, but in a way, they were all impacted in some way by hearing about these repeated the mass shootings, the homicides, the intimate partner violence. We're all connected in this somehow. So when I described this, I didn't want it to be gross, but I wanted to be like this is the reality of what we're trying to end right now, and I tried to choose imagery that could put you there, even though you don't work in medicine or trauma. That could put you there and you say, oh, this is the reality of folks working in trauma every single day of the year.

Speaker 1: 14:02

I think it's something that comes up a lot, as Brady has been pushing more and more to get into more kind of accurate depictions of not just gun violence but gun violence aftermath in media, right in shown media, because I do think we have. If you don't have any sort of medical background, you do have sort of this like grazing anatomy perception of surgeries being very clean and very neat and very quick and that it's a you know in and out and that surgeons have kind of this magical ability to fix everyone.

Speaker 3: 14:28

Yeah, you know, I nobody forced me into trauma surgery. I went into medicine because I wanted to help people. I wanted to be a healer. In the beginning I didn't know what type of doctor I wanted to be. I saw this in the book. Trauma surgery chose me. I didn't choose it. I enjoyed the adrenaline rush, the fast pace. You make quick decisions. These were just my people.

Speaker 3: 14:54

I kind of felt that sort of camaraderie and over the course of the years, my career, you become more in touch with the human side of this, how families are impacted. When you're telling people over and over and over again strangers that you cannot save their loved one due to gun violence, if that doesn't affect you, then you've lost that part of your humanity. Then you need to find another line of work. And it still bothers me Pronouncing children dead on arrival due to gun violence and really most people don't see this. They don't see that. I wanted you to understand that lives are being impacted long after we clean up the blood from the floor, change our bloodied scrubs, talk to the family, write the death note. The ripple effects of gun violence extend much farther from the hospital after we're done.

Speaker 2: 15:53

That's something certainly to sit with too, and just think about the fact that we're putting so many people, you included, who have hope and skills that you could be using for all sorts of things, but on this preventable manmade epidemic that we deal with, and one of the things that happens sometimes when we talk about anything in this country that disproportionately impacts black and brown people, as you know and you talk about in the book, is that people will say black as a risk factor, and one of the profound things you do is you say, to quote it, race is not a risk factor in chronic diseases, medical errors and life expectancy. It's racism. So could you unpack that?

Speaker 3: 16:32

Yeah. So this is where we're really trying to discuss the structural inequality that puts black people at greater risk for gun violence, healthcare inequity and I was taught when I was in medical school that race is a risk factor for many things. Right, and I understand better that. It's not race, it's racism, and structural racism is at the core of that. So I really wanted to really unpack what structural racism means and how that impacts all of us as a society, because I felt that this is a book that I could write right.

Speaker 3: 17:13

As a black doctor, black trauma surgeon treating young black male gun victims, I see myself in them, see myself in their families, who I'm talking to, and I had a perspective that I felt was missing from the discussion about all this.

Speaker 3: 17:28

So what can I add and talk about? How racism impacts this and that kind of intertwines with our policies, right, our policies that go back generations where black people were intentionally excluded from a lot of the benefits that would have elevated whole communities. And I choose one example. I talk about the GI Bill and how you may have someone in your family that benefited from the GI Bill out of the World War II and how that created an entire middle class of people and intergenerational wealth has passed along. But that was denied to a million black service members who served honorably during World War II. So that was housing assistance, that was education assistance that was given to a lot of folks, except if you were black. Now think about what that means today if those tolders and airmen and sailors were also giving the opportunity to go to college subsidized by the government or by a house subsidized by the government and pass that along to their children. So that is structural racism that has had far reaching impacts across generations.

Speaker 1: 18:32

And I think that that kind of plays in as well with sort of the reforming of language or just kind of the reframing of thinking about things that you bring up in the book a lot. So, for example, it's not a disadvantaged community, it's a community of opportunity, because the opportunities coming from within, the disadvantages are being forced from without. I really did like that reframing, but I wonder if you see that kind of expanding out to kind of on the medical system as a whole too, so kind of again pushing. It's not that race is a risk factor, it's that how people respond to race is the risk factor.

Speaker 3: 19:03

I feel that within healthcare and academic medicine, we are beginning to embrace these ideas better, particularly with the younger generation that's going through medical school and residency right now. I feel that they are much more socially aware about how racial injustice impacts our society and within healthcare and I talked about this in a book several organizations that are making concerted efforts to address that, particularly in education. But there is so much further to go. We have so much work to do and they can't be an afterthought. This is going to be the core of what we do, because race and racism aren't woven in so much of our society. It's like it's okay to talk about that, right, because we're just trying to understand our past so we can understand our present and prepare for a better future. And denying all these ugly parts of our past gets us nowhere. So in healthcare specifically, there is so much racial injustice within healthcare system that is persisting today that we as a profession have a lot of work to do.

Speaker 1: 20:11

You referenced that so many times, so beautifully throughout the book. Well, beautifully, and also horrifically, because it's the reality of it throughout the book, of just the number of times that you, professionally, were either blatantly told or just sort of hinted at Don't say anything. We cannot talk about race as part of talking about medicine. We cannot talk about race as part of a response to an issue and it's like well, how do you not?

Speaker 3: 20:33

And we talked earlier about how I put my story in there. I freely admit of the role I played in perpetuating that silence by silencing myself, but also just accepting what was taught to me throughout my medical education and then continuing to teach that to others that I was in charge of education. So I played a role in all this, which I freely admit. But I now want to do better right and step into how we're going to correct the inequities of our past, because this impacts all of us. I'm going to benefit from this and I certainly cannot turn away from that anymore. And after the shooting in Dallas, I realized that there was much more I had to do. I could continue that role I was in, but when I was done with my career, whenever that ends I could look back and say, well, not much has changed and I could have made a difference. So that's why I'm choosing a different path.

Speaker 2: 21:25

I'm so glad that you're highlighting this distinction between race and racism as a risk factor, because I feel like, just speaking for myself, there's this stigma, even for the people who are impacted. If we believe that race is a risk factor, you're basically saying some people are just deficient, which we're not, and so I feel like putting the onus on the systems that we live in is just very empowering.

Speaker 3: 21:49

personally, I'm like yeah, there's nothing wrong with us.

Speaker 2: 21:52

We're great there is excellence everywhere, right, but the country will try to tell you there's something wrong with you and then, therefore, we can't do it. We're disposable, basically, and you have referenced the shooting on July 7th in Dallas and you talk about it a lot in the book. So, definitely, please read the book and explore that a little bit more. But one of the things you did is you spoke at the press conference after the shooting and you talked about how black men were dying and being forgotten and I'm wondering why you, in that moment, that was important for you to raise and what that means to you.

Speaker 3: 22:30

In that moment at the press conference. That was the culmination of, you know, a lifetime of Silencing myself about these issues of racism and gun violence and healthcare injustice, and so I could get by, right, so I could move up the medical hierarchy, because I felt that that was what mattered the most, that the press comes. What was not said about the shooting really did not sit well with me. This was a shooting of police officers at a at a protest for racial justice, a peaceful protest for racial justice. In the days following the officer involved, shootings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. And the shooter was Black who was there targeting white cops. I mean that, right, there should be enough to say, okay, we need to unpack what this meant for our society on a larger scale. But none of that was discussed and we've seen many of these mass shooting press conferences. They kind of follow the same script and that's where we're doing that time and sitting there I should also. I'll be the only black trauma surgeon in the entire group of trauma surgeons.

Speaker 3: 23:45

What was unsaid just didn't sit well with me and I was thinking like, should I say something right now because they're overlooking the huge issue right now? But I thought, well, if I say something, it's gonna be backlash, I'll get fired. I thought about all of the negative things that could happen if I spoke up at that time, but in the end I decided if it's not now, it would ever happen. And it was not me. I mean, it has to be me right now. And so I spoke and I mentioned these things about gun violence and policing and the ongoing loss of black men due to gun violence Was unscripted. It just came out at the moment and when I was done I just really felt liberated. I felt like there's just weight off my shoulders. I'm okay, I've said it, but I assume that the next day I'd be unemployed.

Speaker 1: 24:31

I Don't understand how we've kind of gotten to this place where people you can't hold multiple things as true at the same time, which I think you articulated at that press conference right. You can have wanted to save those police officers who pass through. You can also be horrified that someone would shoot at them. You can be horrified that they weren't able to be saved. You can support police, you can also be afraid of them.

Speaker 1: 24:52

All of those things can be true at the same time, while at the same time saying and there are Black men dying in here every day that don't get any attention. It's not that I don't want attention Following a mass shooting, so that I also want these people who are passing every day in my hospital to get attention. All of those things can be true at once. It's just really complicated and really hard to unpack. Um, and so you, I think giving voice to it was Incredibly important and, as you detail on the book, like, I think, a lot of post-traumatic stress followed both the shooting and that press conference too. And then you know, hate mail and all that fun, the fun joy of being a public figure.

Speaker 3: 25:26

Yes, yes, you are. You articulated that very well, what you just said. I should have you edit that part of my book. I'm like that is really good.

Speaker 2: 25:34

But yes, yes, I had good source materials, so in Raising that, it sort of gets to the point you mentioned before, which is that. And then there's racism. And if we don't talk about racism, then it does put the burden on People like you to raise it. But if we can have it as part of the conversation, then it's a known fact and until then, it's like you have to, as the only black trauma surgeon, be the one to raise it. And you know, I'm wondering for listeners who Maybe they are coming from a place where they're like okay, but why would you raise it then, you know, isn't it about the police? Or maybe for someone who says, uh, you know this is. You know, we shouldn't really be talking about race at that moment for listeners, why is it so important to To carry more than one thing at once and to really think about the complexities and Make sure that when we think about mass shootings, we're also thinking about the daily trauma that you see?

Speaker 3: 26:40

Yeah, because I've been carrying all those things at once for such a long time, right, and I For me, I got to the point where I was no longer thriving. I was existing right and remember 2016,. There was so much death due to gun violence. Remember a month before that, that was the Orlando pulse mass shooting. So there was a lot happening that year and I had I felt that I had to give voice to it at that time, because there are so many people who are dealing with us on a day to day basis that will never have the opportunity to have access to that sort of platform to speak for themselves. So at that moment I felt Brian, you are the voice of the voiceless. Right now, you just have to accept what is going to happen, because this is the one chance to bring light to this issue and you are the one person that can do it.

Speaker 3: 27:38

And I you know I have to give credit to my wife first, right, because I didn't want to go to that press conference. When I was asked, I said no, and she was the one that said get over yourself. You need to go to that press conference because of the very things we just mentioned. So you have to be there. You don't have to speak, but they need to see that there was a black doctor there at night trying to save these police officers and that would have been enough.

Speaker 1: 28:04

Well, and I think to the point of kind of saving people beyond, just kind of what you do as a doctor in medicine, right, but your position as a doctor, like in the world, you articulate in the book a couple of different policies or loopholes that have led to increased gun violence in the US. But the one that kind of in the latter part of the book you devote a lot of attention to is something we've talked a lot about on the podcast, which you call stranger ground laws. If I may suggest a reformation, we've been calling them right to shoot first, laws here at Brady and I wonder you know why the focus on these laws in particular and the latter half of the book.

Speaker 3: 28:42

Well, in the latter half of the book. For one, I wanted the book to be hopeful towards the end because there's a lot of heavy stuff through that right out. So, okay, this is not to be hopeful. And about healing. And I talk a lot about racism throughout the book and that is the clearest policy that has that is rooted in racism and there's plenty of data to support that right. But I want to just be by my opinion stand your ground laws. And I must say I listened to this podcast and I think I cited your podcast as citations.

Speaker 1: 29:13

I may have put a little tab on it. I'm very excited.

Speaker 3: 29:17

But just clearly stand your ground. Laws, shoot first. Laws If you're black, you're most likely if you're shot and killed by a white person, that's usually justified. If you're a black person that shoots, so white person, same situation, you'll be deemed unjustified. So right there, you see the racial disparities in that and there's many more. I kind of talked through there.

Speaker 3: 29:37

But the point I wanted to make was that stand your ground. Laws. That is the one policy. That is the intersection of racism, gun violence and policing. And I'm not saying police, I'm talking about policing because in a way it deputizes all Americans, particularly white Americans, to shoot to kill black people who may think to be a threat. And we've seen it happen over and over again. And Trayvon Martin is the probably the one that brought this law to attention, to a national consciousness and I talked about when talking about the value of black lives. George Zimmerman, who was acquitted a few years later, sold auction the weapon that he used to kill Trayvon Martin and reportedly a woman bought it for a quarter of a million dollars, which is a statement about how we value young black men, in this case you know black boy who was shot and killed. I mean, there's no reason he should be dead right, but that weapon was viewed as something worth having and was sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaker 1: 30:48

And I think too it's one of the things in the book kind of just like when we're talking about the book itself, like I think narratively you had set it up beautifully because as a reader we go along with you. It was like you getting stopped by the police routinely for just living your life and the positioning of like outside strangers or police officers as like you as a threat, and so I think by the time we get to the standard ground laws, we see well, what was the thing is you quote Carol Anderson what is the thing that makes you a threat? You're a black man and so if that's all that it takes to perceive you as a threat under a shoot first law, then that's a huge portion of the population that is completely unsafe because of a law that we have and a firearm makes a deadly interaction.

Speaker 3: 31:26

And it's interesting, after the press conference several police officers told me and said you know, I never thought someone like you would be afraid of me if I pulled you over. And I said well, yeah, you know me as a doctor. We worked together in the hospital, but on the street I don't have doctor on my forehead. You know, I'm not wearing my white coat. I try to do things to minimize the chance of a bad interaction, but still I'm just a black man out there who is deemed a threat. So I understand where you're coming from. But it led to some discussions, right, that were hopefully changed a few minds back then.

Speaker 1: 32:04

I just picture, early on in the book you talk about, like you're with ski equipment and. I've never found a man holding a snowboard in any situation to be someone I'm afraid of. But they're like a neighbor calls it in and is like that man with a snowboard is suspicious and it's just like that's not. You know, like you can't. There's no winning in that scenario, because history is already there.

Speaker 3: 32:23

Right. And with that scene, people may say well, you did all the right things, so you're here to talk about it. I said, well, in that moment I'm playing the tape of what could go wrong, even if I did everything right, because we know that that could be a deadly encounter, no matter what.

Speaker 2: 32:41

Yeah, and it's like Trayvon Martin didn't do anything wrong, Like you know, so it's.

Speaker 1: 32:46

And how much is that to carry when like me and White? Lady Land has never had to have that calculus. Yeah, significant time and attention, I know, like when we both go running. Yeah, it's a different set of calculus for both of us.

Speaker 2: 32:56

And it's the same thing where I'm like no one sees my educate. Not that those things matter but, it doesn't.

Speaker 2: 33:03

Anyway, and when you were talking about history, I was thinking about the fact that they sold the gun that was used to kill Trayvon Martin, and it kind of echoes to people selling postcards and things like that of lynchings, and that that's just part of our history. And someone from our history who is amazing and a genius and I love him so much, James Baldwin. You start the book with a quote from him where you say, or he says quote the price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. Because he's a genius and I'm wondering you know we talked about it some, but what are some? What is, in your opinion, the ugly side of medicine?

Speaker 3: 33:43

For me, the ugly side of medicine that I've come to realize over my course of my year is how healthcare and justice is rooted in each one, with racism within medicine, and there is the benefits of that, which I discuss. You know the exploitation of black women to develop surgical procedures and instruments, the exploitation of black men to you know the Tuskegee. I talk about that like that's just the tip of the iceberg. I talk about all these other ways that the medical establishment has exploited black people for medical advances, techniques and knowledge that I use as a doctor and have taught to future generations. But the price we paid to get that information was to use the bodies of people that had no agency to say no, and so that's like the ugly side and it's something I have to reconcile with myself is that I do get to do what I do and serve humanity, but it's based on the exploitation of my ancestors that I'm still here and I just want people to understand how we got here so we can teach the next generation to do better.

Speaker 3: 35:05

That's the ugly side of the price I've paid to become an excellent surgeon and educator. I feel excellent surgeon and educator is learning that all this knowledge I received. A lot of us come from the exploitation of my ancestors. So the thing is, what do I do with that? Going forward? I can't just throw it away, but I can tell you like, look, let's look at our history on the same way we are now and do better. Going forward.

Speaker 2: 35:31

I mean it's relatable as an attorney.

Speaker 3: 35:33

Like the Constitution itself, is, so you know, tainted.

Speaker 2: 35:38

And yet that's sort of our base document and a lot of the way we're taught is this a historical. It's changing, but a lot of it is very a historical and it doesn't really take into account, like, the background of cases. It's just like this is the precedent. So I totally hear you on that, right. Right, I wonder if there's a sort of similar correlation to like the ugly side of gun violence prevention work too, which what you were doing was gun violence prevention work.

Speaker 1: 35:58

but certainly post-Pres Conference and the work you've done since has, I think, thrust you far more into that avenue as well. Is there kind of a you know what's the bad side of what we're doing or the ugly side?

Speaker 3: 36:10

I think what we could do better is to elevate a lot of the voices that are working in this gun violence prevention work, and I focus a lot on Black victims and survivors, because that has been what my practice is encompassed a lot of, because I've chosen to work at safety net hospitals, which are usually located next to racial segregated neighborhoods with a lot of endemic violence.

Speaker 3: 36:28

And I want to speak like this is not because my patients are morally bankrupt, like there's issues surrounding this that feed into that, and I just want to shine a light on that that we as a society could do better.

Speaker 3: 36:41

So we talked about, you know we always highlight a mass shooting and just understand Any preventable life loss to gun violence is too many. But I want to also say you know what? 24 hours after listening to this podcast, 60% of the firearm homicides will be young Black men. So I'm at this point do we have to do that? 24 hours after listening to this podcast, 60% of the firearm homicides will be young Black men. So my at this point, do you want to highlight all that all the time? Maybe not, but we shouldn't ignore it either, because there are families being affected by this and to really reduce firearm injury and death, we need to look at all the different types of gun violence suicides, homicides, intimate partner violence, mass shootings and address the root causes of each, so that we all can feel safe and secure, no matter where we go.

Speaker 1: 37:44

And to just, you know, to even pluck something out of that too. You know we didn't talk about it, but I think your book does a great response to folks who honestly and it's a racist dog whistle, but folks who will go well, it's black on black crime. Or we refer to it on the podcast, where people say, well, Chicago is the one that, like just, is disruptive. But what I appreciate about the way you spell it out in this book is that we're talking, though, about racism. We can throw that argument out the window because we're not entertaining this nonsense. We're talking about what is causing violence to be in these communities, and it's not that it's inherently a black issue.

Speaker 3: 38:22

Exactly exactly the black on black crime. I use, you know, department of Justice statistics to show that it's not about race. This is a byproduct of us living in a racially segregated society based on our historical redlining policies. So it's about proximity, right. So black people live near black people, white people live near white people. So the rate of violent crime same race is the same whether you're in black or white. How we talk about that at a national level, that's different, right? Because we always interject racist tropes about black violence. That's kind of interwoven into the American consciousness.

Speaker 3: 39:08

So I just wanted to try to dispel that from my own personal experience, professional experience but also use, you know, verifiable information that you can check yourself to decide whether or not I'm talking about. I don't want to just be my opinion but say, hey, you can go check these sources as well and make your own informed decision. There's so much for us to solve in this country, right? But that's what I enjoyed about being in academia is that these questions keep popping up, right, and we can address them using data and science. And get to be around all these smart people looking at the same issues from different perspectives. And how do we solve that?

Speaker 3: 39:49

And that's why at the end of the book I wanted to be hopeful and say like, yeah, we've have all this, but here we have such ingenuity. In this country, we have something dedicated to people that want to make the world a better place, that we can reduce needless death and suffering to the gun violence, to the health care injustice, to the police interactions, and it doesn't have to lead to an argument Like we can actually do this and everybody benefits. But I also just wanted to say that it's just been a tremendous honor for me to be on the podcast, because I've been listening to the show for years. It is one of the ones I regularly listen to. You're doing a great service and to be your guest has been fun and an honor.

Speaker 2: 40:37

We're honored to have you truly.

Speaker 1: 40:39

Yeah, we're honored and I'm sending that to my mom immediately.

Speaker 2: 40:43

I feel like that's going to be the first edit.

Speaker 1: 40:45

That is proof that podcasting is a real job. Thank you, all right, and where can folks find the book to go buy it? I'll link it in the description of this episode, but where can folks find it? And you and all your fabulous work coming forward.

Speaker 3: 40:56

Excellent. So the book is available Anywhere books are sold. I'm putting a plug to support your local Indies, please. If you go to bryanwilliamsmdcom, there'll be all the different links there for where you can purchase the book, but it's launched nationwide in pretty much anywhere you can think of. Also, I did. The audio book is available. I narrated the audio book myself and that's also available in eReader as well. So thank you, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me, thank you.

Speaker 1: 41:29

Hey want to share with the podcast. Listeners can now get in touch with us here at Red Blue and Brady via phone or text message. Simply call or text us at 480-744-3452 with your thoughts. Questions concerns ideas, cat pictures, whatever.

Speaker 2: 41:45

Thanks for listening. As always, brady's life-saving work in Congress, the courts and communities across the country is made possible thanks to you. For more information on Brady or how to get involved in the fight against gun violence, please like and subscribe to the podcast. Get in touch with us at bradyunitedorg or on social at BradyBuzz. Be brave and remember. Take action, not sides.